2019: The Resolutions Of A New Year
Happy New Year! It’s already 2019! Time is sure going by really fast! Wasn’t it just 2000 last year?
It’s been almost 20 years since High School. My wife and I were talking about it on New Years Eve as we tucked our children to bed before the clock hit midnight. How long we have come. How long do we have left? It’s almost 20 years since we both graduated from high school, and soon it’ll be 2020 in no time. Our kids will suddenly be teenagers soon after that, our lives will get busier or less busy depending on what we do.
One thing I know for certain time cannot be gained back, so make the best of it. The time you waste killing yourself for that 9-5pm that you don’t like is time you’re not getting back. The time you sit watching TV rather than doing a side hustle or learning a new skill is time wasted. The time you spend with your friends drinking instead of being at home with your wife and kids is time you’ll miss. The time you lose because you didn’t apply for that out of reach dream job, is time you’ll regret.
Every year I like to reflect on the things I completed and achieved for 2018 – whether big or small and I like to create a plan for the following year. One thing I learned from years of setting goals, is that Resolutions don’t work. Nobody in the history of New Years has ever actually met their goals. Why? Well a combo of reasons actually. The biggest one is that a goal that spans an entire year is really a lot of pressure and people don’t do well with pressure that intense, for a year.
For example this year my goals are clean and simple.
– To learn more about different technologies
– Get more skilled and practice with technologies I am not too great with
– Gain more experience in different tech positions like DevOps and project management
– Finish my current projects of building my own AI robot
– Live better – eat smart & walk every morning and evening with my wife
– Be more tech awesome – network with more IT professionals & understand their tech opinions
See, these are simple to read and achieve. If I read a book on technology I’m not familiar with, I would be check marking multiple goals. With any goal you set, you have to understand what this goal means to you. Writing about how much it means underneath the goal will help put it into perspective for you, and as a side affect, mean more to you.
I try not too specific because I know myself, when I see that I’m not meeting my specific targets, it’ll only make me feel more pressured and annoyed. This way I can set weekly goals that I know are realistic for my schedule and know I’ll hit them all or beat them.
For example, read 1 technical book and 1 self motivational book in a month. I can manage that, along side my other projects and possibly taking on a new career, I can fully manage that. Will I drop 10lbs that month with my eating right and walking twice a day? Nope, but I’ll be a bit fitter, more mentally alert, and maybe be a little stronger. I’m not trying to be loose with my goals, I’m actually being pretty aggressive because I have time. But I also know what each of these goals means to me, where they stand in my priority chart.
When I was teaching at BCIT, my priority for teaching my students was much higher than my evening walk. I like to think making them a higher priority over my walk meant that there was something they learned better because I took the time to teach them better.
Dealing with Chinese diplomats helped me to have a better outlook on life, helped me to be more patient and more understanding. There is no one right way to look at a situation. What makes sense to me, might not make sense to someone else. But I think I can understand their reasons better and they can understand mine if we are patient and respectful. I hope that my goals match that same mindset, where I approach my goals with the understanding of what it means to me, I’m patient and respect my goals.
So what are your goals for 2019?
Cheers,
A.Yasir
