2021 - Goals for the New Year

2020 - a socially-distant year filled with troubles that we'll never forget. Yes, 2020 was a rough year, but also a year that I hope that allowed you to realize what is truly important in your life.

For me, though, 2020 also brought with it many blessings and good memories. I got to travel for work before the shutdown. I got married to my amazing wife. We got news that we are expecting our first child - a baby girl; the first girl in our family since the 1800's. I had time to work on several side-projects with family and friends. And I also took the time to grow as a developer.

We don't know what's in store for 2021, but instead of looking ahead with gloom, let's remember the good things that have happened this past year and focus on what is in our control for 2021.

Goals? Why?

Another New Year's Resolution list? I know, I know. Maybe reading these types of articles are boring for some, but unlike most of my articles which I trust are helpful to others, I'm writing this one for me. I want to look back in a year and see how I was thinking at the end of 2020 and what things I managed to accomplish during 2021.

I've categorized my goals into two sections: personal goals and career/social goals.

Personal goals are goals which I want to do for myself; things that I find value in that I believe will help me, my family & my friends.

Career/social goals are goals directed towards my development profession and social networks.

Personal Goals

Run my first 5k.
Run 3 miles three times a week at a minimum.
Move away from sodas and sweet drinks.
Buy our first house and move closer to family.
Continue to record a podcast.
Learn Blender.

Career/Social Goals

Grow Twitter followers to 10,000.
Release a web development video tutorial series.
Release a premium product that gets high visibility on Product Hunt.
Write a minimum of 30 articles on Hashnode.
Achieve 30,000 article views (7k currently).
Create a brand and cross-promote my products/blog/socials and create a central pool of subscribers (don't know what this looks like yet).
Learn Blazor.
Learn Vue 3.
Learn Kubernetes.
Learn three.js.
Strengthen my Docker skills.
Deepen my experience with GSAP.
Continue to enhance my CSS skills.
Continue to learn SwiftUI and publish an app to the App Store.

Conclusion

These are my goals. No matter what 2021 is like, I should be able to make progress on all of these items. I'm listing these goals here, but will be migrating them to a Notion kanban board to get a visual view of the state of each of these goals.

What do you hope 2021 will look like for you? Feel free to share your goals in the comments below!

Thanks for reading! If you liked this article and want more content like this, read some of my other articles and make sure to follow me on Twitter!