Do you like to set goals? I used to set monthly goals, but over the past few years I’ve changed to thinking about the year split into quarters and that feels more manageable to me. At some point I learned that setting goals and writing them down significantly increases the likelihood of accomplishing them, and I do think that’s true.
While personally I do reflect on goals I may not have achieved and try to adjust my goals for the next quarter with that in mind, I shifted my focus from thinking about what I didn’t do to what I did accomplish. That’s why I started sharing my wins for the previous quarter, instead of focusing on what I didn’t do.
Here are my quarterly wins and goals for 2021.
First Quarter Wins
- I read 27 books! At the pace I’m going I’m on track to read more books this year than ever before, although I truly don’t care about the number. I’m happy that even during this busy season of my life I’m able to find time to do the thing that brings me so much joy.
- I upgraded my Mac. My poor MacBook Air was dying a slow death and I was getting “Your startup disk is full” messages even after I’d done everything I could to delete delete delete. So I upgraded to a MacBook Pro and feel so relieved not having to worry about whether or not today’s the day my computer will die.
- I decided to get serious about blogging. After years of writing with no real expectation of what I wanted out of this online space, I’ve decided to turn my passion for writing and helping women be more inspired to read into a real business. Nothing is changing overnight, but for me, that intention shift alone has been huge.
- Violet started ballet. We had signed her up pre-pandemic but then everything was cancelled of course, yet she had been asking about it ever since. So we decided to sign her up again at the beginning of the year, and she absolutely LOVED her first session. Her class was tiny and she was great about wearing her mask, so I felt comfortable with it too.
- Jona won a leadership award. Each quarter the teachers at Jona’s school get to choose a student to nominate for a leadership award, and his teacher chose him for the first quarter. They had a video of all the nominations, and for his, his teacher wrote the sweetest poem about Jona and why she thinks he’s a leader. My heart just melted all the way to the floor.
- Aaron and I had a night away! We visited a town about an hour away and enjoyed dining out, visiting a winery, and staying in a hotel. It was wonderful! We went on a Sunday too which meant that places weren’t very busy (in fact, there were only two other people at the winery we visited, so we had the whole place practically to ourselves!).
Second Quarter Goals
Complete one big and two small house projects. This is cheating a little because Aaron has already planned and scheduled our big project: getting our front yard sodded. (I think that’s the word? Our front yard struggles to grow grass because of a big tree, and after many fails we’re bringing in professional help.) I’d also like to get some decorations put up in Jona’s room, and maybe do one more small thing next quarter.
Develop a church routine that involves the kids. We have been attending church online for over a year now, but recently our church opened for in-person worship in a limited capacity. I’m thankful that we’ve had the option of attending online, but I haven’t been good about getting the kids involved at all. Whether it’s making plans to attend in person soon, or finding ways to involve them at home, I want church to be part of their lives again.
Schedule a date for the product I’ve been working on. I’ve been working hard to create something I’m pretty excited about, and I’m almost ready to move from the planning stage (aka my comfort zone) to the make it happen stage (aka fear-ville). Honestly, just saying that is scary.
Grow my social media. I don’t live and die by my Facebook and Instagram likes, but I’m only 100 people away from having 1,000 followers in Instagram (I’m @shealennon)—no that doesn’t give me a swipe up link or anything, but it is still a number worth striving for. And I’d love to grow my relatively new little Facebook page as well. I think it could help me reach a lot more potential devoted book-lovers!
I’d love to hear your wins and goals for the quarter as well!
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