Why I’m Not Setting Myself 2021 Goals

Almost every year I can think back on, I’ve set goals for the year ahead. They’re less like resolutions as I believe you can make a change anytime and shouldn’t wait until a new year to start exercising more or going to bed earlier. But my goals are usually just a list of things I want to achieve during the year. Perhaps a financial goal, or a travel goal. But I’m not setting myself any 2021 goals for reasons I’ll outline below.

If 2020 has taught us anything it’s that we can’t plan or think too far ahead. If someone had told us 18 months ago that there would even be a global pandemic I don’t think any of us could imagine it. And we told ourselves last March that we’d be no better off 10 months later we probably wouldn’t have believed it either. While there are some goals you can achieve during these times like saving money, investing, or learning to cook. There’s so much more to surviving this than setting 2021 goals.

Why you shouldn’t be setting 2021 goals

I don’t know about you but the last year has been pretty tough. There have been some good days, but also some pretty low days. As a culture (and millennials especially) we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We always been to be busy and smashing our way through life. So when a lot of us didn’t feel productive last year or felt we were being counter-productive to our goals we made ourselves feel bad and put even more pressure on ourselves. I really wanted to lose weight last year, although don’t I every year?! But the combination of eating to make myself feel better and working from home made that tough for me. But I wanted to achieve my goal so I ended up putting pressure on myself that affected my mental health.

We don’t need to be setting 2021 goals that are going to make us feel bad if we don’t achieve. We don’t know what’s going to be possible this year. Want to travel? That’s probably out. Want to save money? You may lose your job. There’s no agenda for how this year is going to go. So to avoid putting unnecessary pressure on myself to achieve idealistic things I’m just canning it. Yes, there will be things I’ll try and work towards, but they’re not set goals. I’m not noting them down anywhere or going to do a tick box exercise at the end of the year because it’s not worth it.

What we should be concentrating on

2020 was a huge year for learning. I learnt so much about myself, my relationships, my money mindset etc and I want to concentrate on the things I learnt. One major thing was about appreciating the little things. I didn’t appreciate a good hug with a friend, a brunch date or a trip to the cinema quite as much as I should have. And I didn’t realise it until it was taken away from me. Instead of 2021 goals, we should focus on reminding ourselves what is important in life.

As we’re in lockdown 3.0 and life is pretty dull it’s about being safe, healthy and playing our part. Concentrating on getting this part of our lives over with so we can revert back to whatever our ‘new normal’ is going to look like.

Things I’ll be working on/ towards

Of course, this isn’t to say that without 2021 goals I won’t be working on anything. I’m just going to alleviate that pressure and that tick box exercise that comes with it. I’ll be able to work on all of them in some capacity regardless of what happens and the scale will just slide depending on circumstances.

• Wedding planning- This might mean we decide what we actually want from our wedding this year. Or it may mean planning the whole thing out. But we’ve been engaged for a year now and haven’t planned anything so we need to start somewhere.
• Develop my investments- Again quite a vague one, but there’s a reason for this. I have one small stocks and shares ISA and a pension, but I want to develop my investing to have more fallback when we retire. Again this might just mean upping my monthly contributions to my pension, or it might mean opening up a whole new investment portfolio.

Are you going to be setting 2021 goals for yourself?

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