Last year I switched from having new year resolutions to new year theme instead. The theme for last year was Health and Progress, and before we jump into this year’s theme, I would like to reflect upon how the past year has been with respect to the theme.
Health (2021 review)
Overall, I think I’ve made good strides for my health. Starting with more regular exercise, primarily cycling, I’ve recently hit 2,000km 2 months ago: What have I learnt from cycling 2,000 kilometres, and as of this writing, I’ve just touched 2,500km.
To combat what I could only describe as chronic fatigue, I brought awareness about my sleeping cycles and amount of rest that I’m actually getting. I built the habit of wearing my apple watch to sleep to get some basic tracking, then I bought this app called AutoSleep to get better stats on my sleep quality, and how much sleep debt I actually have. It has made a significant difference in how I felt in the day; but I still have trouble keeping to the correct bedtime, so this is still something that I’m working on.
In terms of weight/diet, this hasn’t been going on as well as the other aspects. I did lose some weight, but it fell far short of the goal that I initially had. Of course, if I were to plot a straight line from the start of the year to the end of the year, it was a positive trend in both weight and choice of diet. So in hindsight, I’m really glad to have this theme in mind because it definitely saved me from making more bad choices.
Progress (2021 review)
Getting that sweet job promotion is definitely progress 🎉 . And I’ve learnt so much in the past year, mostly from struggling to keep up with all the new tech stacks that my new team was using.
My second brain has also seen some good growth in the past year, but I haven’t been grooming it as much as I wanted, so there are quite a lot of unlinked notes/thoughts scattered throughout.
Unfortunately, I have not dedicated enough time to the side projects that I wish to work on. Mostly caught up in the grand current of life and mostly reacting to events instead of specifically carving out time to work on these projects. As much as I want to continue working on it this year, my experience in the past year have opened my eyes to things that are more important to me right now.
Which brings me to…
Improving relationships (2022)
Over the past 2 years, I’ve sought and received feedback on how am I as a colleague; some repeated feedback stood out to me. While people have found me generally pleasant to work with, it seems like they have problems forming a more personal connection with me. This makes completely sense as I’ve learnt to “bring my work self” whenever I’m in a work setting. Personally I do not see any issues with it, but neglecting this aspect of human relationships feels like will cause some friction eventually.
One of my senior colleagues likes to call this “good will points”. Generally you want to gather good will points day to day because humans will fuck up eventually, and it would be very tough for you to call in any favors when you really need it. Note that there’s an important distinction between helpful and ass-kisser so I would be careful not to fall into the latter category.
I’ve also noticed that I’ve not been a particularly great friend to many of my old friends. Well, I’d like to think that I’ve not been a bad friend per se, but the recent years have enlightened me on the lack of effort I’ve put in to keep things “great”. I’m hoping that this theme will guide me to do things that helps me to strengthen relationships with all the poeple in my life that I care about. It goes without saying that this applies to my partner too (in case you’re reading this).
Healthier diet (2022)
Yes, I’ve built a pretty good cycling habit, but I’m having difficulty choosing the healthier diet option far more frequently than I’d like to admit. This is a very straight forward theme. Whenever I’m faced with a dietary choice, lean towards the healthier option without depriving myself.
Summary
Looking back, I am content with how 2021 has treated me. I’m looking forward to 2022, hoping that the travel restrictions ease up a little and we can finally get a decent getaway trip.
Just realised that I’ve only written 10 posts on my blog in 2021. I guess ever since I’ve started the habit of journaling this space has became more “formal”, which increases the friction of writing here. Well… let’s just see how this goes 👀