New Year's Resolutions

If you're the kind of person who thinks making new year's resolutions is a waste of time and setting yourself up for failure, I dare you to keep reading.

Here's my public, comprehensive list of goals for this year. Within each bullet point is actionable steps for how I'm going to achieve these goals. Part of the reason for making this post is so I can have a document I can constantly look at throughout the year to make sure I'm on track for my goals.

• Read 50 books March: 0

• Read 4 books in Chinese March: 0

• Reach 10k Instagram followers March: 1,606

• Get into peak physical shape by my 30th birthday March: Not yet

• Make $1,000 profit on independent streams of income March: $68

• Produce 100 YouTube videos March: 7

• Add two languages to my polyglot list March: Russian

• Create morning habits that work for me March: Not yet

How am I going to make these happen? I'm certainly not going to

Read fifty books. You can see my ongoing 2021 list here. I will accomplish this by making time to read in bed, and finishing a little over four books every month. The hardest part about this one is getting the daily work in.

April: Having a hard time focusing

Read four novels/mangas in Chinese. I've already got the first one in my 2021 list, and I'm open to suggestions. While I won't be reading these intensively (looking up every word, making sure I understand a sentence 100% before moving on, reading every line, and doing flash cards to remember vocabulary), I will be reading extensively (getting the general feeling of the story, skipping words I don't know, and only looking stuff up if I absolutely need to).

Reach 10,000 Instagram followers. If you analyzed my follower growth pattern the past four years, you can see the bell curve is definitely steepening, but not at the speed I'd require to reach the first 10k. I will increase the slope of the curve exponentially by determining my audience, creating content they will love, and using targeted advertising to increase conversions.

April: 1,606 Followers

Get into peak physical shape by my 30th birthday. I've never been in peak physical shape, and as I'm approaching 30 years old, I want to put that regret behind me. I'll accomplish this goal by slowly changing my diet and physical activity level week by week until I am active for two to four hours a day, and maintain a sustainable diet of foods that I enjoy.

April: controlling diet much better

Make at least $1,000 profit from independent income streams. According to my plan for this year, I should be making WAY MORE than that to achieve my goals, but I'm going to start with $1,000 and update this later.

April: $68 on art commissions

Income streams include:

• Dropshipping through Shopify

• Merchandise sales through my own online store

• Copyediting and proofreading

• Publishing children's literature

• Doing illustration commissions

Produce 100 YouTube videos. This is about one video every three days. I've already released the first one, so I've got 99 left to make. I'll cover a range of topics, including:

• TnT: Talking internet tea with my brother and his wife.

• English lessons: Teaching English vocabulary and phrases to English learners in Taiwan.

• Chinese lessons: Teaching Chinese vocabulary and phrases to English-speaking Mandarin students

• Aesthetic vlogs: Film everyday life in a pleasant way. These videos are relaxing to watch, and pad out the channel and make it look bigger.

• Travel vlogging: Once the world opens up again, I will be making videos documenting travel and life abroad.

April: 7 videos uploaded

Add two language to my polyglot list. So far, I speak English and Mandarin. I know that's a huge achievement, so I'm not going to punish myself for not speaking more languages. But throughout my life, I've started to learn quite a few languages but never saw them to complete fluency.

• French March: Familiar

• Russian March: Unit 2 of Duolingo complete

• Taiwanese Hokkien

• American Sign Language

• Italian

• Cantonese

Since these are already begun, I won't be starting any new languages from scratch. I hope to pick two of these languages and bring them up to fluency level. I'll do so by taking classes, finding language exchanges, and reading/watching/listening to media in the target language. My goal has always been five languages by thirty, so if I'm going to make that, I've got to CRUNCH this year.

Create morning habits that work for me. I've long since given up on the 5 AM Club. I'm just not that kind of person. So I have to determine which kinds of morning routines help me, and learn how to make them easily repeatable.

April: Yikes! Nowhere near this one.

What are your new year's resolutions and goals? Let me know in the comments!