Thursday, January 4, 2024

2023 in Review: Goals + New Goal Approach for 2024

When I think back on 2023, I would give myself an A in terms of how I did keeping all the plates spinning. But if I graded myself based on the goals I set at the start of the year, I'd give myself a D because I only accomplished half of my goals. This is why I have a tricky relationship with goals. I want to push myself but I hate not accomplishing what I set out to achieve. So it's time to change my goal process. 

But first up, here's how I did. 

1. Work: My goal was to travel about once/month and I mentioned in my goals post that I was unlikely to travel 12 times so felt that 9 times was an appropriate goal. Ha. January 2023 Lisa had no idea how her work life would blow up... I traveled 14 times and, more importantly, did about 4.5 times as many client meetings as I did in 2022. Complete.

2. Reading: I read "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens with The Bookshelf Patreon group and I pretty much hated it. I gave it 2 stars. I think huge classics where the author is a white male that is basically paid by word are not for me. Complete.

3. Relationships: I wanted to go on a quarterly date with my husband. We went on 0 dates. But we did try! We had scheduled a couple of dates in late winter/early spring but the babysitter (the daughter of a friend) had to cancel. We decided she's too busy to use as a babysitter (she's in high school after all) but did not get around to finding another babysitter. Phil and I do get quality time nearly every night before the boys go to bed and we also carpool together 3 days/week and have surprisingly good conversations on the drive home before picking up the kids. But I need to work on this in 2024. Incomplete.

4. Travel: I wanted to go to Tucson with Paul in April and Banff with my friend Amber in August. Both trips happened and both trips were amazing!! Complete. 

5. Fitness: I wanted to run a couple of 10ks. I ran 0. I was supposed to run one on Thanksgiving but had to drop down to the 5k since I was too sick to run for much of the month leading up to Thanksgiving. Incomplete.

6. Outdoors: I set a goal to go outside for 23 minutes every day, inspired by the Happier Podcast. I did well at the start of the year - I would usually go for my walks mid-day during work days and would run or go for walks on the weekend. The wheels totally fell off in March when the spring banking crisis happened. I barely had time to eat lunch in between client calls so going outside for 23 minutes was out of the question. So I kind of gave up and never got back on track. I was outside a lot in 2023, but not 23 minutes every day. Incomplete.

Ok. So that was not an uplifting recap of goals. 50% is pretty awful. I don't want to have to write another "whelp, that didn't happen" kind of post when recapping 2024, so this year I am shifting to quarterly goals. This will allow me to flex to what is happening in life and take a more seasonal approach. Here are my Q1 goals. 

1. Do most of the January Cure. Apartment Therapy hosts this every year - it started yesterday so it’s not too late to join. I ignored the emails last year because I was not in the right place of mind to focus on household organization. This year, I feel differently. Plus I will be working from home for a good chunk of January while my office condenses down from 3 floors to 2. Some of the things Apartment Therapy asks you to do are not happening. Like day one's task was to create a vision board. NOT HAPPENING. Home decor is so not my thing and I don't have any grand dreams for our house besides not stepping on tiny toys and legos and generally having less plastic toys around. Additionally, if they ask me to do a deep cleaning of my floors or scrub my dust boards, I won't. But anything related to organization or decluttering is something I will do. 

2. Go on one date with Phil. My birthday is in February so that seemed like a good time to plan a date. I have already booked the babysitter (who works at a daycare so is a total pro) we used pre-pandemic for the weekend before my birthday in February. There's also a young girl on our block that wants to babysit. Another family with similar-aged kids has used her and raves about her. But I fear that Taco will not let her do bedtime. So we are going to go with the pro for the first 1-2 times to ease him into having a babysitter. 

Did you set goals for 2023? Were you successful? Have you set goals for 2024? 

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