Homestead Annual Reflection & 2020 Goals

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We have been setting a homestead goal for 2020 and reflecting on the current year lately. Did you know reflection and goal setting are great ways to increase your odds of achieving what you want in life. Homesteading brings a lot of challenges, opportunities and excitement. Planning at the start of the year is the perfect way to prepare yourself for a productive and efficient season you can feel proud of!

I’ve thrown together some of my very favourite New Years productivity tips to share our homestead annual plan with you and help you envision your best year yet too!

It’s not just the end of a year, it’s the start of a new decade – the perfect time to live the life you want with intention and purpose. Let’s do this!

PLANNING FOR A PRODUCTIVE 2020 YEAR & DECADE

2020 will mark out 5th year on our homestead. This year, I really want to dive in and getting going with all of our “one day” plans. There’s so much we want to do and achieve as homesteaders, parents, in our day jobs and more. I’ve chosen focus on meeting our homesteading goals of making an income from our farm to stay home with my boys.

OUR WORD OF THE YEAR

This is going to be the year we plant seeds for growth and change. To prepare what we already have in order to reap the benefits.

In this post I’ll share with you what we plan to acquire and the skills we are working to develop necessary to truly make the most of what we have, family, homestead, farm and all.

**Three Things we plan to CULTIVATE in 2020.**

Increased farm income

Decreased farm and family expenses

Less overwhelm and more joy

Tools to CULTIVATE a Productive 2020

Time Management

Effective Routines

Organization

Goal Setting

Planning

Record Keeping

A Positive Growth Mindset

How to choose your own word for 2020

Choosing a word or a moto for the year is a great way to start drawing energy toward your hope for the future. It’s an easy reminder of what you want and how to make it happen with out remembering all of the details. It resonates with you, and you put it in your pocket where ever you go.

Which words are you drawn to, what are you sensing you need more or less of, what do you want to focus on changing or improving, when this year is over how do you want to look back on it?

Go ahead and choose a word, write it down and put it on your fridge. Keep reading for more tips to make that word grow.

“Believe in yourself, you are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.” Roy T. Bennett

HOMESTEAD GOAL #1:

MASTER TIME MANAGEMENT

What has been getting in your way and stealing your precious time?

2019 was a year. It was the best, and probably the hardest year of my life. We now had two babies, only 15 months apart, and a farm and homestead to run. My husband had a new management position, bringing greater work demands and I struggled with my health and wellbeing.

It was a year of survival. We survived a year of low energy and lack of sleep. We survived feeling overwhelmed and trapped. Feeling uncertain about our future, lacking direction or clarity of where we needed to go next.

We had more responsibilities than we could handle and distracted ourselves with social media, text media, tv, other people and the homestead duties.

This year we will set boundaries, make goals and celebrate small accomplishments more often to not feel this way. 2020 is the year and decade I’m going to remember with gratitude, joy, pride and accomplishment. Forget 2019.

We will manage our responsibilities better and feel more successful. Do you feel like you need help managing all of your responsibilities too?

How are we planning on managing our time better? Here are just some of the time management strategies that have already started to lift us out of the fog of overwhelm.

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” Gary Kellerd

HOMESTEAD GOAL #2:

CREATE EFFECTIVE ROUTINES

If I’ve learned anything from my children and as a teacher, humans thrive on an expected routine. If we can create effective routines that help us become more productive our goals become easier to reach.

Creating effective routines is all about choosing how you spend your time based on your priorities and building healthy habits that help you achieve your goals.

Routines for the morning, evening, cleaning, work, chores, meal planning and shopping are all a great places to start healthy habits.

A good example is A Simple Cleaning Routine by Erin Tannehill, an ebook that provides simple, action-based steps to help you keep your home clean and tidy in less than 30min. a day so you can get back to living your best life! I’m so happy I came across this book, her tips and tricks have already impacted my cleaning habits for the better and I feel like I have more time now! Thank you Erin.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then I not an act, but a habit” Aristotle

HOMESTEAD GOAL #3:

GETTING ORGANIZED

I’ve always thrived with organization, and I love colour coding, writing in a planner, decluttering and feeling organized. My biggest struggle is staying organized now that I have children.

I have picked up a few cleaning and decluttering tips from my mother that might help you get better organized too.

Thank goodness I’ve come across the productivity tools to help me stay organized this year.

HOMESTEAD GOAL #4:

SET SHORT AND LONG TERM GOALS

Goal setting is figuring out what you want to do. Then determining how you’re going to do it and what you need to do to make it all happen.

I went ahead and did a “brain dump” when I started goal planning. Then I wrote down everything I wanted to do in 2020, from keeping animals, garden plan, family trips, mommy time and projects for the year. I suggest you grab a blank piece of paper or open a blank word document and take 5 minutes to jot down all the things you want next year.

Next I organized those priorities and fit them into goals for each quarter of the year.

Our Homesteading Goal of 2020

“TO MAKE MONEY HOMESTEADING” by only focusing on tasks that have proven to have income potential in the past and creating a business plan from them.”

Winter: Projects include finishing fencing for orchard, outbuilding roofs and drainage, and business plan.

Spring: Planting a vegetable garden, raising meat birds and ducks, calves.

Summer: Hay season, summer garden. Projects include moving wood stove to basement for more efficient heating and possibly repainting exterior of farmhouse.

Fall: Harvest, preserving, and craft season. Selling beef steers or cuts of beef.

This goal setting reflection is thanks to my friend Julianna from The Simplicity Habit and her Simply Focused Workbook.

HOMESTEAD GOAL #5:

OVERCOME OBSTACLES THAT ENABLED US

Common obstacles when working on reaching our goals: low energy, bad sleep, feeling overwhelmed, uncertainty, finances, time, distractions, health, fear and PROCRASTINATION.

The only way to beat those obstacles is to really identify them and to have a plan to overcome them.

As part of our process for goal setting we identified strategies to overcome our biggest obstacles so that we can be more productive. Here’s just a few strategies you might want to consider.

Plan for a productive year
Make financial goals
Draw a budget
Choose only a few key projects to work on
Write down other things you want or need to do and tuck the paper aside for next year
Celebrate small victories with a special little ritual. Ours will be a toast, a picture and a kiss.

HOMESTEAD GOAL #6:

USE THE PERFECT PLANNER

All of the fine details of our goals, including time lines and budgets are all ready to go in my 2020 planner I printed out and organized for January. I absolutely love planners. This year, I’ve found all of my favourite printable planners, and only printed the pages that spoke to me, my goals and our homestead plan. I skipped the rest.

Check out the best printable planners of 2020 to get started creating yours today!

HOMESTEAD GOAL #7:

TAKE TIME TO REVIEW AND REFLECT

Tea Time: the perfect routine for taking time to review and reflect.

Keeping a Farm Journal, or daily journal is a great way to review and reflect on the day.

Another fun idea to review and reflect what you have done is to create a before and after photo album of your homestead through the changing seasons and the years. You’ll be surprised just by how much you have done.

We always host a Friendsgiving event in the fall, and our friends and family always comment on the changes and improvements they’ve noticed that we’ve done. It’s nice to see other people recognizing our hard work and it makes the celebration that much better.

HOMESTEAD GOAL #8:

KEEP SHIFTING YOUR MINDSET

This past November I participated in the #ThankfulHomesteader Challenge on Instagram. I was not prepared for how powerful that challenge would be. 30 days of choosing something I’m grateful for, documenting it and sharing it with my followers really helped me realized just how blessed I am. Check out the photos and follow Wandering Hoof Ranch on Instagram to see what I’m talking about!

30 day challenges in themselves are super powerful! Here’s a good example of our No Spend Challenge we just completed.

“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” William Arthur Ward

VISION FOR 2020

Create your own personal mission statement!

Create a vision for 2020

How to make a vision board for your homestead.

“Be more intentional about who you want to become. Have vision beyond your current circumstances. Imagine your best future self and start acting like that person today.” -Brendon Burchard

A Reflection on Productivity…

Do you feel like you need to get your life together? Maybe you can completely relate to me about feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities. There’s your family, your job, your homestead and what feels like never having the time to do what you really want to do.

I know for me, I want to do a better job enjoying spending my time doing all these things with the people I love the most.

It will be a matter of learning how to do this, I want to rock at managing my time, master routines that make life feel simpler, and use a planner that actually helps me stay focused and not distracted. I want this year to be the year I CULTIVATE the best decade of my life.

The Ultimate Bundle team put together a collection of resources by ordinary people who’ve found practical ways to squeeze more out of their days to help you start the new year and next decade off on the right foot.

What’s your big goal for 2020?

What do you want to be able to do to make the most of this year? Take the time to make it happen, find the resources and let the experts help you!

Comment below and share your goal, or send me an email at diana@wanderinghoofranch.com! Put it out to the universe- let’s reach our goals!

The Ultimate Productivity Bundle is going to help you plan, achieve and succeed in your goal. Let’s team up and do this together!

Click here for more info

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