New year plan: build productive systems, not goals and resolutions
The previous year was a huge fail: I had tons of goals and I've completed almost nothing. I've mastered procrastination, put on some extra weight, and played a terrifying amount of hours with Dota 2.
At the end of the year, finally, I was able to take a longer PTO and think things through. And also, in January, I start at another company where I'll do completely different things. After analyzing the last year, I've figured out it is worth trying a new approach and instead of setting tons of goals ahead, I modify my life in the following way:
- Instead of tons of small goals, I pick up only a few large not goals but directions. Directions where I want to go. I can call the areas of life that I want to work on and improve
- For every month, I pick up a topic
- And I create systems to make sure I improve myself.
Areas in my life to work on and habits or routines to build
Fitness: I've gained up some extra weight. My endurance went gone and my flexibility completely disappeared. For every month, I create a challenge that I can consciously work on. Habits to build:
- Track calorie intake
- At least 30 minutes every single day. No rest day. Instead of a rest day, do stretching
Work: In January, a new chapter begins. After almost 10 years, I leave LogMeIn and join to Cloudera. I will work with technologies that I've never used and code on a programming language that I've never seen before the job interview. I expect it both challenging and fun. Habits to build:
- Learn every day for at least an hour. It is passive learning, like consuming a book.
- At least 8 Pomodoro of focused and hard work a day digging deep into the codebase.
Side: I have a full list of unfinished projects from the last year. Spend 1 hour a weekday, 2 hours on a weekend per day on my side projects.
House: Our house has a complete list to work on. Do the small things immediately. Do one large thing in a month. A small thing can be something like drilling a picture on the wall. Large can be painting all the wooden stuff in the garden.
Blog: At least 1 post per week.
Reading: Instead of playing thousands of hours on online games, pick up reading again. Read in endless cycles in the following order:
- A hard skill book
- A soft skill book
- Something that entertains Read at least one hour a day
