I’m a few days late in getting around to reviewing how I did on the goals for 2020, but what’s new there in a year full of challenges? It’s an understatement to say that for anyone that set quantified personal goals at the start of the year had a rude awakening in March. We all encounter setbacks along the progress bar throughout any year, but this one was a doozy, and a protracted one that just kept dragging out.

Luckily here in Florida we’ve been able to have some normal(ish) activities the past few months. Even just taking the kids back to playgrounds again around August was like a weight off the chest. The months of cabin fever dragged down everything for the whole family.

So how’d I do on those goals anyway?

Activity	Progress	Pace	Goal	Plus-Minus
Running	650.24 miles	650 miles	650 miles	+0.24
Meditation	1070 minutes	3120 minutes	3120 minutes	—
Reading	31 books	30 books	30 books	+1

Here are my original notes from the start of the year with some comments on each.

Health

✅ Run 650 miles — When I set 500 as a target for 2019, I thought it’d be all I could do to hit that. I ended up landing on 615. With consistent effort (it requires an average 12.5 miles per week) I can definitely hit 650. Feels incremental, slightly uncomfortable, but attainable.

With a couple of days left I crested the running target just barely, 2 free days to spare. Throughout the entire year I don’t think I got more than a couple of miles ahead of the pace marker. I procrastinated way too frequently

❌ Run 2 half marathons — Did one last year, will shoot for one in the spring and one in the fall or winter.

For obvious reasons this one wasn’t possible unless I did them on my own, which would be a long shot for me. I may try one this year, we’ll see.

❌ Deeper meditation — In my takeaways on this from last year, I mentioned the lack of depth with short, frequent sessions. This year I’m going to try doing 2 sessions of at least 30 minutes per week. I’ve read from multiple sources that anything shorter than about that length doesn’t get you all the way to the “present” state that mindfulness techniques are targeting. Half an hour will feel like a long time, but only twice a week should be fine.

2020 would’ve been a great year for improving meditation practice. For no good reason I just couldn’t get myself back into the routine to do it. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this in 2021. I’d rather not put a goal up on the board with no real plan to try at the moment. Can always start anytime without an official goal.

❌ Begin strength training — Shooting for 3 days per week. My plan is to get a setup in the garage to do workouts pre- or post-evening run.

Another one I just never got around to. We just bought a new house (which I’m due to write about, more on that later), so when we move I’m hoping to get a zone set up in the new garage and work this in sometime in the morning after everyone’s in school. Easing into it and getting consistent will be the key.

Reading, Learning, and Writing

✅ Read 30 books — I’m lowering the number this year, but have no plans to read less. I want to prioritize more long-form, deeper books that I’ve got on the shelf.

I notched just over this without trying too hard. I even had a few spells throughout the year with very little reading.

✅ Continue daily posts — I’d also like to force myself to write posts on 1 book per month.

I started 2020 with an intent to keep this going. As it was I made it to the 2-year streak mark in mid-October and put myself on hiatus. It was a good move since it’s given me a little breathing room, with time to spin up what I’ve been doing with the newsletter: Res Extensa.

❌ Study finance — With a half-decade of being heavily involved in the business end of a SaaS company, I’ve gotten a “crash MBA” in budgets, finance, and tons more. I plan to spend more time learning about markets, investing, and economics to have a broader understanding.

Didn’t spend much time here, but I did get some personal budget stuff in order. Not quite done yet.

Professional

❌ Host Fulcrum Live 2020 — The name of the event is TBD, but we’ll be doing another iteration of our user conference that we last did (with success!) in 2017.

Really want to be able to do this (something) sometime in 2021.

✅ Grow the team — Much of my time this year will be focused on team growth. No hard targets yet, but we have some things in the works that’ll be expanding our team.

We grew quite a bit this year, even with the tumultuousness of shifting to full remote.

Other Things

❌ Share more posts from the blog — When I started the daily posting habit in fall of 2018, I made the intentional decision to just put posts out there and see what would happen organically. No expected plan to drive traffic, just post and leave it be — personal journal out in public. One of my main reasons for doing that was to reduce the friction in getting things out there. The idea that every post was getting tweeted or shared could’ve made me overly attentive to perfection and polishing, something I wanted to avoid not only because it’d take longer on net for each new post, but it could make me hesitant about certain things. This year I’ll plan to share more widely the content for feedback and discussion.

I didn’t do as much of this as I’d planned. Footnote to include this one for 2021 goals.

✅ Take a few local weekend trips with the family — There’s a shortlist of places in driving distance I’d like to take the kids to, like on long weekends.

COVID shut us down here. We did get to drive up to the Georgia mountains for a week in late October. Another one that I hope can be resurrected for an improved 2021. All in all I hit the big primary targets.