Important note: I started writing this newsletter the last week of 2022 with the best intention of sending it out before the new year. Unfortunately, things got in the way, so it’s a few days late. (Happy new year, by the way!) I could rewrite the whole newsletter to account for the fact that “next year” has, in fact, already started, but laziness got the best of me. So instead, I prepended this note. So please read this newsletter while imagining that the new year has not yet been rung in, and it is still 2022. Thanks for your understanding!
Happy holidays! ☃️
The year is almost over, and hence, ‘tis the season to review my progress toward my 2022 goals!
I started this newsletter just under two years ago to keep up with my New Year’s resolutions. Over the past two years, I’ve written about the highs and lows of pursuing each goal, the habits I’ve built, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
This will be my last post of the year, and, like last year, I’ll go over my new year’s resolutions and review my progress. In 2022, I set myself eight goals. I’ve broken them down into three main categories: what worked, what didn’t, and where I went above and beyond. At the end of the newsletter, I’ll go over the lessons I learned from goal-setting over the past two years and what I’ll change going forward.
What worked
Overall, the goals that went well this year are those I had already cemented a strong foundation for last year. I was able to use that foundation and grow these goals into full-fledged positive habits this year. In one form or another, these goals will always be a part of my new year’s resolutions.
Goal 1: Write a somewhat-weekly newsletter.
This goal was entirely open-ended and for a good reason. I didn’t want the newsletter to turn from a force for good into a stress-inducing deadline.
This post that you are currently reading is my twelfth of the year. I may have written more in an ideal world, but I’m proud of the newsletters I put out, which is what matters. I feel more confident in my writing voice, which makes the writing process frictionless and makes for genuine creativity. I also write longer, more detailed posts, which is why they take more time to complete.
The real power of this newsletter is what it empowers me to do. Every time I sit down to write, I spend time self-reflecting. I can both acknowledge and celebrate progress. I come up with new ways to push myself. I can reflect on my failures and turn them into growth opportunities. The newsletter is another entry point into mindfulness and allows me to live a more fulfilling life.
Goal 2: Read an hour a day.
This goal allowed me to strengthen my reading habit further and reach new heights. In 2022, I read more than ever: 36 books! Last year, I only read 24.
Now the truth is I did not fully achieve the one-hour-a-day benchmark. As of writing this, I have read 267 hours this year. In other words, I read approximately 44 minutes a day. It’s not an hour, but it’s pretty damn close.
An hour a day is a lot of time. I was able to keep up with it during regular work days. But when traveling or hanging out with friends and family, missing a day now and then quickly adds up, and it’s tough to catch up.
Regardless, I’m proud of the number of books I read, and I think an hour a day was probably more than necessary. I will keep this in mind when coming up with my goals for next year.
Reading continues to expose me to so many new ideas. It is so rewarding and mind-expanding. If I could recommend only one of my habits for you to adopt, it is reading regularly.
Goal 3: Run a marathon.
I did it! I actually ran a marathon. Until I crossed the finish line, I really wasn’t sure if this goal was going to be possible. It seemed so unreachable.
I wrote about this achievement in my last newsletter, so if you haven’t, I invite you to read it.
With running the marathon, the underlying goal was really to set up a good exercise habit. A race is a great way to do this. It functions as a “North Star,” a distant target that you can keep in mind while navigating strenuous training and hard work. It can be challenging to stay focused day-to-day, especially when doing something as physically taxing as running. Having something to look forward to — and something more concrete than “I want to be healthy” or “I want to look good” — helps so much.
I will set another “North Star” exercise goal next year. The marathon pushed me to new heights, especially my mental endurance. I hope to continue to explore this into the new year.
What didn’t
The two goals that I failed to make much progress towards were the two “creative” goals. I didn’t want to put pressure on myself to create, but this resulted in a complete lack of creativity. I need to rethink how I set creative goals in the new year.
Goal 4: Reserve one day a week for being creative.
This goal was my biggest failure this year. I didn’t follow this at all.
When I first came up with this goal, the intention was to make time for creativity rather than setting deadlines. I didn’t want to turn activities that are inherently meant to be fun into a chore.
The problem is, the way I phrased this goal, it’s not really a goal at all. It’s more like the description of a habit. Without a clear goal, missing one week turns into two weeks turns into four, and I’ve forgotten the point of even doing this in the first place. This goal was guilty of lacking the “North Star” I mentioned above.
Regularly setting aside a day for creativity is a fantastic idea. It just needs to be used as a tool for achieving a goal rather than a goal itself. In the new year, I want to develop better goals and use this tool to help me achieve them.
Goal 5: Collaborate with other creatives.
This was another failure. The only collab’ I undertook was to write a small paragraph for a friend’s newsletter, which never ended up getting published.
The problem was that I wasn’t creating things in the first place, let alone collaborating on creations. So, although I continue to want to collaborate with others, I think I should focus on setting up my own habits for creativity before I explore working with others. Only then will I be able to make the best of these collaborations and bring something to the table.
Where I went above and beyond.
The last three goals are where I really excelled this year. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stick to them and if they’d be worthwhile. But, in all three cases, they significantly impacted my quality of life inside and out.
Goal 6: Make time for my mental health.
This is a vague goal that I had copy-pasted from 2021.
This year, this took the form of a very regular mediation practice. I managed to make meditation an almost-daily routine without much stress. And I meditated a LOT.
The beauty of it is I did not need to force myself to do it every day. This could have easily turned a mental health exercise unhealthy. So instead, I designed and implemented an easy-to-follow habit. At the end of my morning routine, right after brushing my teeth, I would sit down for five minutes with the Headspace app.
This little routine allowed me to meditate hundreds of times this year and with little effort. Twice, I even built over 30-day streaks of daily meditation.
Just a few minutes a day, the results over a year are phenomenal. I feel like I’m less impulsive and emotion-driven. I can keep my head down and work more attentively. And I better appreciate the time away from work, like hanging out with friends and family.
Goal 7: Learn something new every month.
I had a dip in the middle months of the year, and I forgot to do this. I was somewhat stretched thin between my job and side projects and couldn’t think about learning stuff on top of that. However, I caught up for the past four months by learning two new things a month.
This was such a rewarding activity, not to mention fun! For the two weeks that I had designated to learn a particular skill, I would set aside 15 minutes a day to learn that skill. Some were quick and easy, like sowing a button (which allowed me to save a pair of pants!). Some of the learning was put toward more technical skills, like programming. I’d either learn a new technology or further my knowledge of one I already knew by reading documentation. Regardless of what I was learning, those fifteen minutes always felt like the most impactful time of the day.
This goal made me notice that since graduating college two and a half years ago, for the first time in my life, the majority of my time isn’t spent learning. Of course, I still learn things indirectly through my work, reading, and living life, but still. It’s nice to learn for the sake of learning again, especially without the pressure of exams. Alongside my reading habit, this goal exposed me to new ideas and information I couldn’t just pick up by osmosis in my day-to-day life. I’m not sure if I’ll keep this goal as is or rethink its structure for next year, but I want to incorporate learning into my goals, whatever form that may take.
Goal 8: Build a bucket list.
Over the past six months, I have spent a few minutes each week coming up with five “bucket list” goals. These goals are very different than the new-year’s-resolutions-type goals I usually write about because they tend to be one-offs. They represent physical endeavors I want to achieve, experiences I want to undergo, or artistic works I want to create.
And I’ve compiled a list of 120!
I need to whittle those down to 100 by choosing which among the 120 are genuinely the most important to me. And then I’ll have a pretty solid bucket list.
Next year, in one of my first newsletters, I’ll publish the whole list of 100. I’ll also set myself a goal to try and achieve some of those bucket list items in 2023. How many will I be able to complete? Only time will tell.
The real intention behind this new list is to counterbalance the very reasonable and practical goals I’ve been setting as new year’s resolutions these past two years. My resolutions are how I’ve set solid, life-altering habits that allow me to be a better person.
On the other hand, my bucket list goals are not about self-improvement but about making sure I make the best of my time on Earth. They’re about adventure. They’re about making stories to tell the grandkids. The bucket list is the starting point for that, so I’m so happy I took the time to make it this year.
Lessons I’ve learned
The most effective way to achieve a goal is to build a habit.
This will be no surprise to those who have been reading my newsletter since last year. The most considerable success I have found while setting goals over the past two years has always revolved around the question, “How can I turn this into a habit?” Reading was the first goal to stick because it was a super easy habit to establish. When I struggled with some of the goals I set for this year, the solution was always to go back to the drawing board and see what aspects of the goal were repeatable and what aspects of my life I could turn into “triggers” to remind myself to execute the habit.
Some examples:
I made meditation part of my morning routine. When I finish brushing my teeth, I know the next thing I’m going to do is sit down and meditate.
Saturday mornings were always when I would work on coming up with ideas for my bucket list.
Goals shouldn’t be the habit itself but should revolve around a “North Star.”
I’ve explained this concept earlier, so I won’t repeat myself too much.
Habits are how you achieve the goal, but the goal shouldn’t be the habit itself. This is because habits don’t always stick the first time and need editing to become a part of your routine. Try designing goals that have a clear objective (e.g. “Run a Marathon” or “Read 20 books”) so that if your habits don’t stick at first, you can tinker with them while keeping the same goal in mind.
Creative goals should be “looser” than non-creative ones but must still be measurable.
In 2021, I discussed having trouble with creative goals. I had set ambitious goals tied to numbers (e.g. “Post 52 TikTok’s”) that were initially motivating but quickly became discouraging when I fell behind.
This year, I overswung in the other direction: no concrete goals, just general outlines. Then I failed to set up the necessary habits and forgot about the goals entirely.
The key is to strike a balance between these two extremes in two ways:
Creative goals shouldn’t be wildly harder to achieve than what you are currently doing naturally. If I had posted 30 TikTok’s in 2020, maybe 52 in 2021 wouldn’t have been such a crazy goal. But I was going from essentially zero to trying to build a quite demanding weekly habit, which was an unreasonable jump. Creative goals should promote consistency rather than expect you to suddenly unleash some untapped potential.
Creative goals should be more open than other goals. Creativity comes and goes, and what you want to create changes over time. If you’re not sure, you’ll want to make TikTok’s six months from now, opt for a more open phrasing of the goal, like “Put out X pieces of content.” That allows you to keep the goal in mind even if your creativity flows in a different direction.
Final thoughts
Well, there you go. The year is done. I’ve gone over my goals and drawn some lessons from them. I hope that was of some value to you.
I also hope you had an incredible year, and I wish you a great 2023.
I’m very proud of what I was able to achieve this year. I made meaningful progress toward many of my goals for the year, even more so than last year, which is a great feeling.
I have an amazing, beautiful, thoughtful, and amazing girlfriend (who edits all of my newsletters so that I don’t sound like an idiot), and we just had our eighth anniversary. Training and caring for our dog together over the past year has been such a rewarding experience. I’m excited about what the future holds for the three of us.
Outside of the newsletter, things have also been going well at work. My colleagues and I reached our first of two earn-outs post-acquisition this year, which was a significant achievement. I’m proud of the work we put in. I also worked on fascinating tech projects on the side, pushing my coding skills to new levels.
I also traveled more than last year (which makes sense, because… Covid). I went to the Netherlands and the Philippines, two awesome trips, and I hope to see even more of the world next year.
My next newsletter, my first of 2023, will outline my new new year’s resolutions, so subscribe if you want to see what I have in store.
Lastly, I want to thank you all for reading my newsletter. All the lovely comments I get mean the world. I hope you have a fantastic new year ❤️
Swag