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6 Goals You Can Reach by Summer

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Since we just passed the beginning of spring, despite what the weather outside might be telling us, I thought it would be a good idea to reevaluate goals for the year and our progress so far.

In my post on 18 Goals to Set in 2018, I listed out 18 goals to achieve within a year. Some of these are longer term goals, but many of them can be broken down and achieved over the course of the year by slowly working your way through them.

Take a look at your list of goals for the year and break them down into micro goals. Take your book goal, for example. Reading 12 books per year is one book per month. Reading a 300-page book per month is only about 75 pages per week, meaning you only need to read 11 pages per day to reach that goal. That is completely doable! (I know because I’ve already read 15 books this year and it’s only March. You’ve got this.)

Here, I’m breaking down some of those goals from my 2018 goals post into smaller, achievable micro goals. They’re not just line items on a to-do list, they are specific actions that work towards your larger goals. Let’s jump in!

1. Read 3 books.

Even if you’re not a voracious reader, you can read one book a month. Pick up something that interests you, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction and dive in!

Like I mentioned before, commit to reading just 11 pages per day, and you’ll have read 900 pages by summer!

2. Take a personal development course or a earn a career certification.

Set aside two to three hours a week to go through a course of your choosing! Skillshare is jam-packed with courses that check both of these boxes.

Set aside 15 minutes per day to complete a 3.5 hour course in 2 weeks time. When broken down into bite-size chunks, a goal like completing a course becomes far easier to accomplish. Especially if you can’t commit to going through the course in one sitting. By chipping away at your goals, you’re still making incredible progress!

 

With the Unbound Planner, you’re able to plan out your monthly goals in the timeline section of the planner. As you can see here on the right page, you can list out your goal and decide ahead of time which month makes the most sense for you to complete the goal in. I’m obsessed with how this long-term planning makes it easy to know and set your short-term, and in turn, micro goals each month and week.

3. Do a “monthly” challenge.

You don’t need to start on the first of the month either! Sometime within the next 90 days, set aside 30 days to complete one of these challenges:

  • Complete a Whole30
  • Do a no-spend challenge
  • A 30 day fitness challenge (or train for a half marathon)
  • Minimalism challenge: Declutter 1 thing a day for 30 days

Keep a journal or a set of notes on how you feel throughout your challenge. Note what has been difficult and what has been easier than you expected. I completed a minimal-spend challenge in January and I’m so glad I did! After gifting from the holidays, I was happy to actually spend time enjoying all of the new things I received. In May, I will be doing the minimalism challenge!

Use the monthly overview in the Unbound Planner to track your monthly challenge! You can check off the days you completed and make any relevant notes to come back to when you attempt another monthly challenge.

4. Up your savings by $100 a month.

Now is a great time to check in with your goals and reevaluate your budget! If you’re doing a no-spend challenge, it should be fairly easy to find an extra $100 to contribute. If you’re not, take a look at your current spending for 2018 so far using a tool like Mint. Where are you overspending? Where are you underspending? What is an unnecessary expense? Can you find a way to cut back on any expenses? Consider calling up your service providers and trying to negotiate a lower rate. I recently helped a friend save $140/month on her car insurance just by shopping around for better rates. It’s not as hard as you think!

Saving $100 extra dollars per month is just a difference of about $3.35 per day. Whether you need to make a daily or weekly transfer, cut back on eating out nights per week, or make some phone calls to your service providers, chances are this money is in your budget somewhere.

5. Unfollow anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself.

Social media is both a curse and a blessing. On one hand, it’s a very powerful tool. And on the other, it means we subject ourselves to the comparison trap. Go through your Instagram account and unfollow everyone who brings up any feelings of jealousy. Are they uninspiring? Unfollow. Do the same for your Twitter account and your Facebook friends and page likes. Unfollowing any accounts that contribute negatively to your mental health (or your wallet) is a positive thing to do.

This is something you can do over time or just do it when you would be mindlessly scrolling through your feed instead. Focus less on who you’re following and focus more on who you’re connecting with. Make your goal to unfollow 5 accounts per day on all of your social media that no longer inspire you. By the end of the month, you’ll have unfollowed 150 accounts! If you do this for three months, that’s 450 accounts of negative content you’ll no longer be absorbing on a daily basis.

6. Spend an hour every week connecting with someone you care about.

It’s time to stop putting off those coffee dates and phone calls! Reach out to your friends and family and start connecting with them on a weekly basis. Set aside an hour or two every week where you can catch up with someone in person or over Skype.

One hour per week across three months only adds up to 12 hours. In the grand scheme of things, 12 hours is nothing. In the scheme of this goal, however, that’s 12 more hours than before. Taking the time to connect in person with the people you care about is vastly different from following their lives online or through text messages. Ask them how their really feeling and what’s going on in their lives. Learn their struggles, share yours, and discover what a deeper connection truly is.


And there we have it, six goals you can reach by summer! I’d love to hear from you in the comments which of these goals you most connect with and will be doing yourself!

About the Author

Nicole Booz

Nicole Booz is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of GenTwenty, GenThirty, and The Capsule Collab. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and is the author of The Kidult Handbook (Simon & Schuster May 2018). She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s probably hiking, eating brunch, or planning her next great adventure.

Website: genthirty.com