2021

2021 was the year we had high hopes for. It was also the year when so many of these hopes have been crushed. Other than COVID, just here in BC, Canada where I live, we had the record high temperatures burning entire towns to ashes and floods of the century cutting us from the rest of Canada. I believe the year like that raised awareness of so many critical issues of the contemporary world, like climate change, politicization, mental health, etc, but most of all it forced us to reevaluate life priorities and think twice about what is important in our lives.

In the year 2021 I spent more time with my family, focused on health and tried to live a good life despite things getting hard mentally at times.

2021 In Numbers

I worked out 365 days last year, including 148 rock climbing gym visits (my climbing stuff), 78 runs, 87 hours of weight training, and many other activies, averaging 55 hours a month; set some new personal records like 20 pullups and sub-50min 10k, briefly reached 56 VO2max and 68kg of weight but retreated on the last two; read 20+ books, many of which are technical but also included all 7 Harry Potter books I read with my daughter. Learned some C++ and subjectively did well at work. I straightened my teeth, tried real rock climbing and pole calisthenics. Invested 20% more money in 2021 than I did in 2020 and my early retierement aspirations at age 41 are now more realistic than ever. I failed to quit coffee but successfully reduced it consumption. I also failed to write enough on this blog and failed to inspire people as I might have done years ago.

Complete list of all items from 2021

1. Read all 7 Harry Potter books to my 7y old daughter. That’s 199 chapters making it roughly 4 chapters (65p) per week.
   1. DONE. I read few first books myself and then my daughter (8) get so much interested she started to read on her own.
2. Teach my daughter basics of programming. Snake game seems to be a good candidate for a year’s project goal.
   1. We had two sessions with my daugher where we created a simple “food” for the snake and are drawing grid. I consider this a failure as this isn’t what I imagined.
3. Teach my 4y old son basics of skiing. Let’s see how many times I can take him out skiing.
   1. Took him 3 times in total (second season – yeap he tries skies at age 3 for the first time). He alreay learned to ski “pizza”-style. I guess I’m better teacher this time. I used ski-wedges (rubber string to keep front of the skies together) and I’m not making the mistake of holding him so that he learns to keep the balance right from the beginning. I should probably classify this as failure, even there was some progress.
4. Travel outside of Canada and have a boring beach vacation. Fingers crossed.
   1. :(
5. Have two camping road-trips (long weekends count, but a week+ would be awesome).
   1. DONE. One weekend long and another almost a week long, though with hotels in between.
6. Set new personal running records (considerations 1K, 1Mile, 5K, 10K and Half-Marathon). Consider running a Marathon (that’s not a healthy distance imo, but people keep asking me if I ran it and I cannot say yes… ogh…).
   1. DONE. 79 runs. Set new 5K – 22:43, 10K – 49:49 PR. I will consider this done.
7. Improve VO2Max to 60 ml/(kg·min) from the current 54. This means I will have to specifically and properly train. Just running 100 times won’t cut it. In combination with my other goals of gaining muscle weight this goal becomes even more difficult.
   1. Max achieved 56. It seem to be unrealistic to achieve 60 for me due to biological limitations and my age or it would take a lot more dedication for me, which I’m not ready to do.
8. Try out at least one other sport activity. Considerations are: mountain biking, martial arts, archery, whatever, anything counts as long as I try it out.
   1. DONE. Tried real rock climbing, kickboxing, and pole-calisthenics, bought a bike and biked super-easy mountain trails.
9. Learn free handstands and snap some cool pics for the next year’s post.
   1. Failed. I made some progress, like I can do low control handstand for few seconds, but that’s not what I wanted.
10. Strength train for 100 hours inclining towards climbing specifics (finger strength; pull-ups; core). Set new personal pullup (19+) and pushup (102+) records.
    1. DONE. Way over 100 hours. I calculated > 83hours of separate strength training time, plus there would be maybe another 50 or more of those coming from my climbing activies. New pull-ups PR 20. Didn’t do the pushups.
11. Gain 5kg of pure muscles (70kg, BMI of 22, fat 10-13%) and post a shirtless comparing pic.
    1. Max achieved was 68. I’m 10.3% body fat. I will delay posting a comparison pic to the next year, though if you are super curious there is some arms stuff in strava.
12. See how far I can get in climbing. Target sending one V8 (7B Font, HEX-5/6) bouldering problem. If this doesn’t say you anything, it is a super-ambitious goal as I can currently do V3s, some V4s. Normally V8 requires years of training and lots of strength. Likely to fail. Shoot for the starts.
    1. DONE (kind-off): rock-climbed 148 times. Sent a couple of HEX-5 (V6-V8, probably these were 7A and not 7B).
13. Continue sleeping full 8.5 hours.
    1. DONE. Based on garmin data I kept sleeping 8.5+ hours for entire year with few exceptions.
14. Straighten my teeth to a perfect arch.
    1. DONE. My teeth are straight now. I’m still wearing last sets of aligners and then will need to wear retainers for some time, but the work is done! Smily pictures are coming next year.
15. Further reduce coffee. Cold turkey is a real option this year.
    1. Had 2 months with 0 coffee intake (Jan, Feb), and many months with few coffees. By the end of the year I’m basically back to daily sonsumption. This means I’m a coffee addict, but a controlled one, or is this not a defintion of an addict? hm..
16. Build a strong disciplined morning routine, that includes among other things waking within 5 minutes of alarm going off, drinking full glass of water, short meditation and a full breakfast.
    1. Big failure. No real discipline, though I do have some kind of routine. I stopped having an alarm. Yeap. I do not have any alarms set and this makes me feel great.
17. Write 10 blog posts, of which at least 5 are of a technical content.
    1. Failure.
18. Listen to/read 10 books, of which at least 5 are technical/career ones. (Harry Potter ones don’t count).
    1. Books done:
       “Time Smart”
       “Effective C++”
       “Effective Modern C++” (partially)
       “Change by Design”
       “The Manager’s Path”
       “The Body Keeps the Score”
       “Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy”
       “Sapiens”
       “The Art of Thinking Clearly”
       “The great mental models: Vol 2”
       “The Ride of a Lifetime”
       “The Pragmatic Programmer” (relisten)
       “Finding Flow”
       and few other funny ones I’m not brave enough to post here
       
19. Solve 100 leet code problems (min 10 hard; min 50 medium). Got to keep myself in a good shape, right?
    1. Solved 44 problems. Not much. (total lifetime solved 565)
20. Deliberately work on loosing my eastern European accent for at least 10 hours. A course with a real teacher would be great.
    1. Failed. Was close to having scheduled classes.
21. Create a monetizable content and earn 1$. This can be a course on programming, an e-book, a problem solving tutorial, anything really.
    1. Failed. Lack of specificity and dedication to this one.
22. Become fully proficient in one more programming laguage.
    1. DONE: Gained C/C++ readability badge at work. It kind of means Google now trusts me to write C++ code :) I also finally fill more-or-less comfortable in this language.
23. Learn Linux. I use Linux every day at work, but I’m limited to basic things and have never deliberately tried to understand this operating system or become proficient in it.
    1. Failed. Linux is now my main non-work operating system. Though still not what I meant.
24. Learn to complete all work within strickly 8 working hours. Less of stretching of time, less of inefficiencies, less of distruction, more discipline. Efficiency. Time is our most precious resource.
    1. Mar: March was probably one of the most efficient months for me at Google so far.
       Feb: I’m tracking my time super-precisely and can tell there is close to 0 of time-wasters (news, social, etc) during work hours.
       Oct: This goes “oke-ish”.
       Calling this a success even I don’t feel I work enough. My employer seems to be happy, though.
25. Better track money. I’ve been tracking money since my first paychecks, but in the year 2020 I lost my routines so need to reestablish them.
    1. Mar: on track.
       Feb: Back on track. Rewamped my “balance and net worth” sheets.
       Oct: Not sharing too much but I have a hold on money tracking and investing. It is just maybe I can make more if, say, I worked in US or something.
       
26. Make or lose 1000$ in a risky investment. Failures are learning experiences.
    1. DONE: I have some crypto ETFs that jumped like hell and I didn’t budge. Jumps were X*1000 so I’m covered for this goal. I have some confidence in risk tollerance now. And no, I do not believe in all this crypto hype.
27. Invest 20% more money in 2021 than in 2020.
    1. DONE.
28. Create a painting and/or a drawing. I already know some basics. Just want to do something to really like.
    1. Failed. I just didn’t feel like doing this for entire year. This has something to do with the feelings.

Learning from 2021

Last year taught me that seemingly “impossible” things are possible as long as you are truly focused on them (by the example of having a physical activity every day), and at the same time many possible things are left undone because they lacked dedication, proper tracking and habit forming aspects to it or were just wishful thinking.

2022 Plan

I’ve been writing new year resolutions since 2010 and my success rate has increased progressively.

Process

Quantify. Wishful untracked resolutions don’t work. Instead of creating a resolution like “improve financial situation”, which is a good idea, try to understand why you want it, what you are willing to sacrifice to achieve it and then crunch the numbers and compile a list of quantifiable, prioritized and trackable results you want to see by the end of the year (ie. “max out pension plan”, “buy asset G”, “invest % into Y”, “get salary hike by doing X”).

Track your list. I am thankful to my friends who kept tabs on me (AnAustrian :) ) because this allowed me to be accountable. I propose a monthly routine when you go back to your plan, update the status and re-review the validity of the goals. I personally do this via google sheets.

Another modification I’ve made to my resolutions is that I set success criteria which usually is 50% of the list, and believe me it is enough to keep myself sweating for the entire year.

Plan

For the year 2022 I have a list of 70+ items. I know, I know, having too many items doesn’t sound like a smart idea, but there is merit to it. The list I created is categorized into health, family, career, life quality, etc and then each of the items was given a priority on a scale 0-4 (0 = highest; 4 = lowest). I ended up with just 10 items I think are truly important. Success criteria is to complete highest priority items but have a possibility to replace some of them with multiple lower priority items. (More exactly, I want to collect 10 points, where P0=1point, P1=1/2, P2=1/3, P3=1/4, P4=1/5)

This year my private goals are mixed with career and all other goals into a single spreadsheet, but in order to share the list I masked some of the items that I’m not comfortable sharing. The below list is not set in stone, but it will be my go-to list any time of the year, any time of the day.

The Why

Now the above maniacally long list doesn’t tell the whole story. “The why” is often much more important than what or how. Each of the categories has its intent and it is a fairly simple long term directional objective:

Happy New Year

May the new 2022 year be the year of great achievements for you!

Share your goals and let’s keep each other accountable.