The New Year is here! 2014 is over and gone and 2015 has officially arrived.

I love the newness and promise of a new year. It's a blank canvas, a clean slate, and the perfect opportunity to turn a new leaf.

While those who've made New Years Resolutions face dismal chances for success, those who've made goals have every reason to be optimistic.

A few days ago, I finally sat down and came up with goals for both my personal and professional life. I want to share them with you in a moment, but first, I need to get some closure with my 2014 goals.

Professionally, 2014 was a huge year. I started working as a writer full time, and, as a result, I was able to publish both my first and second book. The community response was awesome and I'm well on my way to being self-sufficient. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reach my multi-year goal of shipping an iOS app. It's been a goal of mine for at least 2 years, and this year just wasn't it. I've decided in 2015 to make it my #1 focus and I think I have a strategy, and idea, to finally get me across the finish line.

Personally, I also had some mixed results. I didn't make my weight goal (though I came close!) and I didn't reach my podcasting benchmarks. I did significantly increase my prayer life and was pretty consistent with reading, but I could have done much better.

2014 definitely was a year of upheaval and although I had some really big wins, I fell short of where I wanted to be standing today. I think my biggest failure was not reviewing my goals regularly. If I had, I would have been better able to keep my eye on the prize and modified my daily habits to get me there.

Ok, with that, I'm closing 2014 and am fully engaged in 2015.

Here's what I'm working on professionally this year.

While 2014 was about expanding the Catholic Husband product line, 2015 is going to be about refining it. I want to make the Catholic Husband blog the very best blog on the internet by publishing engaging, relevant, and extremely valuable content. Expect great things and for each blog to be better than the last. I want to do the same with the Podcast. By consistently providing outstanding content, I want to expand the Catholic Husband reach and help even more people!

I'm also going to launch my first iOS app later this year. I'm excited about getting this done and I have all of the resources that I need to do it. All I have to do is buckle up and get into student mode. Finally, I have a certain number of books and apps that I want to sell in order to make Catholic Husband completely self-sufficient.

Personally, this is going to be the year I reach my weight goal and I have a solid plan of how to do it. I'll be training for my first half-marathon, so that training, along with aggressively keeping a food journal and walking at least 10,000 steps per day will help me reach this 2012 goal by September. I'm aiming to lose 2.5 lbs per month. Intellectually, I want to dedicate 30 minutes per day reading a book and complete two books per month. Financially, I have a dollar amount of debt that I want to payoff with Alison. It's a stretch, but attainable if we stay on target with our budgeting.

While it seems like a lot, I have a total of 4 professional goals and 3 personal goals. In addition to these 7 goals, I have a few "focus areas" that aren't goal specific, but areas that I want to improve, like having a more regular game night scheduled.

I've put these goals into a system in Evernote and will read them daily and track progress reports weekly. This will help me stay aware of my progress and make course corrections as they come.

This is an exciting time of year and I can't wait to be here January 1, 2016, sharing my successes and celebrating a successful 2015!

Tags: Productivity