hey everyone! its the last day of 2019, and weβre about to move into 2020 which meansβ¦its time to set some goals. In this post, Iβll give a brief guideline on how to set goals and actually work towards them, as well as my own goals for next year.Β
How to Set Goals and Actually Make Progress Towards Accomplishing Them
At the beginning of the year, you said you wanted to travel outside of the US for the first time. You started looking at places you wanted to go, AirBnBs, the whole deal. And you tell yourself βokay, yeah Iβll get to thatβ. October rolls around and you havenβt even started saving money towards the trip. Weβve all been there and itβs okay. Below are a few tips from me on goal setting:
1. Write down all the things you want to accomplish for the year, big and small!
2. Now you pick the ones you really want to accomplish. You can focus on all of them, but its usually easier to focus on 3-5 things than 10-15 things.
3. Now break everything into small, doable chunks. Weβll return to the traveling outside of the US example. Start by picking a destination. Then, start looking at prices to get a general consensus of how much everything will cost (travel, food, buying souvenirs, etc) and then add extra money to that cost just to account for anything that could happen. Now, come up with a savings plan. You see where Iβm going with it? If you break things down into smaller pieces, its much easier to see what needs to get done and makes it possible and tangible.
4. Give yourself deadlines for the small chunks. If you donβt set deadlines for your goals, then theyβre just dreams! Give yourself a reasonable and realistic deadline that you can for sure meet, but maybe put some slight pressure on yourself to give you some motivation. Bonus: and if it helps, have one of your friends be your accountability partner that checks in on you with your goal!
5. And most importantly, if you donβt 100% meet your goals for the year, its okay because you tried. The hardest part of anything is starting and its admirable that you were able to even start.
My Goals for 2020
Academic Goals
Have my GPA increase by .2 by the end of Fall 2020 (it took a rough dive after failing 2 classes in Spring 2019)
Raise $1000 for CSULB Society of Women Engineers (iβm the fundraising chair haha)
Go to another Engineering conference
Get an internship further aligned with my career goals
Personal Goals
be able to squat 75lbs+
add $1000 to my savings account
travel outside of the state
travel outside of the US or make the travel arrangements to travel outside of the US
go to 3+ concerts
Well, those are my goals for 2020! Now its time for me to follow my own advice and create a game plan to accomplish some of them with some good ole deadlines. Happy New Year everyone!
