Last week Jason and I shared our goals for 2024 on the podcast. You can listen in to that episode here. But if my new blogging effort for 2024, I wanted to break down some of those goals a bit more here.

I am no stranger to setting goals for my life, my home, and our business. I’ve been goal planning for years. But it seems in the past couple of years, my goal planning has become tighter. It’s become more effective. And I think a large part of that is simply learning more about how my brain works, what motivates me, and how to set REALISTIC goals and plans.

The easy part is setting goals. The hard part is actually following through on those goals! In today’s blog post I’m going to share my goals for 2024 and then in my next blog post I hope to take some of those goals and show you how I’m breaking them down into daily and weekly tasks to actually accomplish them!

QUICK NOTE: This is a HUGE topic. I hear from so many of you who would love to set goals for this year and most importantly, follow through and achieve those goals. But it can be so tough! That’s why I am hosting a 1 day planning and goal setting online retreat. You can join us for as low as $5 (pay what you can to join us)! Check out all the details here.

Looking ahead to 2024

When I first started goal planning, I would pick just 2-3 goals for the year. Since I was new to it, that’s all I could handle. As I’ve been doing it for many years, I now pick 3-4 goals in several different areas of my life. I usually end up with around 12-15 goals for my year.

That might sound like a LOT, but many of my goals are simply habits I want to cultivate. Some of them are new habits and some are habits I’m carrying over from the previous year. So when you look at my goals list, keep in mind that many of these goals are ones I’ve been working on for a while.

If you listened to the podcast from last week, you might notice that I’ve changed or added to a few of my goals. I spent the weekend really going over these goals and landed on adding a few more.

Our Theme for the Year!

Normally, Jason and I have our own unique word or theme for the year. We often have different areas of things we want to work on. But when we started reviewing our goals together in early December, we realized that so many of our goals were similar. We both have some BIG areas we want to grow in in 2024.

2023 was a good year in so many respects, but it was also a tough year. The first half of 2023 kicked our booties when it came to business and we’ve spent the rest of the year trying to dig our way out of it. We were determined to enter 2024 NOT being behind and feeling buried in everything we have to do. While we know 2024 will have unexpected twists and turns, we also know that we want to double down and make some huge progress in a few areas. 2023 was an off year in many regards, we want to make 2024 a year of GROWTH!

So our theme we set, somewhat in a humorous way, is DOUBLE OR NOTHING! We are doubling many of our goals, whether actually doubling or just doubling our excitement about them. This is our year to really break through to the next level on so many things and we are excited to put in the work and effort this year!

NOTE: This year is looking like a high energy year. We are going to be tackling some large projects, we might have a move this year, and so so much more. But this isn’t always the case. We’ve had very slow years, very hard years, years where we needed to take a step back and say NO more. If you are finding yourself in an “off” year, don’t fret. There are times and seasons for those things. So don’t compare your slower year with someone else’s faster year. Stay the course that God has called YOU to in this season, even if those goals maybe don’t feel as exciting as someone else’s. 

My goals for 2024:

My Personal Goals:

1. Bible Reading Goal: Just read daily. This first goal is not actually a high energy one. If you listen to our podcast episode, you know Jason is doing a really cool Bible reading plan. He’s incorporating all these different things and it sounds FUN! I’m so tempted to jump in and try to join him. But I also know I have other things I’m currently working on and you can improve in only so many areas at once. If I tried to do his plan, I would fail. I’m taking the slow and steady approach with my Bible reading. I started midway through the year, just reading the Bible straight through. I’m in Deuteronomy and that is what I will continue. I need to get more consistent and move a bit faster. So my goal is just to consistently read every single day. Once I finish the Bible this year, I will look at switching to a more in depth plan.
2. Reading Goal: 104 books for the year. We shall see how this goal goes. For the first time in several years, I hit my reading goal in 2023 of 104 books read (I did 105 books). I am setting my goal at the same thing – 104 books for the year which breaks down to 2 books per week. HOWEVER, I also have a business goal that ties into this. I’m working on a new book that requires a LOT of research. I’ve got a good 20-30 books I want to read for this new book, so I’m adding in the requirement that I need to read 1 book a week for that project until I’m done with the research phase. My goal might be a little audacious for this year, but we shall see!
3. Health Goal: Double my fitness! I’ve really gotten into fitness this last half of 2023. I came into 2023 with a 5 month old, feeling SO weak. I felt like my muscles were gone and I was having major pelvic floor issues. I knew I needed to strengthen things (especially if we want to have more babies) and I jumped in this year working on my fitness. Aaand it was NOT a smooth transition. I pulled muscles this year, I had a nasty bad spasm that knocked me out for like a month, and for most of the year, it felt like zero progress. But I kept going back and I kept trying. And suddenly: I started seeing SMALL progress, I started getting more consistent, and my body started craving my daily mobility workout I’ve been doing. It’s been about 3.5 months now of consistently working out and I can’t believe the change!! So my health goal for 2024 is to double my fitness level (which really shouldn’t be that hard to do lol)! My health goals are to: Finish the current postpartum workout program I’m doing (I’m on day 17 out of 28). I will then move into my next 4 week program (probably the beginner’s strength training one). My goal is to walk between 10-12k steps per day (depending on the week day). And eat 90g of protein a day with 30g of protein for breakfast!
4. Grow a big massive garden: I’d like to do double the garden we did 2 summers ago. I’ve got big plans for this one and want to do two successive plantings (we’ll see if we get to that).
5. Canning goals: Can a ton of tomato sauce. Like, a ton. I’m sure I’ll add more canning and preserving goals as we get to summer. 😉

My Household Goals:

1. Get back to our strict grocery budget – This has been creeping up and up this year! My goal for 2023 is to figure out ways to cut back and make more from scratch in order to get back to our strict $1,000 grocery budget! I’d love to be able to actually increase our grocery budget going into next year, but for now, I’m going to work at cutting back in areas that I can! Stay tuned for some fun grocery budget challenges coming soon! 
2. Can meat from the freezer – We have a bunch of beef in our freezer from last summer still. I wasn’t as on the ball about cooking through it all as I wanted. So one of my goals for Jan and Feb is to go through and process all the meat from the freezer and can it. I’ve never canned meat before but it’s the same basic process. I got Melissa K Norris’ new book on preserving that has a whole section at the back on canning meat, I’m excited to dive in!
3. Do several quilting projects – I’m continuing my journey this year of growing my quilting skills. I want to make this amazing dinosaur quilt for my 3-year-old’s olds birthday in April (I need to start it NOW)!! I would also like to make 3 seasonal quilts for this year: A spring quilt, a summer quilt, and a fall quilt. I already have a Christmas one made. So this way I could have one of my quilts out all year long!
4. Learn punch needle: I stumbled across this really cool craft called punch needle. You can do normal embroidery but you can also make rugs (real wool, sturdy rugs that will last a lifetime)! I found this Punch Rug Club which teaches you how to make this incredible huge rug. I can’t afford the full course with all the materials, but she said she is going to release the course as a digital-only sometime this year. I’m REALLY hoping to join but if it’s too expensive, I’ll just work on learning the skill myself.
5. Reorganize and declutter the whole house: Now that we’ve been in this house for nearly 2 years, it’s time for a purge! My goal is to do a whole house declutter and reorganization by summer. We need some more space!

Homeschool Goals:

We don’t have ANY new homeschool goals for this year. We worked on adding in a lot of new things this year and our routine is just working so well. So for 2024, our goal will be to continue these new routines. I’m sure in the summer we will reevaluate and see if there’s anything we need to change for the fall.

• Finish all current subjects by Summer
• School 4 days per week – M-Th
• Do Project Friday at least 3 out of 4 Fridays a month

Family Goals:

Jason and I have set some family goals together. Many of these are not new goals, they are things we are pulling into 2024 and hoping we will become more consistent on.

• Do family worship/devotions at least 5 nights per week.
• Do our rotating kid date – one kid a month gets a special date and it rotates
• Make Saturday night Sabbath Celebration/pizza and game night at least 3 out of 4 Saturdays a month
• Visit NC family at least 1 time
• Visit CA family at least 1 time

Business Goals:

This is a BIG area. We actually have tons of goals and things planned out for 2024. I won’t bore you with all the details but here are a few big ones that are on my plate:

1. Lunch our big website redesign
2. Make progress on my big new book project (Read one new book a week during research phase and then write 1 chapter a week after that. Reevaluate after outline is done to determine release date)
3. Write cookbook on sourdough!

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