2019 Goals Review

Its almost time to do a 2020 year review but I never finished 2019. Here is what I wrote back in March but am just publishing now.

So much is going on right now. Life is wild. Seriously only 3 months into 2020 and the world shuts down. Our family is finally getting into a flow so here I am wrapping up 2019 by reviewing our goals.

This is more for me. I need to revisit last year since this years goals are getting derailed with all the craziness.

2019 (17 Goals)

Career, Relationship, Financial, & Lifestyle

1. Find Job work 3-4 hrs /day from 12-4pm ( pays more than $10/hr.)
2. Find 10 Speaking gigs
3. Appear on 12 podcasts
4. Record my own podcast/ YouTube
5. Re-launch blog with email list ( new design , new pillars) (earn $$)
6. Earn 5K from passion projects
7. Max out 401K and cancel lower IRAs
8. Save 40 K for a house
9. Buy House June- Dec
10. Read 3 parenting books
11. Email 3 people on email day
12. Practice gratitude personally every morning
13. Visit Dentist and optometrist
14. Pay to consult with a nutritionist
15. Pay for a work out coach (  butt and belly goals)
16. 3 week Michigan road trip
17. Yoga everyday that ends with Y

Before we explore the results of my 2019 goals I wanted to let you know how I evaluate them. At first I use to do pass and fail . So Completed or Failed. If I said I wanted to do 10 speaking events and I only did 5 then I would say Fail. I didn’t reach my goal of 10.

I am not so brutal anymore. I still do Fails. Now I just also do progress and success. Now I would give 5/10 speaking gigs a progress grade. I am still seeing growth, that is good to me. This might be a good way for you to evaluate goals too.

Career

• Find Job work 3-4 hrs/day from 12-4pm ( $10+/hr): Fail?

From January- November I worked at my children’s elementary school. I didn’t meet my goal of getting a better paying job but I loved the flexibility. The goal really was to find a position at the second half of the day as appose to something that split my day down the middle. The 2nd part of this goal was, to not be making minimum wage. Maybe as an educated engineer I feel like I should be making more money. Clearly I haven’t wanted to sacrifice the flexibility for the bigger paycheck. I am sure there is a job out there I can do that will maintain my flexibility and pay more. I just need to look.

• Find 10 Speaking gigs: Progress

I think this was a great experiment for me. I have given so many hours of training at my corporate job. I have experience with public speaking. This was different, I had to find people and contact them. Reaching out is the hurdle most people need to overcome. I feel like I saw a lot of growth here even though I only secured 2 paid gig & 6 talks were at toastmaster meetings.

• Appear on 12 podcasts: Progress

Another goal that relies heavily on reaching out. I was able to connect with Mindy and Scott on their great Podcast. You can listen to the story. OR… They also record video! That was a great new experience. Want to see me and hear my story check the video out.

• Record my own podcast/ YouTube : Fail

No movement forward on here. It’s all the technical stuff that discourages people from starting their blog, podcast or YouTube channel. In your head you think, I just have to write, talk, record. Truth is, there is a lot of other moving parts in the background. Those parts can even be more time consuming then the reason you wanted to share.

( Ok, I am not making edits because this is my review from March for 2019 but I think it cool to see that in 2020 it gets done)

• Re-launch blog with email list : Progress

I did a very small redesign in May and published a new about me page. I learned how to attach freebies. It’s a struggle but I am pushing through.

Financial

• Earn 5K from passion projects: Progress

Nope, I didn’t get anywhere near that, but I did get 2 paid speaking gigs. Slowly I am figuring it out. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Yet it has been such an experience testing this out.

• Max out 401K and cancel lower IRAs: Success

Our financial lives really don’t need much. We have set up systems. It’s really just revisiting it to make sure the money is heading in the right direction. We do monthly bookkeeping. We go through our expenses, transfer them over to excel. We look at spending. Initially we had planned to cancel our IRA automated investing to funnel it to a house down payment. We noticed money building up in our checking. Realized that last year we had made progress. We needed to set aside less then originally thought. We had some money to still invest some into our IRAs

• Save 40 K for a house: Success

Our bank account has 40K + for a home down payment. This is liquid and ready for us to make that first purchase.

• Buy House June- Dec: Progress

We did not end up buying. We did end up moving 2 hr away to a new city and we just remebered how much more we understood the city after living there a few months. While I think it’s amazing how some people buy houses in new city they haven’t live in before. We didn’t feel ready to do that. Initially the house buying was part of our move. We moved. Didn’t buy.

Relationships

• Read 3 parenting books: Progress

I read 2.5 parenting books before the year was over. For me its helpful to read because I know that there are things from my upbringing that I just don’t want to include. So it’s good to revisit ideas and methods that take more effort for me to practice but that I know are the better way to go. We all then to fall back on what we know. So, its good to learn and know new things.

• Email 3 people on email day: Progress

I am trying to stay connected to people who live far from me. Since I do tend to move frequently. Usually I kind of let the distance kill those relationships but I am working harder to keep them going. This was a horrible goal in the senses that it was too vague. So I texted people and called people, but I didn’t not decided on an email day. It was more of, If you think of someone just reach out in that moment. And practicing that mantra.

• Practice gratitude personally every morning : Fail

The night time gratitude from last year has been great and really stuck. I haven’t done anything with trying to implement a personal practice in the mornings.

Lifestyle

• Visit Dentist and optometrist (✓) (Adulting!): Success

There really isn’t much to this. I usually do a good job of planning this sort of thing for the kids but don’t always do it for myself. This year we all got seen. We are already paying for all that insurance for well visits. Might as well use them. I did find it ridiculous how much they wanted me to pay for glasses. In California I pay over $200. Here they wanted me to pay on the low end $500. I’ll shop around thanks. People say everything is more expensive in California…. that is a myth.

• Pay to consult with a nutritionist : Fail

LOL, ok I will get around to this one day. For now it’s just reading books and watching YouTube video.

• Pay for a work out coach (  butt and belly goals): Fail

Ditto for this one too. This is a vanity goal. There is no way around it. Clearly it’s not that high priority.

• 3 week Michigan road trip: Fail?

The nice long summer trip never materialize because instead we were trying to figure out moving to a new city 2 hours away. All I know if that I don’t want what happened in California to happen here. Which is waiting until we are leaving California to explore it. I loved our 6 day California road trip. That is why I want to make sure we get to know all the cool places in Michigan while we live here.

We did make it to Chicago for a long weekend.

We also made it back to California to see my family and I even figured out how to extend our connection in Colorado so that we could visit family there too. It was a nice way to end the year.

• Yoga everyday that ends with Y

This was perhaps one of the most successful even though it very much does not meet the SMART goal format. Here I think it was more about building habits. ( I love Yoga with Adrienne. ) And my husband was super supportive of me and was cheerleading for me to go . do that. Or don’t bother mommy while she does that. And my kids even joined me several time too. Which is an extra win.

I feel like parenting and marriage are really my top priority in this stage of life, which is why I feel like I didn’t see as much growth in my business stuff. I don’t want to sacrifice those relationships. I really wish Pat Flynn would talk more about how he manages family and work. He seems to do it all.

This past year I really felt like “blah” around goals. So I worked to really try to figure out my next step.

Once you are out of a place where outside factor dictate your life you are left with yourself. You are left with quiet. You really need to rediscover or reinvent yourself and that can be hard.

It can be hard to say, well what do I really want to do with my life???

I really want to share with people through speech, on podcast , on YouTube video in person. But I am still too overwhelmed by the technical aspect of creating my own thing which is why I love the idea of being a guest on other peoples platforms.

Cheers to continuous improvement!!

Ciao,

Melissa

Note in 2020. Well there you go 2019 year review now to get year 2020 done.
Do you make goals? Do you ever go back and review how you did? Let me know in the comment below.