Personal goals for 2018

Water Cooler
#1

I was reading articles for Twitter earlier and I came across one about setting personal goals for 2018. It got me thinking about what my own goals for the new year might be.

Personally

I have several jobs on top of being a full time parent and my time is very precious. Rather than getting stressed about spending family time keeping the house clean so I’m going to employ a cleaner to take some pressure off.

Professionally

I have had a lot of professional change in my life this year and I as a result I’ve been a bit complacent with some of the things that have been on my plate for a while. In short, I’ve cruised. Next year I plan to refocus a bit and make sure I step up across the board.

Social Responsibility

I feel pretty strongly about everyone finding a way to give something back to society. I’m starting a volunteer role in our local children’s hospital in January.

What are your goals for the new year (assuming you’re comfortable sharing them)?

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#2

That’s really cool! I wish I had the time to do something similar. I can’t imagine how busy you must be! What will you be doing for the hospital, if you don’t mind sharing?

I’ll join in on the goal-setting fun :slight_smile:

###Professionally

  • Finish and publish my book on UX niches.
  • Publish one UX article/month somewhere online.
  • Speak at 1 conference.
  • Become a UX mentor to someone looking to get into the industry.

###Personally

  • Get down to my goal weight.
  • Make three new friends.
  • Blog more.
  • Get one non-UX article published.
  • Finish that damn novel.
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#3

Yeah, time is a tricky one. I have life-hacked a bit though.

  • I have a 75/25 % arrangement with my main job and this one.
  • My 3rd job is teaching group fitness classes at the gym so that takes care of exercise as well.
  • I start work at 5am so that I finish at 3pm to parent.
  • I work one evening per week to make up for the morning I spend at the hospital.

I will be working in the toy library. It involves taking a trolley around the wards and loaning toys and books to the kids (plus collecting and sterilising them afterward). A big part of it is just the connection – lots of kids (and their parents) spend a long time in the hospital.

Love your goals. I also plan to speak at at least one conference next year.

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#4

Good lord, your schedule makes me tired just reading it. I hope somebody gives you some really excellent coffee, tea, or other beverage of choice this holiday season!

I work a pretty standard 8-5, M-F schedule, but spend a lot of evenings writing or researching. I was also recently approached by Skillshare.com to teach a couple of classes for their UX catalog, so my “second job” for the next month or two will be writing and filming the classes.

As an interesting aside, they mentioned they found me through UXMastery, though I’m not sure if someone referred them to me or if they saw something I wrote for the site that got them interested. Either way, I’m very thankful for the voice UXM has given me.

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#5

Both of you exhaust me! :slight_smile:

My goals are much more introverted and quiet. I am going to continue learning about community management and UX. I’m also going to continue working toward my degree in social media communications.

I’m going to explore transferring to Texas State or the University of Texas. UT would be a heck of a commute though.

On the personal side, I’m going to work on being more social ~ not my strongest suit.

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#6

Those all sound like great goals to me! I love being busy but it’s definitely not for everyone.

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#7

Here are mine

Personally

  • stop accumulating so much stuff
  • spend more quality time with my husband - being newly self employed I have a bad habit of throwing myself into it to the point of working 7 days a week and rarely seeing him
  • I want to write some fiction pieces

Professionally

  • Finish my book
  • Continue to grow my business as a freelancer- as of this week am now fully booked to April 2018 which takes me to the end of my first 6 months
  • I’ve already booked 3 speaking engagements for next year but what I really want to do is to give a TEDx talk, so I’ll keep working towards that
  • Get better at networking in my own city! I’m good at networking in general- just terrible at doing it in my own backyard!

Social Responsibility

  • Speak at 3 diversity & inclusion events
  • Do more with my neurodiversity advocacy work - I just write about it but I could be doing a lot more
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#8

That’s an awesome achievement Ash. Well done.

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#9

Thank you! I couldn’t have done it without the support of some amazing people! :grinning:

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