12/01

Side Project Accountability & 2019 Targets

Towards the end of last year, I read an article regarding accountability on side projects, which explained why getting side projects done in your spare time when you’d rather be watching Netflix is difficult —because you don’t have someone peering over your shoulder checking up on you.

After reading that article, I felt accountability within any personal goal is needed.

I’d tried a few things to improve accountability, such as joining communities (specifically WIP.chat), but they didn’t work for me. I felt like I would spend more time on them than doing the work that I wanted to be accounted for!

But a good example of accountability within communities I currently use is Strava. Having a group of other athletes see your goals, activities (or lack of) and pretty much all your physical data pushes you to keep going.

So I thought posting my 2019 goals on Medium would be a good way to make me accountable for the year, as it’s out there publicly for me to be guilty of if I don’t complete. I’ll then review this regularly and update the list when something is complete, but on 1st January 2020, I’ll check to see my overall progress.

We all need goals, right?

But I don’t want to burn out, or be that guy that says he’s working 23 hour days, so as well as being progressive and productive, I’ll still be working sensibly.

So, for the goals.

Side project accountability 2019 targets

Work, Ventures & Learning

⬜ Ship 2 side ventures 🛳
⬜ Ship 2 or more plugins for Craft CMS 🚢
⬜ Revive my personal site (It hasn’t been updated for 6 years!) 👱🏻‍♂️
⬜ Learn Vue.JS ⚡️

Personal

⬜ Write at least once a month (and you guessed it, post on Medium) 📝
⬜ Buy a house 🏠
⬜ Read more books 📖 (Reading list to follow)
⬜ Learn to ride a motorbike 🏍

Fitness

⬜ Run a 10km 🏃‍♂️
⬜ Run a 5km under 22 minutes ⏱
⬜ Run 320mi (514km) 😰
⬜ Cycle 5,750mi (9,253km) 🚴‍♂️