Welcome to 2024: New year, same me

Welcome back to my blog! I’ve been away for a while. After a rough pregnancy in 2022 and adjusting to my new life as a mom (while balancing going back to work full time) in 2023, this year feels full of potential. 2024 is the year I’m getting back to doing some creative projects just for me. So let’s dive right into my goals for the year! (Is February a little late to be publishing a goals list? Perhaps, but I already started making steps toward these and I think keeping the discussion going is a good way to remind anyone who needs to hear it that it is still early in the year—you have plenty of time to accomplish your goals or pivot or create new ones.)

I like to use the term “goals” rather than “resolutions.” Resolutions remind me of the type of too vague promises people make to themselves at the beginning of the year, that are really easy to just toss to the side. The “I’m going to drink more water” type of promise. Goals, on the other hand, naturally feel more actionable to me. I can envision my end game and then break it down into steps spread throughout the year.

Getting started in Q1

I don’t normally chunk my goals into “business quarter,” but this year, I have been thinking of things more seasonally. My overall idea was to relieve the pressure to start everything I want to accomplish this year in January and give myself natural moments to check in, evaluate how a goal is going if it’s still serving me well, and if I need to change anything. I also believe building life-long habits works better when you start incrementally. This year, I’m also bucketing my goals into categories: Mental well-being, Physical Health, Creative Health, Financial Health, and Miscellaneous. So here are my current goals:

Mental Well-being

1) Read two books a month

This doesn’t feel very impressive considering I used to read a minimum of 50 books a year; however, my reading dropped off substantially when I got pregnant in 2022. I felt very ill and tired during much of my pregnancy, which made reading a bit more difficult. In 2023, I was tired and busy while learning to be a mom and balancing a full-time job—resulting in reading only 17 books last year. Two books a month felt like a reasonable goal considering my free time looks a little different now that I’m a mom. As of writing this, I’m just starting my fourth book of the year.

2) Decrease screen time

This is specifically related to my phone. I’m not particularly worried about my screen time on my laptop as the majority of my “laptop” time is spent working. My phone habits are a whole other story. In all honesty, my phone habits have probably been bad since I swapped my Blackberry for an iPhone back in 2011. For more than a decade, I’ve let my phone be by my side at all times, sleep in my bed, and entertain me any moment I’m bored. I have two main motivations for taking this on in 2024: 1) I don’t want to look back and feel like I wasn’t truly present around my daughter and 2) I want to model better behavior, so she can grow up with a healthy relationship with tech than I’ve had.

My overall goal by the end of the year is to get my phone screen time average under three hours and break the habit of mindlessly picking up my phone. But let’s start small. The mini-goals I’m working on during the first three months of the year are: Decrease my daily screen time average to 3.5 hours and not use the apps I mindlessly scroll first thing in the morning. For me, those are social apps like Instagram, shopping apps, and my Google Chrome app. To do this, I’m using my weekly screen time report to keep me honest with my progress and identify where I can improve, which I use to set a mini-weekly goal. I’ve set a block on my “mindless scroll” apps until 9 am (I wake up between 5-6 am for context). At the end of March, if I’m struggling or falling back into bad habits, I’ll kick off my “Q2” with the 30-day phone detox plan from “How to Breakup With Your Phone” by Catherine Price.

Physical Health

I don’t have any goals in this category that I’m working on during the first quarter of the year, other than maintain my current workout routine. Later this year, I will reassess if I want to change up my workouts. I’ll also add some mindfulness around my nutrition to make sure I’m eating in a way that helps my workouts.

Creative Health

Last year, I mostly focused on my paid work. This has left me feeling a little stagnant creatively. This year, I’m looking to refill my creative well. For the first three months of the year, I will be setting aside time every week to do one personal project: That could be YouTube, blogging, photography, recipe development, or an interior home project.

Financial Health

My husband and I assess our financial health and spending patterns monthly. I don’t currently have any action items in this department outside of sticking to our current savings goals. Most of this is automated though so I don’t really have to think much about it. I am hoping a side benefit of decreasing “mindless scrolling” on my phone will be increasing my mindfulness around online shopping… I’m actively trying to shop more in person again. We all impulse shop from time to time, but the rise of online shopping and influencer marketing has definitely made impulse shopping easier than ever.

Miscellaneous

1) Learn to style and care for my hair: This may seem like a random goal, and I am quite good at cutting and styling my bangs (a necessary skill, in my opinion, if you have bangs). But I’ve been scrapping my hair up into a ponytail pretty much every day of my adult life. By the end of the year, I want to take better care of my scalp and know how to properly give my hair a blowout, how to style with velcro rollers, and how to maintain my style across multiple days. This winter, I’m focusing on scalp care and a routine of wrapping my hair in a silk/satin scarf to protect it while I sleep. I experienced postpartum hair loss in 2023, and my regrowth has left me with baby hairs that make my hair appear more frizzy these days. Once I’ve got the basics down, I’ll take steps towards actually styling it!

So let me know: Are you a “goals” person? What are you hoping to accomplish in 2024?