As you may know, I’m a fan of setting and keeping track of my goals (personal, professional, and financial) on a quarterly basis (you can see my entire goal system here). I find New Year’s resolutions to be too big + long to keep momentum, and a month isn’t usually enough time to make a big change. So, I treat my life like a business (lol) and work under quarterly goals.

Even though I just shot New Year’s resolutions down for their overachieving yet momentum-losing nature, I still have some this year, and my quarterly goals throughout the year will be under the umbrella of these resolutions. Each quarter, I set both a goal to reach and a habit to build in the professional, personal, and financial aspects of my life.

Because I do want to keep their momentum, I’ve decided to post them and my progress on my blog. To be honest, I’m a bit nervous about sharing such a personal part of my life on the internet. But, nonetheless I’m urging myself to do so for a couple reasons:

1- Accountability

Though I’m luckily pretty self-disciplined, I’ve got some lofty goals this year and don’t want to think that because they’re big, it’s okay to fail.

2- Relations

I hope that in sharing my goals, we can communicate about our goals together and help and support each other.

Without further ado, here are my 2017 resolutions and my subsequent goals for January- March of 2017.

New Year’s Resolutions 2017

Be more punctual

I’ve gotten over my “I’m always late for everything” days, but still want to become more punctual. I do find that in New York the phrase “5 minutes early is on time; on time is late; late is unacceptable” is particularly true. So, I’m trying to be more punctual at work and in my day-to-day life meeting with friends or for appointments.

Stop saying “sorry” unless I’m actually apologizing

This is something I feel like we all, especially women, could improve on. We say sorry for other people’s sadness, anger, exhaust, frustration, and so on even when we had nothing to do with it. We say sorry when people knock into us on the subway. So many situations when we (or at least, I know I) am not actually apologetic. I want to stop this habit because I think it shows insecurity and it also takes away from the sencerity of the word “sorry”.

Pay off 75% of my student loans

This last one is quite an ambitious goal. Right now, I’m scheduled to pay off my student loans at the end of 2021, and I’m already paying them at the relatively aggressive rate of 20% of my income. And, even if I spent all of my income on my loans, I don’t think I’d have enough. So, this is a difficult and sort of seemingly impossible goal!

I am lucky enough to still have a good credit score, relatively low-interest rates, and no debt aside from my student loans. Because of those factors, I’ve been okay with simply paying the monthly payment until it’s done in 4 years. In the past couple months, that’s totally changed and I’m just not as okay with them anymore. So, I’m going to brainstorm, save, side hustle my butt off (which I’d do anyway cause it’s the best), and see what I can do. Any tips would be appreciated!

Here’s the beginning of how I’m going to try achieving these resolutions! Cheers!

Quarter 1 of 2017 Goals and Habits

Professional

Professional Goal:

Have coffee or drinks with one new person in my industry a month

One of the greatest aspects of my job is how many people I get to meet in New York City. I’m relatively new to my company since I spent the summer traveling and volunteering throughout Southeast Asia. The first three months at this job were spent getting to know the company, my co-workers, and my responsibilities. Now, I want to push myself to take advantage of the networking opportunities.

Professional Habit:

Be punctual

I mentioned above why I want to become more punctual. How am I going to keep track of that? Well, with my handy-dandy habit tracker!

It’s this excel spreadsheet I created where every day I mark an “x” for completing my developing habit and I can see the tracker moving closer to my goal of completing it.

It’s easy and super satisfying.

Below is an example of when I started practicing Russian for 15 minutes a day (or as I like to call it: the good ol’ days).

For my punctuality habit, I’ll change it to only be for 5 days a week, not 7, as the goal is meant to be for my job.

Psst: grab your copy of this excel spreadsheet, formulas in place, below! Simply enter your personal goal and watch your own habits start developing.

 Get your quarterly goal system here

 

 Financial

Financial Goal:

Add 2% of my annual income to my savings

By nature, I’m a pretty good saver and don’t overspend usually. I do love to shop, especially for nice work clothes, but invest in staple pieces to avoid overspending or burning through clothes too often. However, since my return from Asia, I’ve been totally focused on rebuilding my savings account to where it was before my trip.

Once I reach this goal, I’ll be in a better position to try and up my loan payments or invest more.

Financial Habit:

Don’t eat out for one meal

This will make the above goal much easier and it’s also a healthier lifestyle. Again, I’ll use my habit tracker.

Personal

Personal Goal:

Finish 3 books

I love to read but have a bad habit of reading 3-4 books at once and then finishing none of them.

In my defense, if a book is really catching my attention, I’ll easily finish it. So, maybe it’s not my fault the books aren’t more interesting! :). Nonetheless, I want to complete 3 of them.

Personal Habit:

Start reading the news every day again

I’m lucky enough to have a job that basically requires me to read the news, so this shouldn’t be too difficult. But, after the insanity of the 2016 Election, I had to completely shut it off for a little while. It was just too much to handle. I want to get back into doing it daily.

Blog goals:

1- Take one web development e-course

I totally love e-courses and have them largely to thank for the growth of my blog. I had a bad experience with one in the fall and have since been hesitant to purchase anymore. But, I’m trying to not let one ruin the power of them for me.

2- Grow my e-mail list by 300%

This sounds like a ridiculous goal when I type it out. But, my e-mail list has been growing at a much faster rate recently, which I think is largely from my awesome side hustler resource library. I’ve been getting great feedback, so I’m optimistic that I can focus on growing this community in that way, as it’s my favorite way to become friends with you all! Social media can be fun but does seem less personal to me.

3- Attend 3 blog-related events or meetings in person

The blogging world helps you create a community online, which I love because you find way more of your like-minded tribe than you easily will in person. But, I live in New York and don’t want to miss out on the awesome people there are to meet here. So, I’m challenging myself to connect the two this year.

 

What are your goals?

Get your free goal accountability tracker like I use above below!