Successful People Write Down Their Goals, So Here Are Mine For 2021

Trying to become successful by writing about my goals for the year

01.01.2021 - 13:00
Writing down your goals makes it 42% more likely to achieve them.

I recently read somewhere that successful people write down their goals. It boosts your motivation and focus while reducing stress levels at the same time. 

I have been writing to-do lists on paper for quite a while and it helps me keep a better overview of my short-term tasks. Every point you can cross off results in a small sense of accomplishment. 

But I have never tried writing down long term goals and there's really no reason not to do it. So here are some of my goals for 2021 regarding my online presence and freelancing career:

1. Game Development

For the past few months, my indie game project fell a bit by the wayside. External distractions, my recent passion for writing, and other projects took a lot of time away from game development. 

This year, I want to finish the game and publish it. 

It's actually in a decent state, but the final push is going to be very difficult and time-consuming. Right now I am at a point where I need to add a lot of content to the game (buildings, items, etc.). Adding content isn't too difficult and actually quite fun. However, doing so in a way that is balanced is very hard. And all the little things take up a lot of time. Every building needs a model, an attack animation, a sound effect, a projectile, maybe some special effects, etc. Which is fun for a few buildings, but when you need 50+, it can get slightly repetitive and tedious.

2. Writing

In 2020, I discovered my passion for writing. I had been blogging about my game development progress before, but last year I started to spread out into other topics as well. I also learned about Medium and published over 60 stories in 8 months. 

I want to continue writing regularly in 2021. 

I'm not going to set a milestone of how many followers or readers I want to reach because that isn't in my control and comes down to a lot of luck. But I want to stay consistent and keep publishing. After all, you cannot win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket - and by lottery, I mean the almighty algorithm. 

3. My Website

When it comes to writing, I have published most of my recent stories exclusively on Medium. All of my earlier game development blogging has been only on my own website. 

I would like to increase my website's traffic by posting more content on it. 

I have just finished a big update for my website, that added SEO capabilities and other beneficial features for more content. And thanks to Medium's republishing policy I can also import every piece there.

4. Twitter

I want to reach 100 followers on Twitter. It seems doable, but I refuse to participate in follow for follow, so it's going to take a lot longer than for many other people. 

Twitter is a nice tool to cross-promote other pieces and I have been using it to share game development screenshots and updates. It has also become my excuse to create more models in Blender. While I need some for my games, I have been creating other random models as well. Making models is a lot of fun and instead of pure procrastination modeling, it at least produces a few nice renders that I can post on Twitter. 

Twitter is also very good for short-form casual content. Not everything needs to be a polished Blender render, sometimes it's just fun to post a random shower thought. As long as it doesn't become spammy, a few more tweets probably don't hurt. 

5. YouTube

Making more videos and growing on YouTube is more of a stretch goal. I have made a few Blender modeling and map creation time-lapses over the last year, but they have been more about spicing up my game development blog posts with an embedded video and less about growing on YouTube. 

I have a few video ideas, but most of them would take a lot of time to implement, so we'll see. I also hate the 1000 subscriber threshold before you can start monetizing. Even just seeing a few cents trickle in is a big motivation, which YouTube completely blocked. 

6. Freelancing

Another area I want to get into in 2021 is freelancing. I have a master's degree in computer science and a lot of experience with software and web development, so there should be freelance opportunities out there. Maybe even freelance asset creation in Blender or writing. 

The main reason why I haven't gotten into freelancing yet is finding freelancing jobs. Spending hours searching for gigs, that may not even end up in a hire, feels like a waste of time that I could have invested in other projects. I would much rather have potential employers contacting me, but that hasn't worked out so far so I probably have to spend more time looking for opportunities myself.

---

Setting concrete and realistic goals is very difficult and it will always be very hard to reach your goals. So when writing them down increases the likelihood of achieving them by 42%, there's no reason not to do it. 

I like to switch between different things frequently, which makes it especially difficult to narrow down my goals. For example, writing wasn't even on my radar at the beginning of last year and now it has advanced to one of the goals I am looking forward to the most. Who knows whether I can find something new and equally as exciting in 2021.

---