2020 goal check

If you know me well, you probably know that I am a little obsessive about setting and reaching and resetting goals. It's one of my favorite activities and something I think about often. Seasonal goals are my favorite, but my annual goal list usually informs my seasonal goal choices. Here, I'm going to walk through my season goal process and hopefully sound coherent about it as I do so.

Reaching May means that one third of this year has passed. For my annual goals, this is a pretty great time to check in and see if I've made any progress or if I need to make any adjustments.

Here are the goals I set in December to accomplish during 2020:

High priority goals

1) Dive into church history/questions

2) Pass two actuary exams

3) Find a new way to exercise

4) Write!

Next level goals

5) Empty our bonus room of junk we don't need or want

6) Take pics beyond just Brooks

7) Birthday gifts for my immediate family (sisters and parents)

8) Scripture study: world religions devotionals, modern parables/translations, general conference homework

Easy or one-time goals

9) Research unmedicated birth

10) Read Harry Potter again

11) Connect with lady friends regularly

12) Maintain social media fasts, food bank service, and temple attendance from 2019

Here are the ones I'm nailing so far: 1, 4, 5, 7 (but we haven't hit family birthday season yet so this is a cheat), mostly 8, and 10. I probably wouldn't be nailing numbers 4 and 5 if it weren't for COVID.

Here are the ones I haven't touched so far: 3 and 9

And all of the others are somewhere in the middle. COVID delayed my first actuary exam (#2) and ensured that my only photographic subject is Brooks (#6), but I was doing great on both of those before it hit. COVID also sent my normal metrics for #11 out the window, but I have had more digital interactions with friends and family than ever before in my life. I'm being pushed to find new ways to connect, which is as worthy a goal for now as the original. And for #12, COVID has made me less likely to take a real social media fast (boooo, I'm fixing that) and unable to attend the temple, but I've still gone to the food bank!

I'm not here to declare success or failure for months January-April. I do want to evaluate whether any of these goals should shift before I begin my summer months. Where should my focus be as I move forward?

1) I've recently started feeling a strong need to move my body regularly (#3). It's been nice to take a break from running, but once school calms down (next week!), I'll be scouring the internet for workout videos like it's my job. Might buy a yoga mat with my Donald dollars! This will probably be my biggest new area of focus for summer.

2) I need to shift my actuary testing plans (#2) if I'm going to have a paycheck in August. This first felt like a huge bummer, but I'm excited now to potentially get some experience in data science before going whole hog toward actuary science specifically. I'll use my summer months to earn one passing score and rebuild my resume, and then I hope to find a job adjacent to the actuary field in the fall while I continue studying for my second test. 

3) As an entirely new goal: I think I need to try a more strict lactose/dairy free diet than I have so far ever tried. I'm not saying I'll do it; I'm saying I'll think about it. But perhaps over summer, when the harvest is bounteous, I could convince myself to try it? And I could really test if I feel significantly better or not. I'm tired of the low-level but seemingly constant bloat.

4) And my top goal always is to go down any church-related rabbit hole that comes my way. I need a better system for bookmarking these rabbit holes until I can really dive into them. If I can figure out how to better manage the books, links, podcasts, videos, interviews, articles, etc. that are flying at me (keep em comin, tho), I can probably stop feeling like this goal is stealing time from all the other goals (which was the feeling during, like, all of March).

So! Lots of info here, and maybe no one but me cares about it, but summer looks like it's going to be great. That is the best part about setting seasonal goals: it gets me excited for what's to come every single time. My favorite season is whatever season we're about to enter! And usually that's because it's my permission to myself to get going on some new goal material.

If you're feeling an itch to change something, set yourself a lil goal. I promise you'll be glad you at least started on the path.