Lots of changes.

Introduction

Ahhh just reviewing my 2021 year in review and good to see that we are still deep into the heart of the pandemic. As always, I’m going to try to focus on my resolutions, do a bit of reflection about the past year, identify goals for this year, and think about how I can better get there.

Analysis of 2021

To recall, I pivoted slightly in terms of my approach about resolutions and living life. In 2019 and 2020, I was pretty keen on utilizing an Excel workbook to track some resolutions and things that I wanted to follow up on. In 2020, I was again lucky enough to get an Apple Watch and start to keep track of some things through this streaks application. The real idea behind this shift was that I was letting some of my goals drop because they were too macro level. The idea behind streaks is that you could focus on building daily habits that would translate through small steps into those macro goals. It’s why people on Duolingo are way more likely to maintain a streak if they can get to that 10 day point (although I feel like there’s some interesting assumptions with that). It’s also an idea explored a bit in Habits (can’t believe I’m linking to AMZN like a corporate slug) as well as Grit (I highly recommend both of those books… maybe more so Grit).

Qualitatively, I think I did a pretty good job for about the first 8 months of the year. Which is way better than I ever had before (2020 I think I really held onto things until like June). I journaled legit almost every day which I’m thrilled about and I think was hopefully good mentally. I read 7 books which… is not great… but it’s also 7 more than in 2020 I think!

The one thing is post my sister getting married in the beginning of September, I came back to Cincinnati and just got a little preoccupied with work and starting a new job. Part of that was because I left my watch in Greece at a hostel and soooo I couldn’t really track things (luckily, the host sent me my watch and I got it back). That being said, there’s no real excuse. I still journaled probably every couple weeks but it definitely fell off a bit and I was a little less obsessive about the watch and the Streaks app.

Regardless, I’m pretty pleased with how I did, but let’s let the numbers do some talking as well.

So quantiatively, let’s take a look.

Again, really really good streak until around September. A 214 day streak was really solid. 61.7% overall completion is pretty solid as well. You can see the drop off pretty noticably around September.

One of my streaks was exercising which was pretty naturally accomplished because it was tracked by my Apple Watch automatically. I’m pleased with this one. I completed my first half ironman and athletically I’m feeling pretty good.

Journaling again was pretty solid until around the wedding.

Reading as well I fell off at the end of the year but was feeling pretty good at the start.

So this isn’t quite as quantitative as of an approach as last year, but I think the outcomes were at least equal or not better. Once again, I’m not going to analyze this data any more than it’s already presented, but I’m happy with the way this year has gone and with what I’ve accomplished so far.

Going into 2022

It’s going to be yet another year of shifting around some. In 2020, I moved from Chicago back home to Cincinnati which has been incredible. In two weeks, I’m moving out to San Francisco for at least half a year. I’ve recently started a new job which I’m absolutely loving. I’m excited for this next chapter.

I’m going to keep a lot of the same streaks and try to refocus on learning Italian, reading, and maybe mixing in some art, as well as keeping the side projects / classes flowing.