One of the best ways to accomplish something is to break it down into small, manageable parts. Complete these small parts and soon you’ll have your goal accomplished. For 2008, I thought I’d back on what my goals were and how I’ve done at accomplishing them. Please put on your seat belt, this could get ugly.

At the beginning of the year, I actually set 2 sets of goals, one if I worked full-time and one if I focused on blogging and other online businesses. Since I’ve been focusing on the other online businesses, I’ll ignore the full-time goals here.

• Net Worth – My goal was to have $250,000 in net worth by the end of the year. At least count, I was at $212,000 – about no gain for the year. There are 3 things that contributed to my lack of growth in this area. My investment property is worth a couple of thousand less than it was at the beginning of the year. I was hoping it would be worth a little more. My stocks and mutual funds have been flat. Lastly, with reduced income, I’ve been unable to grow this area. It doesn’t look like I’ll accomplish this goal unless we see some drastic changes.
• Alternative Income – My goal was to make $5000 in this area. It seemed like a reasonable goal since I would put my full focus on it. For much of the year, I’ve been unable to significantly grow my alternative income. This month is looking very good, though – and it seems to be somewhat sustainable. I might finish in with a pre-tax of $3000.
• Software Development Skills – I have not learned any significant skills in this area. Tuning my online projects has required me to dig into a little code, but I haven’t picked up Ruby on Rails or CakePHP.
• Business Skills – I tried to get a personal MBA this year. I got through the first book, Elements of Style, and quickly remembered how much I really dislike reading books vs. web pages. Sadly, I’m no danger of actually completing this goal.
• Health – I weigh about 3 pounds less than I did at the beginning of the year. My goal was to go from 20% body fat to 17%. I’m at around 19% now. I should probably be in better shape, but I’ve been very good about eating better and exercising.
• Websites – I wanted to have 50,000 monthly visitors of this website and 20,000 of Lazy Man and Health. This month, despite the summer slowdown in Internet traffic, looks like it will be just shy of 50,000. If I can keep it up, I should be able to surpass this by a good distance. My health site is starting to gain a little traction, but it’s got a tougher road to get 20,000. I’m looking at only 13,000 for this months pace.

Look back, it seems like I’m on track in only two of the six areas. That sounds pretty bad. One of the factors that I didn’t put in place is the stealth business I’ve started with a friend. It’s brought in enough cash to cover the start-ups costs, but it hasn’t done much more than that. I am learning some business skills along the way. In that sense, real world experience is better than reading the books I intended.

I’ll continue to update you along the way, but why not take a few minutes today and review your own goals for the year. Let me know in the comments how you are doing.