My 2021 Goals | Personal, Financial, and Business

New year and it is time to set my goals for 2021. I love that we have evolved from “resolutions” that we never stuck to now to Goals that we can actually achieve. I think the reason behind that has somewhat to do with the psychology of the word goals. Goals feel more attainable than resolutions to “change” your life.

As humans we don’t really like change. But at this point I am getting off topic so let’s get back into yearly goals! In 2020 I began implementing a new strategy for goal planning. I had specific goals with steps to reach them, I also had a vision board to remind myself and keep me accountable, and I discovered manifestation. This change made working towards goals more proactive as well as gave me small steps to feel like we were moving forward. So for this year I have done the same, let’s dive into my 2021 goals!

Financial Goals

Now that we have a new government we know that the COVID forbearance for student loans will continue until September of this year. That makes some of my goals for this year SO MUCH more attainable. In addition, in 2020 I began budgeting and being WAY more organized with my finances. To get a sneak peek into my budget check out my previous post where I go over my January 2021 budget and some of my budgeting strategies. SO let’s get into my 2021 financial goals

Goals:

1. Pay off 1-2 loans entirely.
   This would be the 2 loans with the highest interest which are currently at $10,000 and $4,300. In turn this would leave behind all the HUGE loans but that have a 5% interest rate. Even though it won’t really bring me closer to paying off ALL of my loans, it feels great to say I paid off 3 loans while in residency.
2. Increase savings by $50 a month until I reach $800/month. I am currently saving about $600 a month. That is split between my emergency fund and my down payment savings. So for this year I want to be contributing $800 total into my savings accounts.
3. Increase Roth IRA contributions to $500 in order to max out Roth IRA. In 2020 I was contributing $300/month into my Roth IRA. Starting February I have increased that to $400/month and eventually later this year I shall increase that to the $500 in order to reach my goal.
4. Decrease personal/miscellaneous spending to $400/month TOTAL. Currently I was spending close to $700 per month on random things. This year I want to live, and spend, more intentionally. Also in order to achieve the above goals, I need to “find” the money to do those increases. The way I plan to do that is by decreasing my spending and re-directing those funds into the IRA and savings.
5. Have at least $13,000 in the house down payment savings. I calculated what I contributed last year into my savings and came up with this number as a goal. This is certainly under-calling what I will have if I contribute according to plan. But if anything happens and I cant reach the actual savings goal, I have another goal I can reach and stay on track with the down payment plan.

Personal and Career Goals

This category of goals includes things I want to improve in my personal life as well as in my career as an ObGyn. These are 2021 goals that are very important to me because they pertain to mental and emotional wellbeing as well as my success as an ObGyn. I like to think that these are more important but also more flexible. Most of these do not have a strict deadline for that same reason, but I still want to have improved and worked towards them by the end of the year.

Goals:

1. Improve my CREOG score from last year. This one is already in the works since we took our CREOG exam last week but I am hopeful. The difference between 2020 and other years was that I was able to dedicate more time to preparing for the CREOG than in previous years. I also was not in a crazy busy rotation and as such was not absolutely exhausted. SO we shall see how I did!
2. Buy PROLOGs: These are review books for the written board exam we take after graduating residency. They are an EXPENSIVE set of books, about $600 with the resident discount! So I want to have this as a goal to set aside the money and buy the books before summer.
3. Get a JOB! My first real job as a doctor. It would no longer be training, it would officially be me on my own caring for patients. This isa very exciting, nerve wrecking, and scary process but I am very motivated to share that with you guys. I have been trying to find resources on HOW to do this but everything is very generic. SO I plan to share every step of the process with you and give you all of the tips and details!
4. Meditate 3x per week. Last year, in 2020, I began to meditate more and with more intention and it was life-changing. I had done meditation since medical school, but it was pretty on and off and without truly setting direct intentions. Once I began meditating differently my entire life changed and I see the wonderful benefits of meditation. So I hope to do it more routinely this year.
5. Focus more on manifestation. This was another discovery of 2020. I have been unintentionally doing manifestation for years. But I truly embraced it and began to understand it more in 2020. It was also the fact of doing it more intentionally that I believe made the difference and helped me manifest certain things in a short period of time. So for this year begin manifesting with intention and more routinely and hopefully see even better results.
6. Eat Whole Food Plant Based meals at least 1x per week. There is good evidence out there for the benefits of diet on health. Primarily, the mediterranean diet and the whole food plant based diet have irrefutable evidence of health benefits. They both help decrease incidence of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and even some cancers. So for this year I hope to begin incorporating some of these meals into our routine.
7. Do yoga at least 2x per week. This was another life changing discovery of 2020. I have loved yoga and pilates for a long time but never did it routinely. During quarantine times, we began doing yoga every day and in just 2-3 weeks the changes were impressive. Not only for physical health but overall wellbeing, yoga helped me feel centered and balanced as well as motivated every day. So in 2021 I want to somehow do it more routinely.

Business Goals

Finally my 2021 business goals. These are goals that relate to this blog, as well as all of my social media channels: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Eventually I want this blog as a whole to be my side hustle. I have not worked on it as much as I would’ve liked over the past few years. But seeing as my theme for 2021 is intention, then I hope to be more organized and work on this space to reach this goal. The most I have made from these sources is about $500 in a year back in 2019. After that I had essentially fallen off the wagon and stopped working on it as much. So I want to work again towards the goal of making $500 this year from these platforms.

Goals

1. Post at least 2x per month on YouTube and the blog. I plan to do this by batch creating content on my weekends off. If I am truly organized it will be possible to use 1 out 2 weekends off to create all of the content for that month. I believe this is entirely possible and achievable. So far I have content for the next 2-3 months so we are on the right track!
2. Get to 600 subscribers on YouTube and 2,500 on Instagram. I am close to both of these goals and I don’t see it as impossible to reach them. If you are not following me on both of those and want to help me reach my goals for this year go and follow me there. HERE for Instagram, HERE for YouTube.
3. Create an Online Course. This was an idea I had back in 2020 and I pretty much outlined the entire course. Now all I have to do is create the content for the course! What courses would you like to see from me?
4. Create 3 digital products. Last year I created a few resources that you can find in my resource library once you subscribe to my newsletter HERE. I also created a few paid products like my USMLE Step Study Schedule and my Financial Planning Workbook. So for this new year I want to create a few more of these to expand what you, my audience, have access to and continue towards living the life you want. So what products would you want me to make for you?
5. Mentor 2 medical students. In 2020 I also launched my mentorship service for medical students that will be applying to residency. To be honest I don’t think I did a great job on the launch and that is why it “failed”. But for this new year I am hopeful to get 2 mentees and help them achieve their goal of matching into the specialty of their dreams! Did you know I had this service? If not, well now you know and you can find it HERE.
6. Make $500 from my side hustle. Like I mentioned aboveI did this bak in 2019 after working hard on this blog during 2018 and 2019. So I know that if I put in the work I will get to that goal.
7. Grow my email list by 100 leads per month. This might be the most ambitious goal out of all of these. I have never been great at email marketing but I know it has a huge potential. If I work hard on it and put in the time I may be able to reach this goal. If you want to join my newsletter and get access to my resource library, sneak peaks into future content, as well as special discounts for my products and services, join HERE!

Conclusion:

So to wrap this up I truly believe that anything is possible if we put our mind, body, and soul into it as well as stay organized. I have found that when I am ding things that make me happy, I stay motivated and achieve amazing things. So in 2021 my goals are a way for to stay accountable for what I hope to achieve as well as to have something to look back and see how far I have gone. With writing things down, having a planner, and having a vision board I have multiple ways to stay focused and on track towards reaching those goals.

What ways do you have to stay accountable for reaching the 2021 goals you set out to achieve?

XOXO

Jani