Why even set goals?

I have never been a very good goal setter.

Every year I think “Hey, I don’t need goals they will likely change in 6 months so whats the point”.

This year, I am trying something “different”. By different, I mean just doing what most people do every year around January 1st. They set goals.

The difference for me is this is the first time I am going to do it. And I am going to do it publicly which is scary for me (but luckily I don’t know how many will read this!)

The purpose of this post is really to hold myself accountable.

I have intentionally left these goals pretty small, the reason being is I want to start of easy. I can always finish them early and add but it feels pretty bad when you miss or fall behind.

Can you summarize your goals into one word?

When I was walking through the lobby at Rover on Jan 2nd, a group of coworkers were discussing what their goals were for the year.

Rebecca asked me to summarize my goals into one word. It took me a while to think about since I had created four goals.

In the end, I came up with

Learning

I think this summarizes my goals as best as possible to one word.

I want to learn more about business on the side, I want to learn more about Swift and iOS development and I want to learn more how to deal with stress and solving disagreements.

The specific goals

With all that out of the way, here are my specific 2019 goals. I plan to set this page as my homepage so that I have to see it every time I start my browser (and to pad my blog stats 😉)

📒 Read through my back catalog of purchased Swift and Business books

Over the past while, I have bought a lot of books to grow personally. Sadly, a lot of these just went to a folder of “Books”. This year, I want to get through the full stack (and write a review of each to summarize my learnings). This adds up to 9 total books and 1 video series so roughly one per month.

🤝 Go to one meetup a month and meet someone new each time

I thought for sure having a kid would be easy and I would have plenty of time to go to meetups. Except…

Since having my daughter, I haven’t spent nearly as much time going to meetups and meeting other engineers and entrepreneurs. It’s hard to go spend time meeting others when you have such a limited time with your family (nights and weekends).

I do think now though that I need to get out and chat with more people again. One night a month feels totally reasonable. I plan to go to at least one meetup starting with Seattle Xcoders this month.

🚢 Ship at least one side project

I think like most people, I have started a ton of small projects or had a lot of new business ideas. Sadly, I haven’t shipped anything outside of work in the past 3 years. I used to ship a lot of things even if they weren’t perfect.

This year, I am going to ship something (even if its free and small). I am hoping to exceed this goal but really want to kick off the year shipping something and hope it snowballs into something bigger.

🏡 Get through 2nd story house remodel without too much stress

This is definitely a more personal goal. As we go into 2019, Melanie and I are adding a whole second story to our house. This requires us to move out for 9 months in May. It will be a ton of stress and disagreements about layouts/colors/furnishings. My goal is to be better about listening and dealing those issues. I think this will help me both personally and professionally working on a larger team as Rover continues to grow.

Do you have goals this year as well?

Leave me a comment on this Github issue.

If you want, I will even follow up through the year with you to hold you accountable!

Cheers to an awesome 2019!

-Kevin