I cannot believe it’s 2020 already. Being involved in church my whole life, I’ve been seeing capital campaigns using the 2020 years as a goal point for my entire life. Now it’s here. I’m beyond excited for where this year is going to take me, my family and my business in the next 12 months. Here are a few of the goals I have for the different things I’m involved in over the year.
Business
Mission Plannr
2019 was supposed to be the banner year for 2019. Unfortunately, life took a detour. I started doing a lot more freelance work in the first quarter of 2019 which led to way less time for products and Saas in my spare time. We also moved from Florida to Tennessee in the Summer and I spent the last half of the year recovering from that and really digging in at work. But the great thing about 2019 was that I learned Laravel really well through my day job and am now excited to relaunch Mission Plannr with Laravel as a much more solid and more flexible foundation.
Release Goal: April 2020
Mobile Apps
Last year, as my wife was entering the late third trimester with our son, we noticed that there were a few contraction tracking apps out there, but nothing that was both easy to use and feature-rich. So I took about a week to build a proof of concept of what we wanted. I released it and let it sit while I spent time getting used to being a father of four. I’m now ready to put more effort, features, and marketing into that app as well as build some new ones. We have plans for three more apps and plan on releasing one per quarter of the year. More on that soon.
Goal: One new Native app per Quarter.
BuddyDrive
BuddyDrive is something of a hobby at this point. It hasn’t seen any love in quite a while. I was really hoping to push a big release in 2019, but because of the changes I made to move outside of enterprise software, I lost my own use case for the plugin. BuddyDrive has a large and diverse user base, so it definitely has an audience.
So I’ve decided to focus on a major rewrite in Quarter 2 of 2020 and release a revitalized free plugin and several premium add-ons to BuddyDrive with more focused and available support via email rather than trying to support the WordPress.org forums, which are difficult to use and don’t really allow for the functionality that makes support easier from a developer’s view.
Release Goal: August 2020
Freelancing
Ultimately, my goal is to reduce my freelancing and consulting to almost zero, but 2020 won’t see that happen much. I’m ramping up energy on a few personal projects which will hopefully lead to that future, but I’m also going to be investing big in freelancing to help meet those goals and our debt-free goal. If you’re interested in working together on apps, nonprofit software, or enterprise development projects, reach out!
Personal
Health
2019 was a solid year for my health until the very end. I lost only 20lbs, but radically improved my cardiovascular fitness and maintained decent (not perfect) eating habits. I got my blood sugar, blood pressure, and a few other numbers in normal ranges and kept them there. I dropped 3 shirt sizes and 6 pant sizes.
Unfortunately, towards the end of the year, my Crohn’s decided to flare up and I spent some time in the ER as well as recovering at home. I’ve been in remission for almost two years except for a few small issues, so I’m happy overall with my progress but will be monitoring it closely moving forward. Stress, diet, and exercise all play a huge role in that, but the biggest thing in my ongoing medication to manage it. I really appreciated the love that my coworkers and twitter friends provided while I was sick.
Weight Loss Goal: Lose 50lbs in 2020
Bike Goal: 250 miles
Family
2019 introduced a brand new member to the Pritchett family with the birth of my son, Aiden. Moving to a family of six (plus a dog) has been interesting. At the outset, it feels much different than three, but I believe this is because of having an infant, but we’ll see.
This year we’re focusing on being debt-free except for our mortgage. We’ve gotten close before, but have made a few bad decisions along the way. This year, we’re returning to our roots and getting debt out of our life.
We’re also focusing on spending less time with devices and more time with each other. I’ll be taking each of our kids on an adventure of their own choosing every quarter. I’m taking my soon-to-be three-year-old son camping with my dad in April. We’re still working on planning and scheduling the girls’ adventures. I’m also committing to a date night with my wife every two weeks for now, with the ultimate goal to be weekly.
With our goal to be completely out of debt, we’re forgoing our much loved Destin trip this year to save money but will be traveling to see extended family several times throughout the year. We’re excited to visit Ohio during the Summer (instead of the winter, like normal) and to check out the Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama where my parents live.
Travel
2019 travel was all about moving. Beyond that, I didn’t travel for work and we only traveled a couple of times to see family. Family came to us, thankfully. 2020 is going to be reduced from our norm, but more than in 2019. We’ll be going to see family a few times and I’m hoping to travel to conferences and events with work once or twice. We’ll see how that goes and I’ll be posting about it here. Here’s to hoping we cross paths this year!