Today on the blog I’m talking all about my 2024 Personal Goals and sharing the 3 things I’m utilizing and doing differently to (hopefully) help to stay consistent through December. 18 days in and so far so good haha!
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Read 25 Books: Last year I set my goal to read 12 books and ended the year at 18, so I thought I’d double the goal this time around. I tend to read a lot over the winter when I have plenty of downtime from photography work, but I don’t often make time to read when things get busy so I hope to improve on that this year. I have to say, I’m so happy to have found a love for reading again – I didn’t read at all from graduating high school through around 2018, so for about five years. It’s just so nice to turn your brain off from whatever else is going on, and it’s so nice to have an activity that doesn’t involve staring at a screen. I’m always looking for book recommendations so if you have any suggestions that you loved, please share!
Peloton 3x a Week: This is a big one, because I really haven’t prioritized consistently working out in a long time. I go through phases – last year at this time I was running and doing the Couch to 5k program, but I stopped that in April and that was about it for the year. I’ve had my Peloton since 2021 and similar to running, I’ve gone through phases. I know that exercise and moving your body is like THE most important thing, especially because I spend so much time sitting behind a computer for work, but I’ve never made it a priority. I’m happy with how I’m doing with this one right now (been doing 4-5x a week during my off season) but I know the hard part is going to be when busy season hits.
Keep a fairly consistent bed time and wake up time: Easy in the off season, tough in the busy season. (I’m sensing a theme here). When I’m in the thick of photography work, I stay up way too late to get editing done and then that usually throws off my routine for the following days. Or even worse, I’m up late just scrolling on my phone or watching TV. I don’t expect to be perfect with this one but would like to make an effort.
Stop scrolling on Instagram so much: I think this right here is the key to making the rest of the goals happen, I’m sure a lot of you can relate! The amount of time that could have been freed up in the past…that I could have spent reading or working out or sleeping, that I instead spent scrolling on my phone…I don’t want to know haha. It really is hard not to get sucked in. This year though I’ve found a simple tool that has already helped SO much with this, I’ve shared that at the end.
Maybe be able to do a split again: I’ll admit something here that I didn’t share on Instagram – I can’t even touch my toes right now. After dancing for 8 years, I’m very mad at myself for that haha, for losing all of my flexibility. I’m not sure how realistic it is to be able to be a split again but I’ll be happy to regain flexibility in any form.
Now I know we’re only a couple of weeks into 2024, but there are 3 things I’ve been utilizing that I can already tell are going to make a difference in my motivation for the months to come so I wanted to share!
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Habit Calendar: I bought this one (linked here) for around $15 on Amazon – a simple monthly calendar to track your habits and check them off each day when done. The wayyy this has kept me consistent – I’ll be ready to go to sleep, go to update the calendar, realize I didn’t take vitamins, and get out of bed and go back downstairs just so I can check it off. Which would NEVER happen otherwise. There is definitely something to be said for checking things off and the motivation to keep a streak going. I also decided to add a couple of “bad habits” to the calendar to track those things too.
The good ones I track are: Peloton, Read, Less than 1 hour on Instagram, Wake up on time, Used my planner, Floss + Mouthwash, Vitamins, and No Spend Days.
And the bad ones: Had alcohol, hungover, and ordered DoorDash (Not saying that being hungover is a habit of mine haha and I’m not even necessarily trying to cut down on alcohol, but I was just curious to keep track)
The One Sec App: I heard about this from my sister and decided to give it a try. It has helped SO much. In the past, I’ve tried setting my Instagram time limit to one hour and that worked well for about a month, until I got into the habit of clicking “15 more minutes” so fast to a point that I eventually almost didn’t even register when the time limit message popped up. Here’s how The One Sec App (linked here) works: when you click to pull up Instagram (or whatever app you choose) instead of bringing you directly to your feed, it brings you to a different screen for a few seconds and THEN gives you the option to decide if you want to go to Instagram or not. When I first got it, the number of times that I would click to Instagram without a thought, without even realizing I was doing it was crazy. It was like automatic sometimes. And by then it’s already too late, because the second Instagram opens you see something interesting on your feed and get so easily sucked in from there. All this app does is force you take a few seconds and think twice about it – do I actually want to open up Instagram right now or no? It’s so simple but it makes so much sense and I highly recommend to anyone trying to cut down on their screen time.
The 12 Week Year Book, and My Planner: I’m including these together because they have sort of gone hand in hand. This book called The 12 Week Year (linked here) has been super motivating and helpful and I highly recommend it to other business owners! While I’m mainly applying it towards business things, it is helpful for personal goals too. The overall takeaway is to set 12 week goals instead of annual goals for highest productivity. There is so much more to it but I’ll leave it at that, I actually have a few chapters left to read. But, that leads me to my planner and my biggest downfall in past years: not making a plan for my day ahead of time. I’ve now been taking my planner with me everywhere and each night or morning I will roughly schedule out my day by the hour, alongside a to do list and a note of the main priorities for the day. I really like this particular planner that I bought (linked here) because it has a blank Notes page for each day which is super helpful to have the space to write more if needed and keep it all in one place.
And lastly, a quick honorable mention to these erasable marker pens (linked here), which has made writing in my planner and on my calendar way more fun.
