Setting serious goals for your 2021 could make this a formidable year for you. So is that what you’re here for?
Fact: people who set goals get better results than those who don’t.
Sounds obvious, but amid all the garbage opinions out there that tell you “new year’s resolutions don’t work” and “10 reasons why you shouldn’t set goals” you might be confused as to how to actually make the changes and achieve your most important desires in life.
There’s something very special about the beginning of the year, and a year of solid progress (regardless of how many times you fail and relapse) could leave you feeling angry with yourself in December, or like the hero of your own life movie.
So, choose. Goals or nah?
Let’s begin.

Setting Goals for 2021
Setting goals in 2021 is even more pertinent than usual. Most of us can see we weren’t as prepared for something like last year as we thought we were, and as much as we’d like to move past that, last year won’t be the only shitty year we live through.
It’s very important to have all our bases covered and we can all do that by improving our life and circumstances through solid goals.
Where did we suffer most in 2020?
The goals you set this year will obviously be specific to you, but in general, these are some of the areas of your life that might need bolstered up a bit: money, job, income, health, general preparedness, and finding a sense of purpose.
- 9 Examples of SMART Goals (stop praying for results!)
- SMARTER Goals: How to Take High Energy Action Steps
Goals to set in 2021:
- Stock up on non-perishable food that can be stored indefinitely
- Plant a garden to promote your own self sufficiency
- Start an indoor garden
- Learn how to hustle in general. Coming up with creative ideas in general to make income on the side
- Find sources of information (the news) about the world and society that don’t make you feel afraid
- Learn how to control your mental state regardless of the circumstances
- Produce a second source of income
- Learn a decent amount about your government, country and political landscape so you’re not confused about how to believe
- Polish your critical thinking skills so nobody on television can tell you how to hink
- Ask yourself deeper questions about your surface level emotions
- Discover a sense of purpose that will travel with you throughout your life
- Pick a problem in the world you’d like to help solve and start in a small way
- Create a “Realignment” Exercise for yourself that helps you get back to how you like to feel when life beats you down
- Find and take a firm stance on your political views
- Become irreplaceable at your job. So good they can’t ignore you.
- Optimize your biology and start taking serious care of your immune system, gut biome, etc…
- Create a backup plan for where to live, move to, be with your family and prepare in general for a SHTF situation.
- Create a space in your home that you can retreat to when you’re experiencing anxiety. Make it happy.
- Find a job that makes you happy.
- Learn how to make money on the internet.
- Stop spending so much money on irrelevant crap you don’t need, so that when things happen, you’ve got a cushion in the bank.
- Create a bucket list.
- Dream up a difficult goal that will require serious effort from you and start getting after it.
- Educate yourself and your family on how to get through rough times.
- Pick 12 topics you wish you knew more about and read a book on each for every month this year.
2021 Goals Ideas
To be honest, I didn’t feel that last year was that hard. My life basically stayed the same, but only because I already had the knowledge and skills in place from previous years that mitigated the amount of suffering I had to endure.
If you don’t feel like you can say the same for yourself here are some of my personal ideas for goals you can set in 2021 to make sure you’re a bit more bullet proof.
- Ikigai: How to Find your Passion & Purpose in Life
- “What do I want to do with my life?” | Confused, stalled & wasting time
2021 Goals Ideas:
- Prioritize your time better. If the doom and gloom news comes on as soon as you wake up, prioritize other things in your life with your time. Try 50% work 35% family 10% personal time and 5% keeping up with that’s going on in the world.
- Keep a journal about how you feel. You can come back later and see how circumstances in life affect you. When you know yourself deeply like this, you’re better able to control your emotions and feelings when they come in.
- Come up with a creative brain child that will occupy your time and really challenge you.
- Create a personal growth plan and get started with it. Many of us found ourselves without anything to do last year. Once we were left with nothing but our own thoughts, we didn’t like what we saw. If your shadow self scared you last year, learn to face your short comings and grow into new and better.
- Take responsibility for your thoughts and feelings. Nobody controls you but you. Not the president, not the government and not your neighbors. Just you.
- Choose an area where you think you’re “fixed” and adopt a growth mindset there instead.
- Start keeping a gratitude journal. The worst thing is to fall asleep angry, scared or irritated. Keep that journal by your bed and write down 10 things you’re grateful for each day. It helps to think of things you have access to that others in the world might not. Even something like a fast internet connection.
- Create some affirmations that will prime your mind first thing in the morning.
- Choose the time of day when you feel drained, anxious or stressed and watch 10 minutes of something funny during that time, before or after. So you can see how laughter affects your mood.
- Decide to be more optimistic and practice it each day. Remember, realism is for the present. Optimism and Pessimism are how you feel about your future. Be real, and choose to be optimistic about the future. See how it affects your life.
Personal Goals for 2021:
Regardless of which expert you speak to, one fact about humans remains the same: progress is integral to our enduring sense of happiness and satisfaction with life. Even progress is largely defined by YOU and what YOU want from life, the fact remains – you will not go too long staying the same without getting bored, then antsy, and then completely dissatisfied with life.
When it comes to setting personal goals for 2021 (or any year) – Complete the Wheel of Life Exercise and give each area of your life a score. Isolate the life areas with the lowest score and list the reasons why you gave it that score. Then decide what you want from life in that particular area instead of what you currently have.
Personal goals to set in 2021:
- Find a job that you like better, that pays you more money
- Get closer and spend more quality time with someone in your family
- Make a list of all the things that would set you apart from your colleagues at work and do them.
- Do deep research on all the spiritual traditions on earth. See what all the fuss is about.
- Study art and history from a different time period.
- Read 12 books
- Draw the perfect body that you’d like to have and give yourself 12 months to look that way.
- Become a nutrition freak. See if it’s really all it’s cracked up to be.
- Organize a feast for your community.
- Donate 10% of your income to charity. 1 out of every 10 dollars you make.
- Do something that’s pleasurable, and something that’s good and healthy for you every week.
- Pick 12 things you don’t like about yourself, that you’d change if it only required a push of a button. Now work hard to change them by pushing yourself.
- Decide that this year you and your spouse or partner will fall in love again.
- Choose an impossible dream you don’t think you could ever accomplish. Do some research on it, and take the first step.
- Take something you’re really good at and put it on YouTube. See if anyone cares about it.
Goals for 2021 for Students:
Whether you’re a teacher trying to guide younger students, a highschool student attempting to get into college, or a college student wondering how you can stand out to future employers, there is no argument that students who set goals succeed more often than those who don’t. In fact, students who don’t set goals often find their results shoddy and unsatisfying.
2021 goals for Students:
- Make sure your GPA is commendable for your core classes
- Challenge yourself by doing well in the AP curriculum
- Take a challenging course load to prove to colleges that you can handle a serious amount of effort
- Prepare seriously for the SAT and ACT.
- Create a college essay that accurately represents your personality, values and goals.
- Demonstrate your leadership and community responsibilities by joining a few extra curricular activities
- Come up with at least 15 colleges to apply to. Make sure you have a decent variety of “high” and “low” acceptance schools.
- Do ample research on what scholarships and grants you apply for. Relying on loans is a recipe for serious debt afterward.
- Come up with a list of 5 possible sources of income for you while in college.
- Describe in vivid detail your life after college. Create a 4 year plan that accomplishes those ends.
- Re-examine why you want to go to college in the first place. Is it the best choice for you? Make a firm decision before applying, and don’t be scared to do what’s right for you.
- Find a sense of purpose. What do you truly want to do with your life? If you don’t know, that’s fine. But spending some time figuring this out will give you clarity on question 11.
- Find a way to commit to your school or community this year. Colleges love service oriented applicants.
- Do something this year that you can include in your essay that shows you’re willing to take risks.
- Learn all the aspects of critical thinking and the critical thinking process
- Read 3 books on emotional intelligence. Employers say its the most important way to succeed in the workplace now
- Read the book Managing Oneself by Stephen Covey
- Go to a website that has free online courses and take some on the job you want after college.
- Start a website or blog centered around your niche or field that you can show employers once you graduated. This will illustrate your understanding and sincerity.
- Join a club or after school activity that requires you to learn expert quality teamwork and collaborative skills.
- Master the technology used in your industry
- Research and pay attention to the Top companies and CEO’s in the field you want to work in after college.
- Make a list of all the soft skills you need to be a stellar employee and embody them each day.
- Dress the part of your future self in your future after school. Get used to the feeling now.
- If you know where you want to work, or what you want to do after school, call them up now. See if an internship is available. Ask them genuinely what they wish all their employees knew now and what skills they would love to see you have.
2021 Work Goals
There’s almost nothing scarier than losing your income, or feeling like your paycheck is on shaky ground. I’ve been telling people two things for years, and 2020 didn’t do anything except make it abundantly clear that I was absolutely right.
Number one: you MUST have more than one source of income. Otherwise you’re not stable.
Number two: Everything is moving online, and most of us do NOT need to be at work in order to do our jobs.
We realized quickly just how outdated and irrelevant the office space is when we decided to quarantine the entire country didn’t we? We made it work.
So if the world is moving in that direction anyway, you might as well take this year and learn how to not only work from home, but add a simple online source of income to your life.
That being said, there are some of us who cannot do our jobs from home. I used to drive a forklift in a warehouse…that doesn’t really work from my home office…
Here is a list of 2021 work goals that works for both groups:
- Get super familiar with computers, cell phones and technology in general. Even if you can get by with them, I promise you don’t know them as well as your tech savvy friends. Phones and computers can do crazy things.
- Brainstorm a second source of income.
- Go on YouTube and watch tutorials on all the online internet money making machines: eCommerice, Blogging (which I do), Freelancing (also do), Social Media Influencing, etc..
- Find an extremely qualified and honest person who teaches others how to win the online money game and learn from them. Use their free stuff at first, then go for their paid options once you get your feet wet.
- Figure out which tools people were using to work from home and master them. Those skills will come in handy in the future.
- Figure out what your employers love and hate about their employees performance and become the best employee you can be.
- Start to see the positive side of the job you work. What problem does it solve? Make sure before you go in each day/night that you understand that your performance and dedication is valuable.
- Ignore everyone who sucks at work and see how your life changes.
- Brainstorm how you could take the skills you employ now at work and start your own business selling those skills where you can pocket all the profit.
- Grow up this year. Most employees bitch, complain and are generally immature in their perspective on how businesses run. Don’t be that person this year. Be a mature adult.
Professional Goals for 2021
Whether it was Harvey Weinstein, Mark Zuckerburg or basically any politician you can name, a tremendous amount of embarrassment and unprofessionalism was found last year that left many without jobs, being impeached, and even going to prison.
Last year in February The Boy Scouts faced hundreds of lawsuits for “unproffessionalism in the work place” which basically amounted to a serious discussion on child abuse for them.
If you want to stand out from the crowd and present yourself with integrity and confidence, here are some goals below that will make you a complete knock out in the professional sphere.
- Are goals and objectives the same? | Stupid Simple Answer
- Expert Research On The Difference Between Goals And Purpose
- How to Create a Master Plan that Ensures Success for your Goals and Projects!
Professional goals for 2021:
- Practice asking for advice more often
- Understand what it means to truly be a person of integrity, and maintain that standard
- Endeavour to bring out the confidence in others. Behave in such a way that they know what to expect when dealing with you.
- Learn how to speak to large groups with confidence
- Try to figure out your teammates strengths and harness those strengths
- Brainstorm great ideas into a journal every day. Eventually you’ll develop extraordinary creativity and problem solving skills because you’re used to thinking outside of the box.
- Learn how to deal with difficult people
- Learn how to accommodate others when they’re having a bad day
- Master the art of pleasant small talk. Just so that others are comfortable around you.
- Read a book on persuasion and start practicing it.
- Prove to your colleagues that they can count on you by silently proving it with your behavior.
- Master a piece of technology in your field.
- Follow all the rules. Mark Zuckerberg is being investigated by the FTC on monopoly charges because he chose the easy way instead of the legal way.
- Practice being stubborn about principles but flexible in how they are achieved. It’s important to understand when the letter of the law should be applied. The same goes for the spirit of the law.
- Get clear on your vision. Your personal vision, your company’s vision, and the mission of you as an individual and those who work in your field. Write a personal mission and personal vision statement.
Quotes on Goals for 2021
I spent years setting new year’s resolutions for myself, only to forget about them by February. And honestly, this is how so many people approach goal-setting! – Erin Gobler
Setting goals for yourself at the beginning of the year is the first step to getting where you want to be and knowing the direction you’re working towards. – Grace from Glossybelle
“Thinking and planning ahead, including focusing on what goals I’d like to achieve for 2021 sure beats staring at the peeling paint on the wall … and wondering if I will ever get to sip a cocktail at a restaurant with a friend like a human being in and of the world again.” – Allison Hope of CNN
“I don’t know if you’re like me, but family is the most important thing. I don’t know if you’re like me, but family is the most important thing. Which is why it’s essential to set family and relationship goals when coming up with new year’s resolutions” – Bijan from CoachingOnline.org
To develop your 2021 goals, it may be tempting to just grab your 2020 goals, and update them…But I urge you to try another way this time, especially after all the upheaval of 2020, because it gave each of us an opportunity… to reexamine our goals, plans, careers, perspectives, relationships and priorities.” – Joan Michelson on Forbes
Goals for 2021 template
Click here to grab your 2021 Goals Template here.
My Favorite Goal Setting Tools
What should your goals be? (Quiz)