How did I do with my new year resolution?
2022 edition
As I’ve written before, each year I write down my new year resolutions. This year I’m doing something different. I’m putting them online for your viewing pleasure. I’m hoping this can provide inspirations for others to pick up this habit as well.
The system is simple. I have four overarching goals: health, mindfulness, learning, and personal. Each goal has actions I plan to take throughout the year. They are concrete and measurable. Once every two months I will rank myself out of 10. At the end of the year I average out the scores to get an overall score of how I did.
Health
Bring a non alcoholic beverage to social gatherings - This is my attempt to reduce my alcohol consumption. I was hoping if I bring some LaCroix or Spindrift with me, I will drink less Heineken and Corona. 2/10 I fell off that bandwagon real fast.
Come up with meals that involve essential foods and consume them every 3 weeks - That was my attempt to improve my diet. I have a list of foods I believe are good for you. I wanted to build out a set of recipes and eat them on regular basis. 1/10 Failed terribly. I don’t have a single recipe.
Have 120 workout sessions - In 2021 I managed to average 2 workouts a week. I wanted to push myself with 2.3 workouts a week. 6/10 I did OK. I stumbled mid year but got back into the groove towards the end.
Complete 52 16-hour fasts - 10/10. I stopped keeping track of this one since it got so easy.
Weigh in and measure blood pressure 52 times - I have a smart scale and smart blood pressure monitor that keeps track of my metrics. I’ve been doing this for years but quite irregularly. Little has changed this year. 5/10.
I’d say those are poor results for supposedly such an important part of my life.
Mindfulness
Keep your phone away from the table during social gatherings - I hate it when people browse their phones in front of others. It’s so rude. I’ve slipped up myself though so I can’t be too harsh. 7/10
5 min meditation every day - never happened. 1/10.
Mindless browse only on the phone - the idea here is to avoid wasting time on the laptop - especially before bad. I want to read books. If I limit myself to my phone, maybe I would browse less. Didn’t work. 3/10.
Put laptop away after work - That was another technique for the same problem. Didn’t work. 3/10.
Learning
Listen to podcasts in another language on my walks - This morphed into listening to podcasts in another language while feeding my baby daughter. Worked quite well. 9/10.
Talk to someone in another language once a month - Never happened. I am far too self conscious for that. 1/10.
Read 19 non-tech books - I read 13 in total. Not too bad considering our daughter was born in May and I failed to take that into account. 6/10.
Read 3 tech books - I haven’t read a single one. Once again, I failed to account for how much time a baby takes. 1/10.
Personal
Target being 10 minutes early - I don’t need to be early. But I’m tired of constantly being late - 20, 30, sometimes 40 minutes. It’s something between lack of respect for other people’s time and a bad cultural norm. I did well in the beginning but started slipping in the second half the year. 5/10.
Ping distant friends once every 2 months - All good friends started as distant friends at some point. My goal for 2022 was to keep some friendships from dying out. In 2023 I will be more ambitious. 7/10.
Call parents every other day - Pretty easy. I have good relationship with my parents. Ever since I became a father, I also have a lot more appreciation for what my mom had to go through. 9/10.
Go to bed at 10:30 - After my daughter was born, I was in bed by 9pm. This was mandatory to get any decent amount of sleep. Prior to her birth I was going to bed past midnight every single night. Am I cheating? Maybe. But it’s still a win in my books. 7/10.
Join an activity - Didn’t really join anything. 1/10. I think this action needs to be more specific in 2023 to be useful.
2022 has been rough on the resolutions front. I can’t help but feel disappointed with how many action items were complete failures. Sometime mid-year I stopped tracking my resolutions. With no accountability, I got no results.
At the same time, there’s a lot of good learnings to apply to 2023. But that will have to wait for another post.