Our 2017 Goals – DIYs and Otherwise

When Sage posted about her amazing kitchen and everything that she got done last year (new work pants? WOW!), I, Naomi, was insanely jealous.  Not necessarily about the kitchen – although it is really beautiful and a huge achievement – but about all of her accomplishments.  I was super busy last year, perhaps busier than I have ever been, but I don’t feel like I was as intentional as I would have liked to be about what I got done.

So, I decided to set some proactive goals this year, and Sage agreed to share hers also in a joint post. Hopefully putting these out on the internet will help us get the done!

Before we share those, though, two quick announcements:

1. Tomorrow marks the two year anniversary of that time we started a blog together! You’re welcome. Last year we marked the occasion with a week of posts (here, here, here, and here), and this year we’re doing the same. We’ll be dedicating all of next week to celebrating ourselves, and we hope you join us…but if you don’t that’s fine too, the great thing about doing this together is at least we always have each another to laugh at our jokes.
2. Remember that time we were on reality TV, but it was on a channel called Great American Country that no one gets? Good news: our episode of Flea Market Flip is airing on HGTV this weekend! Tune in on Sunday (Jan 15th) at 12:30pm eastern to watch us try not to make complete fools of ourselves on national TV.

Okay, now onto our goals!

Naomi’s 2017 Goals

I haven’t set annual goals before (it seemed like an arbitrary time to do this, rather than dedicating myself to what I know I should do when I know I should do it).  However, for this year at least, the timing feels right for me to take stock and make some adjustments.  I just recently crossed the one year threshold at my new job, and it has been an exhilarating year, but also one that was so much more challenging and demanding than I could have expected.  I am a much better professional and leader than I was before, but it took a lot out of me (and the people and things that I care about) to get here.

Readjust in the direction of work-life balance.  This is obviously a mirage, but I’m making a few concrete shifts that I think will help. I will make time each workday to also do something productive for myself (like writing this blog post, making a good dinner for/with Brad, emailing or calling with family) so I am not lost in work.  Another small (but so far really REALLY impactful) change is to disable the vibrate notification on my phone from my work email.

Make some house progress.  After a year of stalling I’m going to take care of a few areas of the house that are bugging me.  I’m going to finish up the dining room (which is awaiting new furniture) and do a mini-renovation on the upstairs bathroom (it needs a full one, but I don’t think that will be a top priority for a while).  I’m also going to at least start the process to re-side the outside of the house and build out our porches.

Find (look for) my cause.  I’m struggling with what I should do to make a bigger difference – what feels right and, most importantly, what feels effective.  I think I’ll know it when I see it, but I also don’t want to just wait and see if I see it.

Finish my novel.  No, really.  And finally, in the most cliched goal of all, I’m going to finish the first draft of a novel.  Over the last 3-4 months I’ve written about 1/5 of it, so I’ll need to pick up the pace but it is achievable.

Sage’s 2017 Goals

As a planner, I like to set and then achieve my goals and I don’t like it when things don’t go my way. But 2016 really emphasized for me that it’s an important part of life to be able to accept that you can’t control everything and that changing course doesn’t always mean failure. (You’re welcome for this profound wisdom.)

So this year I decided to do something radical: rather than writing my goals down with ink in a notebook (like I did last year…), I wrote them in a Google Doc. I KNOW. Now I can edit them. Plus as much as I like to pretend I’m someone who can carry around a real notebook and write deep reflections and whatnot, the reality is that electronic systems (mostly owned by Google) keep me organized.

Here’s what I have so far:

These are things I really want to achieve so it’s not my intention to let go of any of them. But when I do need to edit them — because of a new opportunity or an unforeseen impasse — I can. For instance, I might have set a goal to exercise every day in January and on Day 7 have gone for a run in a snowstorm and fallen and destroyed my tailbone. And if theoretically that did happen, then maybe I could just revise my goals to give myself a day off and add “try not to get injured again” to my goals list. For instance.

The other thing I reflected a lot on was that last year my goals weren’t very balanced. I had a lot of running-related goals, one house goal, and one goal about buying pants (fashion/professional?). This year I wanted to think about all the aspects of my life that are important to me and set some goals in each area. (I also set some professional goals that I didn’t include on that list — work is one thing I keep a bit separate from the blog.) As you can see, this year I focused on health rather than specific races, and added in goals around family and my progressive values.

I won’t go through all of them right now, but I may revisit them with you during the year. I’m sure the list will keep evolving, too — and that’s okay!

Thanks for reading, and please give us a stern talking to blog comment if we’re not following through on these.

How about you — do you use goals to be proactive about your choices, or does that not work for you? What are your goals for 2017 for DIY, or for your life?