2019 Goals — June Update
Tags: goals
Published: 2019-07-01 15:13:40

---
title: 2019 Goals — June Update
published: true
description: A progress update on my goals for 2019
tags: goals
cover_image: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1444090542259-0af8fa96557e?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=1650&q=80
---

June was a busy month. I'm excited for July because a) the weekends are looking free (no travel or events so far) and b) I have a project I'm excited to work on 😄

But before I share any updates, here's a bit of reflection on goal-related stuff for June.


## Achievements

Here, I’ll share the goal followed by the related achievement of the month after the arrow.

### Intellectual
- Launch 2 projects on Product Hunt -> Finished MVP for [mentored.dev](https://mentored.dev)

So I didn't "complete" this goal but I hit a milestone. I had been talking to my friends about finishing mentored for a while. My project board on GitHub was filled with all these awesome features I wanted to build.

But while chatting at the Phoenix ReactJS meetup, we had a realistic conversation. And they said, "What are the remaining features you need to add to be 'done' with a v1?" 

I thought for a second. Okay, they're right. I need to cut scope and get this out the door. So I moved everything to the backlog and only added the key pieces - saving progress to local storage and improving the UI flow. 

I did all that and shared a [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/jsjoeio/status/1144994580200210432?s=20) about the journey this weekend. It felt really good. It was scary, but I had put in a lot of time and effort and I was excited to share it. 

I'm not sure where I'll take it next but this marks the completion of the first phase. 

### Professional

- Write 6 articles -> 2 dev.to articles written! (Total: 3/6)

I think I was on a teaching/writing "high" this past month because I knocked out two articles. Actually, what made it "easy" was writing the articles as I was learning two new things. I thought it would help me solidify the learning if I wrote it as I learned. 

The first was ["React Native - Adding App Icons for Android "](https://dev.to/jsjoeio/react-native-adding-app-icons-for-android-47e7) where I shared the basics of adding app icons to Android. I started learning React Native and wanted to do the simplest thing: add an icon to my app.

After a lot of misunderstanding, I finally got it working 😃 So I wrote the article to a) help me remember and b) share what I learned.

The second article I wrote was titled ["How to Create Code Profiles in VSCode "](https://dev.to/jsjoeio/how-to-create-code-profiles-in-vscode-3ofo). My wife is letting me borrow her personal laptop until I save up enough to buy my own personal laptop. So, while setting things up, I decided I would try a technique used by a fellow egghead instructor - code profiles. They're basically a saved state of your `settings.json` for VSCode. This is helpful when recording screencasts where you need a larger font size for instance. I wrote this one while going through a README on GitHub to better understand it. 

## Updates

Being at the halfway point in 2019, I've decided reevaluate my goals I set back in [January](https://medium.com/@jsjoeio/2019-goals-overview-8846eb8cb067). 

Although I've made progress towards some of these goals, I would like to change direction and get more specific. My long-term goal is to achieve what I call "freedom of time" - the ability to spend your time how you like every day. Some call this financial independence. 

I've spent some time mind-mapping to think about how I can get there and so I want my goals to align with that. For July, I'm going to be focusing on one project: a new egghead course related to React and npm packages 👀

I wouldn't say anymore but keep your eyes peeled for a blog post and a new egghead course. 


That's all folks! Until next month!

### 
[Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash]