Eight months ago I sat down on my 25th birthday and hammered out my 25 goals for this year. I could have easily written 100 of them because I’m a serial goal-setter, but 25×25 had a good ring to it.

Check it out here → 25×25: Setting Life Goals for the Next 12 Months

I thought it’d be fun to publicly post my goals for a few reasons:

1. Archiving them for my own reference. It’s fun for me to look back on them & that post served as a great reminder whenever I felt aimless.
2. Getting feedback from y’all
3. Accountability
4. Progress: seeing results is motivating.

Unfortunately, I failed to live up to my promise to post quarterly updates. I took the summer off from the blog and spent August and September revisioning why I wanted to blog and what I hoped to accomplish.

I’ve been back for 3 months with a vengeance.

The plan was to measure and track my goals yearly based around my birthday, but as I approach the end of the year, I want to move to a calendar year approach. As I evaluate these goals, I’ll consider how I did based on the fact that I’m calling it 4 months short.

Overall, I’m incredibly happy with how the last 8 months have gone! I’ve been able to have some major wins, and at the same time, I’ve definitely fallen short in a few areas.

That’s the nature of progress. Shoot high. And be okay with failing. Learn from mistakes. Keep pressing on.

2018 Year Review: Wins, Fails, and Changed Plans

Goal Wins: (Already accomplished or easily on track for)

Bench 365, Squat 405, Deadlift 495

This year I’ve done a much better job at consistently making it to the gym! I was able to hit 2/3 of these strength goals! My squat has actually blown up way higher than I expected. Just a couple of months ago I hit 500.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to deadlift regularly because the commercial gym I go to doesn’t have a good set-up for it.

Join or launch my own mastermind group

About two months ago I was invited to join a blogging mastermind with some of my closest friends in the blogging world. We’ve met a couple of times already and it’s been fun to have a smaller group of people to brainstorm and talk about blogging with. Excited to see how this pans out!

Reach 10,000 visitors in one month

Whoop! I actually just hit this target in December! Right in time for this review.

The past few months I’ve been hovering between 6-8k sessions a month! Thanks to a feature on Rockstar Noteworthy, I managed to cross the 12k mark this past month.

60,000 page views this year

Back when I posted the 25×25 post, my goal was to hit around 60k page views for the entire year! As of now, I’m about 6000 views short of this goal, but I’ve been averaging 10k pageviews a month for the last four months so I’m 100% positive I would have hit this with another four months!

Reach $75k Net Worth

At the time, this was a total reach goal for us! After creating $25k equity on our house, I think our net worth is right around $75-80k! I’ll have to get a more accurate update in January once house stuff settles down. Super happy to see this and pumped to see if we can break the $100k mark in 2019!

Get a raise of $1,500

Totally blew this out of the water with a $5,500 raise! To some, this may not seem like much, but it was a 15% raise for me.

Buy a House

We closed on our house just last month! It took us over 8 months to find the right house in the right area at the right price, but we managed to get almost exactly what we were looking for! We did a 203k loan which allowed us tie in a partial renovation with our mortgage and we made around $25k in equity up front.

For every dollar we put into the renovation, we got $1.50 back based on the appraisal by the city. Pretty good return on investment!

We have a number of projects around the house that we’re hoping to DIY over the coming months.

Preach through a book from the Old Testament

This year I’ve had the chance to preach around 30 times to our youth group and was able to cross preaching through an Old Testament book off my bucket list! We have actually spent the past 7 months working through various parts of the Old Testament: Jonah, select Proverbs, and an overview series of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus.  

Develop mentor / discipleship relationships

This is one area that I’ve made a lot of progress in, but see SO much potential to grow. I’ve been incredibly blessed to have a mentor this year who has challenged me to love my wife, lead in ministry, and be passionate about academics.

However, I’ve failed to take action on my goal to be discipling someone else. As a youth pastor I spend a lot of my time investing in students, but would love to have a handful that I lead in a more focused way.

Maintain a 3.8 GPA

Still rocking it on the GPA front at a 3.93. I’m incredibly proud of this because I’ve managed to get through some of my toughest classes this year with high marks.

At this point, I’m halfway done with my Masters in Theology (61/120 hours!). I’m expecting to graduate in May of 2022. The downside of doing school part time is that it will take forever to finish the program.

Fails: (not done & would not be done)

Diet down and maintain at 230

Totally failed on this! Time to make it happen in 2019.

Consecutive pull-ups: Twenty

I was on great pace to hit this at 13 in July, but ended up tweaking something in my elbow and had to take a few months off from pull-ups and most upper body work.

Take on one more key area of responsibility at my job

This has actually been interesting! I’ve been working at a church plant for the last 3 years and so while I haven’t added areas of responsibility at my job, my role has grown because the ministry I lead has grown by about 30%.

Initiate regular job performance reviews

One of my goals was to work with my boss to establish regular job performance reviews. I get that most people hate doing these, but I see them as opportunities to demonstrate the value I bring to the organization.

Performance reviews are also a chance to address weaknesses and identify areas of improvement. The more feedback I get, the more rapidly I can make adjustments and grow as a leader and pastor.

Other Goals I failed to accomplish this year:

• Make prayer with my wife a part of our daily rhythm
• Put together a “just-in-case” folder for my wife
• Write 52 articles for a total of at least 104,000 words
• Talk to at least 100 readers via phone, email, or other mediums
• Look into a side hustle that isn’t blogging
• Email list of 1,000 + Create a Defined Strategy

Goals I’m no longer pursuing:

One thing I’ve started to realize is that when you set year-long goals, you fall into the trap of your goals changing.

After reflecting on this year, I’ve noticed that my desired end-results haven’t changed. I still want to

• Have a healthy marriage
• Lose weight
• Build our savings
• Grow this blog
• Develop as a pastor

However, the strategies and habits I thought would get me there, have changed.

The reality of goal setting is that goals change & our strategies change.

Lift 10,000,000 pounds

At the time of publishing that goals post, I was running a super high volume routine but ended up burning out and having to take some time off from the gym. I’ve been back at it for a few months now but have been sticking to lower volume strength work!

Simply put, this isn’t a goal anymore because it wasn’t the best strategy to get to where I want to be.

Develop 2-3 great resources for church-wide use

This is one that I’m disappointed to no longer be pursuing! My focus just needs to be on my area of ministry–but I am hoping to create 2-3 great resources for our students, parents, and leaders.

Lead a community group

As my role on staff has grown, my ability to handle responsibilities outside of that has gone way down. Even though I’m not leading a community group, I’m leading over 80 students and 15 volunteers.

WRAP UP

Next week I’ll be posting up my goals for 2019! Super excited to see what’s in store as we keep laying a foundation for our family and the rest of our lives.