My 2016 Goals – and How I Plan on Accomplishing Them

2016 is here which means it’s time to set goals!

Some bloggers share monthly goals but I prefer to stick to only sharing yearly goals. While it’s important to realize how quickly priorities can change over the course of a year, I think there is a ton of value in identifying what you want to work towards.

I love setting goals because it gives me a sense of direction and forces me to think about how I can accomplish them.

If you haven’t set goals yet for 2016 consider checking out Erin’s awesome post 100 Goals to Focus on for a Successful Year.

A few other good posts about goals and goal-setting are How to Turn Your Financial Goals Into a Game, 5 Financial Goals Everyone Should Work Towards, and How to Accomplish Goals by using the “Financial Bridge” Technique.

I spent some time throughout December thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2016 and I came up with 8 goals. Below are my goals for 2016, in order from most important to least important.

1) Have a Successful Book Release

My first book, Hustle Away Debt, comes out in May. Having a successful book release is my top priority this year.

What does a successful book release look like? I set the following benchmarks:

Base Goal: 1,000+ book sales

Stretch Goal: 5,000+ book sales

I haven’t actually talked numbers yet with the marketing team, so these numbers may not be good benchmarks, but it’s better than having an ambiguous goal of a “successful” release. I may tweak them after discussing expectations with the sales and marketing team.

How I am going to do it:

Prioritize marketing and promotion of this book. Work with my publisher’s marketing and sales team to do whatever I can to make the chance of success better. Make this goal a priority over other goals I have this year. This will be a time-consuming goal as it will likely require writing guest posts, giving interviews, and in general putting in the time and effort to get the word out.

2) Have a Successful Year in My New Job

A couple months ago I received a promotion and took on new responsibilities at my 9-5. I want to do whatever I can to make sure my first year in this role a successful one.

Some may think that having so many goals outside of work will conflict with my 9-5, but there is a lot that can be done in a 40+ hour work week to be more productive and make good use of my time.

Most people in 9-5 jobs (myself included) end up wasting time throughout the day or focus on things that are not priorities. There is always opportunities to perform better within a 9-5, though it does sometimes mean working longer hours during busy times.

How I am going to do it:

• Prioritize tasks/responsibilities better – Focus on the most important things first. Spend less time on less-important tasks/responsibilities.

• Plan my time better – Continue to use a to-do list and schedule my time effectively. Plan ahead for busier times and do what I can to “work ahead” for those busy times.

• Delegate work – Now that I have two employees that I can hand off work to I need to release control over some processes and hand things off. Being patient with transition of tasks and being okay with things not being done exactly how I would do them is key. Long-term this will help me develop management skills and prepare myself for even more responsibility down the road.

Ultimately my goal here is to do good work that reflects well on myself, my manager, my team, and my company. I want to spend the next year becoming a more knowledgeable and polished employee. I also want to continue to build on my reputation of being a dependable team member who will get things done when they need to get done.

3) Build My Blog and Brand

While I typically do not share blog goals, stats, or really much at all about the “behind-the-scenes” of my blog, I do realize that many people who read this blog are either bloggers themselves or have thought about starting a blog. I thought it would make sense to share a little about my goals for building my blog in 2016.

Before doing that, though, I do want to call out my nearly 5,000 word post I wrote about 30+ ways to improve your blog. Many of the things on this list are things that I want to focus on in 2016.

Below are some of my blog goals for 2016, as well as how I will accomplish them.

• Full redesign of website – I’ve been planning a redesign for over two years. Twice I’ve hired designers. Twice I’ve cut ties with designers early in the process. Over Christmas I wrote requirements for a redesign and reached out to a few promising designers. This has to be done before the book comes out in May so it’s a top priority in 2016.

• Full redesign of email newsletter – To use a kind word our email newsletter is “minimalist.” I have no desire to spend the time designing and coding a new one, but we desperately need something new. I’d like to get it coordinated with the new design so that the brand is consistent across all platforms.

• Plan content further in advance – While I’ve had a good process going with my writers, it would be great to have 2+ months of content planned out on our editorial calendar.

• Find tasks that can be outsourced – While I do have a couple of writers who do a fantastic job writing most of the content on the site, I do virtually everything else myself. I need to look for opportunities to outsource some of those tasks so I have more time/capacity to invest in my site in other value-added ways.

• Reinvest 50%+ of income – Most bloggers, myself included, do not reinvest much of their blog earnings. Next year I want to reinvest as much as possible to build a strong brand and provide more value to readers.

• Stretch: Set up separate personal website – I put this as a stretch goal because I don’t see it as a top priority, but I can see it being beneficial if/when I write my second book or get involved in other websites/ventures and want one consolidated place to showcase my work.

The theme this year for my blog goals is this: invest and provide value. I want to build the Young Adult Money brand and create a website that is known for providing high-quality content, tools, and resources. I don’t want it to be like “every other site” and want to create the infrastructure necessary for a site that stands out.
 

4) Crush the first semester of my MBA

Some long-time readers are likely sick of hearing about me going back and forth about the MBA. After all, I’ve been writing posts off and on about it for over 3 years now.

As I explained in my 2015 goals review post I was all set to start my MBA last Fall when I received a book deal. I decided to delay my MBA a semester while I wrote the book.

So what does it mean to “crush” my first semester of my MBA? I think it’s fairly simple:

• Get an “A” in my first class – Pretty simple. I have a strategic management class this semester and I’d like to start things off on the right foot.

• Test out of 1 class – In your first semester of the MBA program you can test out of up to 3 courses. These tests are not easy and unfortunately after you are out of school 5+ years it simply takes time to study enough to pass the tests. I plan on at minimum testing out of the Finance waiver exam.

• Stretch Goal: Test out of 3 classes – In a world where I did not have a blog to manage or a book to promote I think I’d be able to test out of the maximum number of courses (3), but it really isn’t a realistic goal. I’ll leave it here as a stretch goal since I have no idea how I would accomplish it.

If I can achieve the first two sub-goals that will be a success in my book. With so much else going on in my life I don’t anticipate being able to test out of 2 additional courses.

5) Renovate our Bathroom

We bought a house that is a bit of a fixer-upper and basically we need to gut and renovate every part of it over the course of the next 5-8 years that we live here. The bathroom on the main level is a top priority. It’s been neglected for

How I am going to do it:

If you asked me a year ago I would have told you that I would take the time to gut and renovate the bathroom myself. I have a friend who is a teacher who went that route and his bathroom looks incredible. His life is much different than mine, though. He’s a teacher who has the Summer off so he was able to slowly renovate it. I simply do not have that luxury and my free time is very limited due to other goals.

Instead I’ll hire a contractor to do it. Victoria and I will discuss what we want it to look like and then collect bids from at least 3 contractors. I have done a lot of research on Angie’s List so I feel like I have a good idea of how much this will cost. I would love to delay this project but the bathroom has been neglected for years and it really needs to be completely redone.

6) Outdoor Landscaping

Last Summer I took on a massive retaining wall project in our backyard. It took hours and hours of work and I’m very happy with the outcome. You can see before/after pics in my 2015 goals review post.

What we have left as of today is some additional backfilling/grading of the area behind the wall. Victoria and I also decided that now was the time to fix any grading problems in the front yard since, well, the machinery used for the retaining wall basically killed all the grass in our front yard.

How I am going to do it:

As far as the front yard and retaining wall is concerned, it really would just require moving dirt around and potentially getting a load of dirt dropped off for us to grade the front yard better. Finally we’d have to lay sod or plant grass seed.

The one wrench that gets thrown into the mix is the rest of our backyard. There is one more section of our yard that would greatly benefit from being leveled out and having a short retaining wall installed. Problem is that retaining wall would stretch something like 70+feet.

Throughout this process we’d also likely have the power lines buried, which I have no idea how much that would cost.

With how much else is going on next year I will put anything beyond the front and backyard as a “stretch” goal. It simply might not happen this year, and I’m okay with that.

7) Go on Vacation

This may seem like a silly goal to some people, but my wife and I rarely take time out for ourselves unless we are on vacation. That happens about one week out of the year. My wife takes classes for her masters literally from about September through July with virtually no break at all.

We have an $800 travel voucher from our free Hawaii trip that we need to book within a couple weeks here. We actually just discussed this last weekend and we should have this booked by the time this post goes live.

8) Cash $5k+ in poker tournaments

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you know that I started to play poker quite a bit starting last July. I used to play a lot more during college and prior to last July only played about once a year for a three year stretch.

I started to play more because it’s a way for me to take my mind off things and, to be quite frank I think I’m a fairly talented player who has a shot at cashing high in a poker tournament.

How I am going to do it:

To actually cash over $5k in poker tournaments means I need to play in tournaments. I plan on playing somewhere around 10-30 tournaments in 2016 with some of them having buy-ins of $200+.

This goal is not a top priority for me, though, and there is a lot of variance when it comes to poker. I could easily lose every tournament I play even if I play “perfectly.” So this is more a fun goal that I’d like to challenge myself to and give myself a chance to potentially succeed.

What these Goals Reveal

I didn’t just sit down one day and crank out these goals. I thought about them for most of December and I truly think they illustrate well what I’m pursuing in 2016. I think they revealed a few things:

• One thing that is missing is any sort of physical health goal. I stay in “decent” shape but it’s simply not a huge priority for me next year. I’m willing to sacrifice some in this area if it means I can accomplish other goals on my list.

• Another thing missing was social/relationship goals. My wife is in grad school and we don’t have kids, so I see this as an ideal time to also push hard in career/business/school goals as well. We are planning on scheduling dates to make sure we carve out at least some time to grow in our relationship, but this is definitely an area where I need to be intentional about not playing second fiddle to my goals list.

• Finally I didn’t list any religious goals. My wife and I were very active in our church, specifically the 20-something ministry, but our church went through a long process of deterioration and essentially everyone has left. We are no longer committed members of any church and we feel okay with that. We do have a group of Christian friends we meet with weekly that we have made a priority. Ultimately I feel like I don’t have to have specific “religious” goals to continue to grow in my faith.

So there you have it, all my 2016 goals and how I plan on accomplishing them! I hope you had fun reading this post and I’ll be giving a mid-year and end-of-year update, hopefully with good news.

What is your top goal for 2016? What do you hope you can look back on in 2016 and say you accomplished?

Photo by Guudmorning!

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