My 2020 Goals

Every year I like to write down my goals for the 12 months ahead. It’s meant to create the illusion that there’s accountability there – that I need to do this stuff because I’ve told you lot that I will. In reality, I post it and then I maybe look at it mid way through the year and then once again in December. That’s what I did last year and my 2019 recap showed that although I didn’t fail miserably, I didn’t do as amazingly well as I could. 

That being said, you lot have left some wonderful comments on my previous post telling me not to beat myself up so much! They were all so lovely to read, so thank you to anyone who left something positive for me to look at – it means a lot. 

Right, onto my goals for 2020. It’s going to be a bit of a busy year, we’ve lots planned and I’m really excited to see what happens. So here are my goals for the year, I hope to do a bit better than last year and I aim to have a little look at this post at the end of every month, to remind myself of what I’m working towards. As usual, my 2020 goals are split into personal and blog related goals. Here we go…

Personal Goals

1. Do a Race At Your Pace challenge every month and collect all 12 medals. This is the top of my list because it’s going to be the hardest. I did 4 challenges in 2019 and I failed one of them. It was a lot of pressure and I’m already worried about embarking on this journey but I know that I can do it – I just need to get out there and run! If you compete in a challenge every month, at the end of the year you’re awarded with a special medal that has your total mileage for the year on it – I can’t wait to earn that one!
2. Believe in myself. In 2020, I want to work towards betting myself without the need for validation. I want to trust my body, trust my mind, use my instincts, learn to love myself and believe in myself. I have such high hopes for 2020 and I know that happiness starts with you. I want to learn how to be a better friend to myself and I want to care less about what other people think.
3. Create more family memories. I don’t want my life to be ruled by money. (At the time of writing this, it’s Friday 13th Dec – the day we all awoke to find out the Conservatives won the general election. Money, quite frankly, is a topic that now terrifies me.) No matter what happens from now on, I am determined to make sure that I make the effort to spend as much time with my family as is possible. I want my kids to grow up knowing that love is important, in fact, it is THE most important thing and compassion and kindness will get you a lot further than money. 
4. Make matched betting work for me. I’ve got a wedding to plan and pay for, I’ve got a house to move into, I’ve got kids school uniforms and trips to pay for and god knows what else. Last year I wanted to make £2000 from matched betting – I think I might settle with £1000. If people can regularly make 1K a month from matched betting, surely I can make that in a year, right?
5. Start therapy. Towards the end of 2019 I found myself, once again, sat in the doctor’s office being told I had anxiety and crying my heart out. I guess after 6 years of being medication free and trying to manage it all myself, it became too much again and I ended up feeling overwhelmed and struggling more than I’d care to admit. I need to sign up to therapy – hopefully by the time this has gone live, I will have actually plucked up the courage to do so! (Edit: not yet, but soon!)
6. More creative writing. I haven’t written creatively since I was in school and it was my favourite thing to do. Mainly because it was pretty much the only thing that I was good at. In college I wrote a screenplay for my Film Studies A Level and won an award for it. In fact, it’s the only award I’ve ever won and it was all thanks to my writing. Needless to say, I still have that trophy! It always made sense that I would end up writing for a living, but writing creatively is something I really miss. I started writing little bits and bobs at the end of 2019 and I completely fell in love with it. I’m really eager to keep this up as it was a really creative and therapeutic way of letting off some steam.

Blog & Freelance Goals

1. Continue to monetise the blog. 2019 was a brilliant year for me in terms of income generated by Lukeosaurus And Me. I am by no means a super blogger (ha!), but I made more last year than I have since the blog was born in 2013. This has been really good, but it’s also taught me a few life lessons. I need to make sure I sort tax returns earlier and be more prepared, especially by saving money to pay the tax (assuming I make that much. I need to also be more organised with receipts because I’m rubbish at adding my expenses on.
2. New theme AND new header/logo – a big rebrand. I had wanted to do this last year but I never got around to it. Well, I mean technically, I did buy a new theme but it turns out that this one isn’t as great as it first appeared, so I’m on the lookout for a new one now. Once I’ve finally found one that I like, I will be looking for someone to create a new header for me. 
3. Continue freelance content writing. Writing a blog is very different from writing content for other people, especially SEO copywriting. I’m aiming to get a bit faster at this as it currently takes me a bit too long to crack an article out for the amount of money I’m paid per piece of copy. My goal is to find a way to more easily get into the SEO zone and hopefully, if I can get the written in less time, the money will be better. 
4. Work harder on Instagram. Instagram is one of the platforms that I really struggle with. It’s never instant and there’s way too much to consider. It seems that my natural engagement on IG is pretty pants, so I’m going to be spending a lot of time researching ways to boost thing organically, as well as looking into better hashtags and photography tips. 
5. Stay on top of admin tasks. This is fairly boring but considering the horrible DA hit my blog took last year, it can’t help to stay on top of everything that happens behind the scenes. I plan to do monthly broken link checks and stay on top of SEO etc. These things take ages and they’re really boring but I suppose they’re also kind of essential to running a well maintained blog! 

That’s about it for now. I think these goals will be achievable throughout 2020. It’s now the 6th of January – the official “back to reality day” for many with school and work starting up again. I’m already well on my way to achieving my minimal 15 miles of running for the month and I’m just about to embark on some wordpress theme shopping. Wish me luck!

Other Posts You Might Like

• 2019 Goals Update
• 5 Things I Did In January To Help Me Achieve My 2019 Goals
• 2019 New Year Goals
• January Bucket List

What are your goals or resolutions for 2020? Let me know in the comments.