At the beginning of 2017, I made a short video lying in bed with some fairly realistic goals to start off my year. Throughout my highs and lows of 2017, I found myself remembering that video and those goals, reminding myself that I had some work to do and to not let the January 1st, 2017 version of myself down.
My goals were simple:
- Write at least 1 blog post every two weeks on my personal blog
- Get a pay raise or start a new job
- Submit a piece of writing to the New York Times
- Hang out with more people one on one (and make them play Pie Face)
- Help as many people as possible with things involving writing
They were all fairly easy.
Ok jk they totally weren't, and I was going to give a quick overview here, but as I started to develop a little on each topic, the post got longer and longer, so click here for a separate post on a brief overview of my goals and how they were/weren't achieved.
A good way to set goals for yourself, both long-term and short, is to set realistic goals for yourself; there's no way I'm going to learn how to be invisible by the end of the year, so I'm probably not going to set a goal as "Learn how to be invisible," unless I'm talking about being invisible in a social setting, like metaphorically, in which case, ok maybe. However, setting a goal that isn't impossible but is challenging enough, and is well within your Zone of Proximal Development (ayeee Masters Degree in work okaaaay), is optimal.
And long story short, I kind of achieved all or parts of each goal that I set for myself…
except for one.