Are you as excited for 2017 as I am? I can’t explain why but I am absolutely confident that this year is going to rock. It is something I know in my bones. If you are going into this year skeptical or pensive, stop it. Decide right here and now that you are going to make 2017 the best year of your life. Dream big, plan big, and then work hard. That is the recipe for an awesome year. How do you start? You start creating your future by writing down your January 2017 goals! See my monthly goals and last month’s evaluation below for inspiration.

Affiliate links may be used in this post. Ordering a product through these links may result in a commission at no extra cost to you. Read the full disclosure here.

 

[bctt tweet=”Dream big, plan big, and work hard. That’s the recipe for an awesome year. #januarygoals” username=”diyadulation”]

 

December Evaluation

Business Goals

Affiliate Marketing – Fail

• I was incredibly blessed to have a lot of sponsored post offers for December. While this was fantastic, it meant bumping some of the affiliate articles I had planned.

Create a 2017 Business Plan – In Progress

• This goal has been eye-opening. Writing down my processes and scheduling social media work is easy. Defining areas like my mission statement is really difficult for me.

Take the Week of Christmas Off – Semi-Success

• For the most part, I did not work the week of Christmas. I was fully present at all of our celebrations and dinners. However, there were nights when the kids were in bed and TV was boring. To be frank, I missed it. I truly love what I do and I think that not allowing work to distract me from the holidays and being with family is successful.

Finance Goals

Save another $200 – Success

Continue Meal Planning – Fail

• When all of the parties, dinners, and gatherings came my meal plan went poof! We were often sent home with leftovers that needed to get eaten. Many nights involved me reinventing the leftovers into a different meal.

Re-Read the Total Money Makeover – Fail

• There is no reason that this failed. I could have made the time to do it but instead would turn on Netflix or pick up a fiction book. I plan on being more intentional with this one in January.

Organizational Goals

Continue to Get Rid of 1 Item a Day – Success

• After continuing to do this I have come to realize something: I don’t think we have ever gotten rid of a piece of clothing in our lives! My goodness! There are at least 20 boxes of clothes to donate right now. It is madness.

Finish Living Room – Success

• Yes, my friends, the living room is done! Yay! Of course, then Christmas happened so I’m currently working on finding homes for the gifts but I’m still very excited.

Start Moving Office – Success

• I can promise you that I am highly motivated to finish this one this month. Having no home to work in is killing me.

Self-Improvement Goals

Develop a Specific Routine – (Insert Maniacal Laugh Here)

• Whose genius ideas was it to try and develop a daily routine on the busiest and most chaotic month of the year? Oh yeah, that’s right: mine!

Do One Activity that Brings Me Joy Each Week – Success

• These typically were me taking a bath with a book. On one week I did take an entire day and spent it with my mom. We had so much fun and it was incredibly rejuvenating.

Family Goals

Weekly Family Nights – Success

• Our Advent gifts made these super easy in December. Almost every week we ended up having 2 instead of one because of how the activities fell in the Advent calendar.

Create and Enforce Chore Charts – Success/Fail

• Were the chore charts created? Yes. Unfortunately they have not been hung up yet and subsequently not enforced.

 

January 2017 Goals

Business Goals

• Start Outlining Products – I am planning to launch 2 new products this year. I want to have each of them outlined by the end of the month as well as a rough working timeline.
• Affiliate Income – This one is the same as last month.
• Build Twitter Following – I have been focusing heavily on Pinterest in November and December. I have now grown it to over 5,000 followers (thank, guys!!). Now that I have my systems in place there, I want to start focusing on Twitter.

Finance Goals

• Save $100 – If you are wondering why it is less this month that is because one paycheck isn’t hitting until February 1^st. The beauty of budgeting allows me to know this in advance and plan accordingly.
• Grocery Freeze – Periodically I will do a grocery freeze to clean out the freezers and pantry. It saves money and it helps older items get used up.
• Re-Read the Total Money Makeover – This month I’m going to break this down by daily page goals. It will be easier to make myself do this if I say, “I only have to read 10 pages today.”

 

[bctt tweet=”I’m ready to rock my goals this year. Are you? #goals #goalsetting” username=”diyadulation”]

 

Organizational Goals

• Finish My Craft Room/Office – I need my space to write and create. Not having it has only proved to highlight that need.
• Keep Purging – I am so tired of storing all of this stuff that we don’t use, don’t want, or don’t need. That is why I will continue to keep getting rid of items. Honestly, I haven’t even gotten to the point that it is difficult yet.

Self-Improvement Goals

• Daily Routine – We’re going to give this another try. With school starting back and the holidays ending, this should be a more conducive month for it.
• Move – No, I don’t want to pack up boxes and relocate. I want to make sure that I am moving every day. Dance to a 5 minute song, play tag with the kids, or do some activity that gets me moving.

Family Goals

• Learn Something New Together – I haven’t decided quite what it will be yet but I want us to learn something new as a family. We could cook a new recipe together or change a tail light on a car. As long as it is something new that we can all do together, I’m happy.
• Try Out New Family Night Activities – This month I want to change up the family night activities. Some ideas I have are a coloring night, a DDR (Dance, Dance Revolution) night, and an electricity free night.

 

Given how chaotic December was I am incredibly proud of all that I accomplished. If you goals for December have a lot of “Fails” next to them cut yourself a little slack. Decide that January is going to be your month to dominate and jump back up onto that horse. Don’t forget, you can find a helpful “Evaluation Worksheet” in the free Monthly Goal Setting Planner. It will help you dig into why your goals were or were not successful as well as help your adjust so that you are more successful this month!

See where I’m linking up!

Can you believe that it is December already? It feels like just yesterday we were creating last month’s goals. In case you didn’t see it, make sure to snag your free Monthly Goal Setting Planner to make achieving your goals even easier. Whether you’re looking at November’s goals and feeling a little discouraged or you are excited to rock another month, it is time to create your December goals. Don’t get discouraged if last month wasn’t as successful as you hoped. If you’ve never been a goal planner it will take time to get on top of your plans. If you need some inspiration, keep reading below to see how I did in November and what this month’s goals are.

Affiliate links may be used in this post. Ordering a product through these links may result in a commission. Read the full disclosure here.

 

[bctt tweet=”Whether you’re feeling discouraged or excited to rock another month, it is time to create your December goals. #goals” username=”diyadulation”]

 

November Evaluation

Business Goals

Create an Instagram Plan – Success

• Not only did I manage to post more consistently, I was introduced to an awesome tool that makes this easy to schedule and post. Yay!

Add Daily New Listing to Etsy – Fail

• Seriously, I failed so hard at this. I think I got 10 items listed and that’s it. I literally have 100’s of items to upload and currently they are sitting in boxes and organizers just waiting. Daily was too ambitious of a goal. This month I’m going to shoot for adding 2 items a week.

Plan New Revenue Stream – Success

• I did decide on a new revenue stream. It is technically something I’m already doing but in December I’m going to focus on affiliate marketing. Currently I simply throw links in to direct you to the supplies needed for the projects. I have been neglecting in this area and I want to really hit this hard in December.

Get Ahead on Posts – Success

• I have been very diligent about outlining and creating. This has given me a leg up on my posts. Admittedly, this week I have been on overdrive because in addition to my regular editorial calendar, I have some other projects that I am taking part in. That’s why this week (and for the next 2 weeks) you are seeing 2 posts go live on some days.

Finance Goals

Save $200 (or more) in an Emergency Fund – Near Success

• I saved $150 so I’m pretty happy. It would have been more but most of our “extra” money was allocated to Christmas in our budget. My oldest also conveniently forgot about multiple school events, trips, etcetera that cost money so that came out of this fund. The joys of mom-life, right?

Meal Plan – Success

• While I haven’t gotten any posts about it up yet, we totally rocked our meal plan this month. Of course, having so many holiday dinners helped make it easier.

Extra Cash – Fail

• I didn’t even attempt this one. I was going to sell some of the items we’re purging but I only got as far as boxing them up. On the upside, that will make it easier to do this month.

Organizational Goals

Get rid of one item each day. – Crushed

• I didn’t just get rid of 1 item a day. I boxed up hundreds of items last month and I plan to continue to do so in December.

Empty Living Room – Semi-Success

• It is not done but I’ve made huge strides in the room. I knew this would be a huge undertaking for around the holidays so that fact that the entire living room remodel should be done in the next week is pretty awesome. A huge thanks to my best friend for coming over one night and helping me knock a lot of it out!

Family

Family Dinners – Success

• Sometimes getting through the family dinner was rough but we are getting into the swing of things. They are much better now than they were at the beginning of the month.

Weekly Family Night – Success

• We did make weekly family nights a priority. Some were very successful and fun while others, not so much. Either way we made memories that I wouldn’t trade for the world!

Self-Improvement

Complete Monthly Fitness Challenge – Fail

• I have realized that I really need to restructure my days and get more rigid with my routine. Tasks are not done at the same time each day (except dinner and working after the kiddos go to bed). I wasn’t remotely consistent with my schedule and fitness became hit or miss.

Increase Gratitude – Success

• I didn’t remember to write the 3 things every day. I set an alarm on my phone to remind me each day around the middle of the month. Before having the alarm idea, though, I would write additional entries for the days I missed. Since the entire exercise was about becoming more mindful about being thankful, I’m considering it a success. I feel that I have accomplished that.

Read 20 Minutes a Day – Success

• Some days I actually surpassed this. I got caught up reading and go well past 20 minutes. This is definitely one of those goals that once your sit down and start, it is easy to complete (for those who enjoy reading).

 

December Goals

Business Goals

• Affiliate Marketing – I want to really spend December testing what works and what doesn’t. This will help me plan the coming months.
• Create 2017 Business Plan
• Take the Week of Christmas Off – I think the most important aspects of building a successful business is to be able to take time off and the business continues to run. This will be like the ultimate test to see if DIY Adulation is ready to go to the next level.

Finance Goals

• Save Another $200 – I like this number because it small enough to seem possible but large enough to require some sacrifice (such as not eating out or skipping extra trips in the van).
• Continue Meal-Planning – This made dinners such a breeze that I definitely want to keep going.
• Re-Read The Total Money Makeover – I love this book. I cannot say enough good things about it. However, when you haven’t referenced it in a while you can lose intensity. By re-reading the book I hope to re-ignite that fire. (This works directly towards my long-term goal of paying off my student loans.)

Organizational Goals

• Continue to Get Rid of 1 Item A Day
• Finish Living Room – I am tantalizingly close and I want to finish it by the end of next week so I can get Christmas decorations up.
• Start Moving Office – Being a DIY blogger takes up a lot of space. Right now my office is in a tiny room in the corner of my house and it is overflowing, not-to-mention staging photos is a nightmare. The office is moving to the basement to provide me with the space I need to get everything done.

Self-Improvement Goals

• Develop a Specific Routine – I am going to create a specific daily routine that will allow me to spend time doing all of the things I want and need to do each day.
• Do One Activity that Brings Me Joy Each Week – The stress of the holidays and growing my business are really getting to me. Part of this is because I am pushing myself so hard that I’m no longer taking the time to do the things I love. Instead of reading a book or going to karaoke, I am filling that time with work. While I am seeing results, it is also killing me. I need to be more diligent with my “me-time”.

Family Goals

• Weekly Family Nights – Even mixed results are worth it. We are enjoying the time together and I want to continue making these a priority.
• Create and Enforce Chore Charts – This will be for everyone. Somewhere along the line my kiddos started developing lazy and self-entitled attitudes. I’m not having that so the whole family is getting chore charts.

 

Wow, you guys, that is a lot. Even the goals I failed at taught me something to make my life (and future) better. Conquering your goals is moving towards creating your future. Even if you only manage to accomplish half of your monthly goals you are moving towards living a life you love. What are your goals for December? How did you do on your November goals? Don’t forget that there is an evaluation page in the Monthly Goal Setting Planner that helps you figure out what worked, what didn’t, and why.

See where I’m linking up!