2018 Goals Wrap Up | How I Did On My 2018 Goals

Hello, everyone. It’s time for my 2018 wrap up. This year was amazing in terms of my goals. I made progress on every single one of them. I used the Powersheets Goal Planner this year and it has made a world of difference. I’ve been trying to figure out why this year has felt so great and realized that my life doesn’t feel like it’s happening on accident. I’ve really been living on purpose this year, and that’s a wonderful feeling. Before I start rambling too much, let’s get into the important stuff. Here’s how I did on my 2018 goals.

Related:

//Word For The Year//

So my word for 2018 was initiative. I’ve never really been one to have “words for the year.” It’s become a sort of trend in the last few years, so I decided to give it a try in 2017. The thing is, I decided on a word and didn’t act on it nearly as much as I should have, so it didn’t make much of a difference.

And honestly, the word “initiative” wasn’t always on my mind this year, either. I just did it. I took initiative. The reason I chose that word was that I wanted to start things this year. I wanted to really take initiative on the things I wanted to do whether that was to apply for a credit card, book a plane ticket, or simply call a friend. I didn’t want to wait to do things. I wanted to just do them.

And I truly think I did that in 2018. This year was a year of taking initiative.

My goal planner also told me to choose three out of ten categories to focus on this year. The three I chose were Finance, Work, and Friends. Looking at my goals below, it’s clear to see that I did just that.

//2018 Goals//

1.// Financial Stability

Original Goal – Financial Stability:

This goal has stayed the same throughout the year and I’m happy to say that it’s complete. I went into more detail in this post if you want to know more, but the reason I set this goal was that I wanted to be financially stable enough to move out in 2019. I ended moving out in August, so needless to say, I accomplished that goal.

I’m a college student, so the term “financially stable” is a bit different for me. I didn’t want to have a 401k or anything. I just wanted to reach a point where I didn’t have to worry too much about money. I have an emergency fund, a working budget, and have started building my credit. I feel significantly better about my financial situation than I did a year ago. I mark this goal as complete.

Starting Steps I Set Back In January:

~~Get A Credit Card~~
~~Start Making A More Regular Income~~
~~Save an undisclosed amount of money~~

2.//Travel To Another Continent

Original Goal – Travel To Europe

Sadly, I wasn’t able to complete this goal. I had saved enough money to travel to Europe in 2017, but a lot of personal things came up that prevented me from going. I changed that goal to “traveling to another continent” because I wanted to take a solo trip somewhere during winter break and I have family in other countries I could potentially visit, but because I moved out in August, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a trip this year.

I did go to Canada for the first time during spring break in March. That was my second time outside the country and my third solo trip (The first was to Disney World and the second was to Bangladesh). I definitely plan on traveling to Europe in 2019 and want to take more trips in 2019. This year held a lot of setbacks in terms of travel, but I’m sure I’ll have more opportunities in the future.

With one of my best friends at Niagara Falls

3.//Create A Product To Sell On Blog

Original Goal – Start A YouTube Channel

The original goal makes me laugh. At the beginning of the year, blogging had started becoming very routine and I wanted to try something to experiment with my creativity, so my dad suggested I start a YouTube channel. I did some research and started making plans. It seemed like a really fun idea. I even went as far as to film a few videos but decided that I didn’t like it. It may be something fun to do in the future, but I much prefer blogging over editing videos. That goal changed real quick.

Instead, I decided to undertake another project for this blog. I wanted to create an e-course. Even though it won’t be published any time soon, I’ve made a lot of progress with it. I’ve decided on a topic, created an outline and am currently writing it out. I still have to create a workbook and do some other stuff for it, so I plan on launching it this summer. I had originally wanted to launch it this year, but school was a much higher priority. Even though this goal isn’t technically complete, it feels like a win based on all the progress that I’ve made.

4.//Build A Foundation To Make More Money From Blog In The Future

Original Goal – Make $1000 in one month from the blog

I had intended to start treating my blog more like a business this year, but I ended up focusing more on my actual business unrelated to this blog. I’m self-employed and one of the goals I didn’t share in my 2018 goals post was related to expanding that. One of the reasons I reached my financial stability goal was that I started making a much more consistent income from that business, so I put more of my effort towards that.

Even though I have made money from this blog, I didn’t spend time on monetizing this year. I decided to focus more of my effort on my job. Because of that, I changed my goal to preparing this blog for making money in the future. This meant things like fixing SEO, changing a few design elements, reorganizing the menu, etc. The biggest undertaking was certainly rereading all my old blog posts. I had this horrible habit of posting blog posts before rereading them and I’ve been going back to look through every last one of my published posts.

Thankfully, there haven’t been too many typos, but man, do I hate reading things I’ve written. I’ve learned that most writers feel that way, but it doesn’t make it much better. I’m not done yet. I’ve been working my way backward, so I’m currently reading my 2016 blog posts. It’s been torture. I hadn’t realized how much my blogging had improved until I’d started reading my older stuff. I don’t understand why I had so many readers back then because I had started getting thousands of views by my second month.

I’ll be done with rereading everything by the end of December, so I call this goal a win. There are still some marketing aspects I need to improve, but overall, I feel good about what I’ve gotten done.

5.//Be More Intentional About My Friendships

Original Goal – Be More Intentional About My Friendships

This is another goal that hasn’t changed. I wrote an entire post about this recently, so I’ll link it below. I would consider this goal complete. I had a lot of intentional forethought when it came to my friends this year. I called and texted them more often. I made sure to set aside time to hang out with them.

At the beginning of this year, I had realized that I had prioritized school and work so much that I wasn’t making time for my friends. I’m glad to say I’ve changed that. Don’t get me wrong, we all could have done better when it came to meeting up. My closest friends and I all go to different colleges, so it’s hard to set aside time where all of us are free. I’ll try to do better on planning more get-togethers this year, but I’ll still mark this goal as complete.

That was not a very good summary of that goal. You should read the link below to get a better idea on the steps I took to complete this goal.

This is from the surprise party we threw for our friend Feza

6.//Be More Intentional About My Time

Original Goal – Wake Up Early

I had afternoon classes in the first semester of my sophomore year (Fall 2017), so I had gotten in the habit of waking up late. I wanted to get over that bad habit. I don’t know if I should mark this goal as complete because I’ve had mixed results with this. I did a really good job on some days and slept in on a few others. I would wake up early on the days I had classes and sleep in on the weekends I didn’t have any work.

I think I’ll mark this goal as complete because I’ve woken up before 9:00 consistently since school started, but I need to work on improving my weekend schedule because waking up at noon is not a good use of daylight.

I will also mark the refreshed goal complete because I have been much more intentional about my time. That goal came about because I had noticed that I would scroll through my phone while watching T.V. I didn’t like that. It had become a compulsion that was really hard to break. I decided that I wanted to be more present with everything I do and I’m happy to say that I don’t reach for my phone every time I watch a movie anymore. I’m genuinely focusing on what I do in the moment.

I also think this goal has extended to how I spend my time when I go home. My brother has autism, so I come home every weekend from my dorm. When I’m at home, I want to make the most of the time I have with him because me moving has been really hard for us. That’s why I stopped doing school work on weekends. I’m already super busy with work in general that I don’t want to spend the extra time I have doing school work while with my family. I can do that when I’m in the dorm.

Overall, I’ve prioritized important things when it comes to managing my time and am much more present. I’m marking this goal as complete.

(Note: I didn’t have this phone compulsion when I was spending time with people. Only when I was watching T.V.)

7.//Read 70 Books; Watch Every Superhero Movie

Original Goal – Read 12 New Books; Watch 12 New Movies

Complete! As of right now, I’ve finished almost 80 books and I still have time to complete another before the year is over. I did a lot or rereading in 2017 and I wanted to read some things I hadn’t before, so I decided to finish one book a month. I finished that goal real quick. I had read 12 books by February and had gotten my thirst for reading back. Soon that goal expanded to read 50 books, then to 70 books. (Books in general, not just new books). I’m super proud of accomplishing this goal.

The movie goal was added as an afterthought. It just seemed like a fun bucket list type of goal to complete. I originally wanted to watch classic movies that I hadn’t seen before like Casablanca or The Godfather, but I didn’t end up doing that. Because of Avengers: Infinity War, I rewatched every MCU movie before it came out. That got me on a huge superhero movie kick, so I started watching DC movies and the Spiderman remakes, as well. Since I had already gotten through so many of them, I updated the goal in October to watch every superhero movie. I didn’t watch the Fantastic Four movies, but I have gotten through a chunk of the X-Men. I don’t think I’ll get through all of those in the next three days (nor do I want to), but that was a super fun goal. I’ll probably finish it in January.

8.//Write Every Day

Original Goal – Write Every Day

This was a pretty general hobby-based goal I set for this year. I wanted to write something unrelated to school every day, whether that was a blog post, a journal entry, or something fiction. I tracked this at the beginning of the year but stopped sometime in April. I think I did a good job at this goal in the first half of the year and lagged in the second.

I was busy with transferring to another college, moving out, family visiting, etc. that I didn’t blog as much. That was the bulk of the writing I did, so I ended up writing significantly less in general. I also wish I had written more fiction. I write fiction for fun and I had a lot of ideas this year but didn’t implement many of them.

I did start journaling this year and have done a pretty good job at keeping it up. I won’t mark this as complete, but this wasn’t one of my serious goals. This was just a hobby I wanted to pursue more in 2018, so I’m okay with how I did.

Well, I guess that’s it. Even though some of these goals aren’t completely crossed off, I feel very accomplished. I’ve gotten so much done this year, a lot of it behind the scenes, and I’m excited about what 2019 brings. I’ve already set my new years goals and can’t wait to share them with you.

Until next time!

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How did you do on your 2018 goals? What progress did you make?

2018 Wrap Up | How I Did On My 2018 Goals

//Word For The Year//

//2018 Goals//