A Few Goals For My Next Decade

As I face my 30th birthday, now only a couple of weeks away, I’ve spent some time reflecting on my 20s and considering my 30s. I’ll focus here on the latter rather than the former, but in short, I am quite happy with how I spent my 20s. I think I’ve built strong, important foundations in my life.

Nonetheless, as I approached the question of, “What do I want my 30s to look like?”, or perhaps the future-reflective question of, “When I turn 40, what do I want to look back and see or say about my 30s?”, several thoughts came to me. I’d like to share those. Or at least I’d like them to be written down and published somewhere as a flag in the ground — a point in time historical record of what I believe now.

The first thought is that of humility. Ten years is a long time. To say that I have no idea what might come along the way in that time is an understatement — I have no idea what tomorrow is likely going to look like much-less one, two, or even five years from now. On the counter, I also believe that setting oneself on a dedicated path towards something will itself create the path for the thing to be accomplished. E.g. I believe much more in Hamilton’s proactive actions to change the course of history rather than Burr’s wait to see what history does before you make your move. So while I don’t know what the future holds, I believe that taking deliberate action and sticking to something can accomplish large things over time.

It’s from that tension that these desired arise. These are the things that my 29-year-old self hopes that my 39-year-old self also finds important and is able to look back on and see accomplished.

• To have read. Partially as recognition of getting away from social media and/or other digital things which don’t add very much to my life, I want to have read at least 240 books between 2025 and 2035. That’s 2 books a month, on average. There are so many books to be read, all of which provide more depth and thoughtfulness (both in content and in participating in a space of solitude) than digital mediums tend to provide. Books are my antidote to Youtube.

  • “Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” (Nicholas Carr, The Shallows) — I want to be a diver.

• To have established a pattern of travel with my family. Kalika and I loved our time RV’ing full time. It wasn’t as long as we’d have hoped, and traveling full time with no ‘home base’ has a unique set of psychological and logistical challenges, but now that we have kid(s) and a home-base, I hope to have built travel into our lives by 40. My current vision looks like purchasing another RV (with bunk beds this time!) and making road trips across the US a common occurrence. Remote work is remote 🙂

• To have won the mornings. I’ve written before about how I wake up at 5am every day. Sometimes I take a Saturday off and sleep until 6 or 7, but more often I’ll continue to wake up early on the weekends — I get all the benefits of morning time on those days with none of the weight of “I need to start work after this”! Anyway, I’ve been at 5am for about 3 years now and while the particulars of what I do in those early hours has changed season-to-season, I still believe that waking up and doing things before the predominate cultural waking time is a real psychological hack that has tremendous benefits. I don’t ever want to lose my 5am groove! (I think I was at 5:30am when I wrote that article, but I’ve since moved to 5am proper)

• To have given generously. I believe that giving freely and generously is ultimately an act of gratitude, in faith, to God. Resting on Paul’s second recorded letter to the church at Corinth (2 Cor 9:6-X NIV):

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written:

“They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.”

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

• To have mentored. This one is still a little amorphous in my mind at the moment, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot over the last ten years and would love to be able to help others with the fruits of that learning. I don’t know what this would look like yet, but I hope that when I look back on my 30s I’ll see notable points where I’ve made a tangible impact on the younger people around me.

• To have been phone-free. I’ve talked on this blog plenty of times about my relationship to a phone and its ebbs and flows over the years. Last I posted I’d switched from an Apple Watch back to the iPhone in the Spring of 2023, but that actually only lasted about a year. My iPhone is still configured this way, but in the Spring of 2024 I purchased an Apple Watch Ultra 2 and went back to Apple Watch only (given its significant improvements on the issues I’d had with the Apple Watch SE). That all said, I find it significantly more important to not be on my phone since I now have a son. Aside from the direct issues of distracting me from spending time with him, I hate the idea that he’ll grow a visual association between the little black rectangle and “that’s the thing that my parents stare at”. That’s not what I want for my life or his. By the time I turn forty, James will be almost 10. I genuinely hope that I’ll have been phone-free, generally speaking, all that time.

• To have established a permanent home. That is, to be fully debt free and to have paid off our mortgage. It’s been an important goal for me for several years — both that my kids would never have to worry about the persistence of their home and that their parents wouldn’t be indentured to working indefinitely to ensure that security. While most Americans don’t seem to consider a mortgage to be under the umbrella of what we typically call ‘debt’, I absolutely do. I believe in the FIRE idea (Financial Independence, Retire Early), and by the time I’m 40 I’d like to have our house fully paid off, be debt free, and have enough money in a dedicated investment account to cover our property taxes forever. At that point I’ll almost certainly keep working, but I’ll do so with a vastly different mindset and pressure-load than before. I’ll do so because I want to and I genuinely enjoy the work.

I’m sure others will come to me in the coming weeks as I think about this further, but I’ll leave it here for today!

Comments? Thoughts?