I’m back!
Once again, another less technical post and some light analysis on my 2019 New Year resolutions.
Introduction
It was December of 2017 I came up with a formalized way to track my New Years Resolutions. I expanded and tweaked on the goals from 2018 into 2019. I didn’t really change the template too much so I’m just going to link the one from last year. Once again, this is the unchanged one.
Actually, looking over the 2018 Year in Review blog post, I see one of the things I added was quarters, which I only partially held to.
Again, yadda yadda there’s some things you get for free like categorization and conditional formatting. And just like last year. Once again, that’s not really what I’m going to be talking about in this blog post.
Analysis of 2019
Digression
It’s tough to really summarize a year. 2019. Running through the highlights.
The year started off with another incredible trip out to Beaver Creek, Colorado with some of my friends. I visited my sister for her birthday. All of the time I wasn’t traveling around I was having a blast in Chicago. I visited Henry out in SF which was a really good thing for me in terms of my relationship dynamics. And then yeah before I knew it… it was April.
It was a big year for me professionally. I left Belvedere Trading, which was an immensely tough decision for me. Frustrations at work boiled over to the point that I didn’t truly feel valued given where I was within the company. So I quit. And took another job at Ab Initio. I left Belvedere back in April. Took a month off. Went solo hiking around France and went to Monte Carlo to see the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters 1000. Hannah, one of my best friends from Swarthmore, met me out there. At the time, she was playing soccer in Sweden with a semi-professional soccer team.
So that was pretty incredible. Then came back and went to Long Island to see the cuzzos for a weekend. Went to Mexico City with friends. Then eventually started work and have been hitting that hard. Started dating an incredible girl in Boston. Sadly, recently stopped dating said incredible girl. I still care about her deeply and hope to be friends in the future.
The new job has really forced me to expand as a person. It’s definitely caused me to question myself with regardles to some things and taken a good long look in the mirror. I think one of the biggest things is it has caused me to really weigh professional life versus social life, given that I now travel for work. But let’s talk more about the hard numbers, and stop with the public journal.
Meat
So if we’re talking quantitatively: 65%. That’s the completion rate for 2019.
One thing year over year (2018 -> 2019) that improved dramatically was that I read a ton more. I hit a little over 12 books in 2019 which was stronger from the 0 the year before. I also did the Chicago tri again, even though it turned into the Chicago bi-athlon.
I still wasn’t able to do a sub 30 minute murph. The huge thing I dropped over this year was italian. Check out this bar graph from this year.
Boils to:
| Category | Made | In Progress | Missed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| Reading | 11 | 0 | 2 |
| Italian | 0 | 0 | 11 |
| Extracurricular | 61 | 0 | 34 |
| Work | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Stretch goal | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Relationships | 9 | 0 | 0 |
Pros
These are things I’m overall happy with:
- Reading
- Fitness
- Professional career change
- Visiting friends
- Donating blood
Cons
Not so happy with these guys:
- Italian
- Meditating
- Coding / blog posts
- Deeply nurturing the relationships that are close (thinking specifically tail end of year in Chicago)
Take Away
I’m not sure how I really feel about trying to quantitate a year. On one hand, 65% is failing… On another hand, it was still a big year of growth for me and the metrics don’t quite reflect that. 2019 was an incredible year where I was able to visit numerous friends and have many adventures, including lots of travel. This came at the cost of not spending a lot of time in my home of Chicago. The new job and travel made me deeply appreciate the time I do get with my friends and family.
I’ve already been working on it, but I think in 2020, there’s a lot more I’m going to focus on specifically. I think part of the downside in 2019, was that I tried to create specific goals, but they didn’t exactly tie to other goals. Furthermore, with that many goals, long term goals (like the Italian) fractured heavily.
2020 is a year I want to focus a lot on being a better person - to my family and friends and those closest to me. I want to keep aggressively learning and achieving fitness goals, but also want to be present when I’m with the people I love most.
The new template for 2020 has been modified and I think it’ll be more conducive to completing some of the goals I care about. There’s going to be multiple sheets now.
P.S. I’m going to try and post more.
Thanks for reading / listening to the rant as always.