How I’m Approaching My Goals for 2017

I went back and looked at my 2016 goals post last week and . . . well, that was embarrassing.

I feel like 2016 was a really good year for our family and I made a lot of headway in laying foundational habits and routines that help me accomplish my goals.

This year, my goal is to really make my life more rich in that framework.

I want to spend my free time in the evenings in ways that really enrich the quality of my life – that includes more reading, finally taking the calligraphy and handlettering classes I intended to do last year and did nothing about, and working on house projects, rather than watching television or getting sucked into my phone.

I want my relationships to be richer – more planned outings as a family on the weekends, more parties and friends over for dinner, more dates and quality time with Bart (we kicked that one off this week by hanging wallpaper in our laundry room, which was surprisingly fun), and more focused time with the girls, reading books, playing forty million games of Yahtzee, and trips to the park.

Also, be a little richer by making some progress on our student loans. That’s less exciting than reading more books or finishing house projects, but it’ll certainly feel good.

Like most people, I already have a lot on my plate, so I didn’t want my goals to be just things I set for the sake of setting goals.

Instead, I tried to be really deliberate about choosing five things I really wanted to accomplish this year. Then I also picked four projects to focus on finishing by the end of the year, and six habits to work on being consistent at (early bedtime, I’m looking at you).

Last year, one of my fatal flaws was that I never printed out my list of goals. I know this is hardly revolutionary, but it makes the biggest difference to have them somewhere I can see them on a daily basis.

We’re also trying something new this year where each month we make a shared Google Doc (how did I live before Google Docs?) and fill it out together, with a list of the birthdays that month, any travel we have, movies we want to watch for family movie night, weekend outings, church responsibilities, house projects we want to tackle, people to have over, and organization/cleaning projects that need to be done.

It’s a great time also to refer to our yearly goals and make sure we’re on track with those and write down things that need to happen for that month to make them happen by the end of the year.

Then each week, during our Sunday night planning session, we can refer to that month’s list and see what birthday cards or gifts need to be sent, what movies to request from the library, do any planning for family outings (like what hike we’re going to do or where we’ll go to dinner), and schedule in time to make our house projects happen.

Otherwise, a year just seems too long and by the end, you’ve completely forgotten what you intended to do.

I’m also doing more tracking of my goals.

Like last year, my goal is to read 120 books, but this year, I’m planning to ACTUALLY do that, so I set a Goodreads challenge so it can keep me on task and remind me of that goal throughout the year.

And I’m using the health tracker on my phone to keep track on my exercise. I was off the exercise bandwagon because of my hemorrhage for so much of this year, but my mom and I did nearly 4 miles of walking every day that I was in Las Vegas, and it helped jumpstart me back into the habit.

After this baby is born, I want to start running again, working back up to 3 miles (which is what I was doing 3 times a week during my whole pregnancy with Ani, and was definitely the best shape I’ve ever been in my entire life), but until then, my goal is just to be consistently walking several miles 4-5 times a week so that I’m already in the habit of getting out the door and doing something good for my body.

Anyway, as usual, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed thinking through what I want to accomplish this year, and every year I think I get a little better at setting goals and working on things that are really important to me.

And I’d LOVE to hear about your goals and how you’re staying on track through 2017 because I never get tired of reading what habits and projects and dreams other people are working toward.