2020

This year was pretty chaotic. Lots of ups and downs in all aspects of life. I got overwhelmed and did probably the worst thing possible–I put everything on pause.

I’ve tried to make my goals for this coming year easy to measure. I’ve also set-up a couple self-care goals so that I can make sure I’m taking care of my health while at the same time, enabling myself to make forward progress.

Anyhow, this post is long and largely for my personal reflection. But feel free to hold me accountable in 2020 or share your goals for the coming year 🙂

Happy New Year!

2019 In Review

I had a lot of goals in 2019, but I stopped actively working towards most of them about halfway through the year.

I only read 48 books of my 100 book target. I was on track for the first half of the year, but then I read only a couple of books in the last half of the year. Here is what I finished reading:

1. Fresh Off The Boat by Eddie Huang
2. Secrets, Lies and Democracy by Noam Chomsky
3. Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas
4. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
5. How To Fight A Hydra by Josh Kaufman
6. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
7. The Thoughtful Leader by Mindy Gibbins-Klein
8. Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 by John Maxwell
9. Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli
10. Awareness by Anthony de Mello
11. Unspeakable by Chris Hedges
12. Heart and Brain by Nick Seluk
13. Heart and Brain: Gut Instincts by Nick Seluk
14. The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Zander and Benjamin Zander
15. I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You by Yumi Sakugawa
16. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 1) by Yukito Kishiro
17. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 2) by Yukito Kishiro
18. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 3) by Yukito Kishiro
19. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 4) by Yukito Kishiro
20. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 5) by Yukito Kishiro
21. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 6) by Yukito Kishiro
22. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 7) by Yukito Kishiro
23. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 8) by Yukito Kishiro
24. Battle Angel Alita (Vol. 9) by Yukito Kishiro
25. Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
26. Organizing Her Life by Lauren Souders
27. Bird Box by Josh Malerman
28. Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
29. Anatomy for Runners by Jay Dicharry
30. Everything Is F*cked by Mark Manson
31. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
32. The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday
33. The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
34. Love That Lasts by Jefferson Bethke and Alyssa Bethke
35. The Power of Everyday Missionaries by Clayton Christensen
36. Becoming by Michelle Obama
37. The Diabetes Code by Jason Fung
38. Can’t Hunt Me by David Goggins
39. Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
40. White Rage by Carol Anderson
41. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson
42. Models by Mark Manson
43. Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday
44. The Outsider by Albert Camus
45. Atomic Habits by James Clear
46. Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz
47. The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
48. It Starts With Food by Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig

I wanted to bring my Pocket backlog down to below 50 articles. I was successful here–I brought it down from 1164 articles at the beginning of the year to 29 articles at the time of writing.

I also wanted to bring my Overcast backlog down to below 5 podcast episodes. I was successful here–I brought it down from 47 episodes (though, I appear to have peaked at 66 podcasts in the Spring) to 2 episodes.

I didn’t do any personal coding projects this year, though I had originally intended to complete 4 of them to learn new things.

I can’t remember exactly what I was aiming for with regards to meal prep–probably something like 90-95% of my meals being meal prep. By the end of the year, only 21.9% of my meals came from meal prep.

I aimed to reduce my restaurant spending by 80% this year, but I don’t think I reduced that number by much compared to the previous year.

My savings goal got derailed as I switched my financial priorities in October.

With regards to body measurements, the only numbers that saw significant movement was my waist (dropped 3 inches at one point during the year), my stomach (dropped 3 inches at one point during the year), my arms (gained 1 inch at one point during the year), and my weight (varied between 179 and 208 pounds throughout the year–smaller weight loss than previous years).

Although I was aiming to go running multiple times each week, I averaged about one run every two weeks this year. I recorded 5 runs in my best week this year.

I was aiming to increase the amount of volleyball I played this year, but that did not happen. This year I played the same amount as the previous year.

I wasn’t able to increase my mindfulness/sensitivity to my Apple Watch notifications. For this goal, I think I need a better action plan on how to improve in this area.

I felt like I increased the frequency that I was in communication about my experiences this year, but I haven’t determined a great way to quantify this yet.

With regards to minimalism, I did manage to donate, give away, or throw away a bunch of books, clothing, kitchenware, and electronics this year, but only about 10% of what I was originally hoping to do so.

2020 Goals

Gonna try something different this year to see if it affects how much reading I get done. I’m going to choose specific books in advance as part of my reading goal. If I want to read something else instead, I’ll just have that book replace something else on the list.

In 2020, I will read these 100 books:

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
3. Azumanga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma
4. Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston
5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
6. The Empty Pot by Demi
7. Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
8. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
9. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
10. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
11. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
12. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
13. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
14. Boyd by Robert Coram
15. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown
16. Endurance by Alfred Lansing
17. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
18. The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell
19. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb
20. The Perfect Predator by Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson
21. Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
22. This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
23. Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian
24. Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
25. The Absent Superpower by Peter Zeihan
26. The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan
27. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
28. Blowout by Rachel Maddow
29. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
30. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
31. Fascism by Madeleine Albright
32. Grace Will Lead Us Home by Jennifer Hawes
33. Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
34. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi
35. Letters of Note by Shaun Usher
36. The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett Graff
37. Persecution and Toleration by Noel Johnson and Mark Koyama
38. Say Nothing by Patrick Keefe
39. She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
40. Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon
41. Thick by Tressie Cottom
42. Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
43. The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena
44. The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
45. Clean Code by Robert Martin
46. Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle McDowell
47. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
48. Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan
49. The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis
50. The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman
51. It’s Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff
52. The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier
53. The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
54. The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt
55. Radical Candor by Kim Scott
56. Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
57. Resilient Management by Lara Hogan
58. The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim
59. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
60. As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
61. Becoming a Person of Influence by John Maxwell
62. Changing on the Job by Jennifer Berger
63. The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
64. The Essays of Warren Buffet by Lawrence Cunningham and Warren Buffett
65. Failing Forward by John Maxwell
66. Getting Things Done by David Allen
67. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
68. Goals! by Brian Tracy
69. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
70. Leading from the Emerging Future by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaeufer
71. Mastery by Robert Greene
72. Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy
73. Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam
74. The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
75. Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
76. On Writing by Stephen King
77. Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
78. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen
79. Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe
80. The State of Affairs by Esther Perel
81. Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Stone
82. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
83. The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
84. In The Buddha’s Words by Bhikkhu Bodhi
85. Joyful Wisdom by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Eric Swanson
86. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
87. The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron
88. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
89. Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron
90. The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello
91. To Be Human by Jiddu Krishnamurti
92. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
93. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy by Christine Wilding
94. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry
95. How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb
96. The Body by Bill Bryson
97. Cosmos by Carl Sagan
98. Factfulness by Hans Rosling
99. Invisible Women by Caroline Perez
100. A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson

In 2020, I will check-in with my stress levels weekly via a journal entry; each week, I will create a self-care plan based on stress levels and then execute on that plan. Because I’m not very in touch with my stress levels, I intend to do this by looking out for proxy indicators that I’ve identified in the past including feeling the need to be efficient/perfect, picking my skin/nails, withdrawing from sports or social activities, decrease in sleep quantity/quality, and digestion issues.

In 2020, I will decrease my fasting blood glucose levels to the lower-half of normal levels.

In 2020, I will decrease my body fat percentage to 10%.

In 2020, I will run 2000 km. (This is ~40km a week.)

In 2020, I will consume meal prep for 990 of my meals. (This is ~90% of my meals, assuming 3 meals per day.)

In 2020, I will complete 366 pre-determined gym workout routines.

In 2020, I will be able to complete an ass-to-the-ground body weight squat while keeping my heels on the ground.

In 2020, I will be able to bend over and touch my palms on the ground while keeping my legs straight.

In 2020, I will meditate 366 times for at least 5 minutes each session.

In 2020, I will track my mood in Gyroscope 1460 times and increase my average mood score to 75%. (1460 times works out to be about 4 entries per day; my average mood score from this year was 46.2% — 54.9% happy and 23.5% energy.)

In 2020, I will increase my average time asleep per night to 7 hours. (I hope to eventually increase this to 8 hours; this year, I slept for an average of less than 5.7 hours per night.)

In 2020, I will find a new therapist with whom I will work towards a meaningful depression-/anxiety-related goal.

In 2020, I will publish 120 blog posts.

In 2020, I will renew my L and then obtain my N.

In 2020, I will journal twice a week about things that frustrate or worry me; I will initiate responsible conversation with anyone who appears more than once, and I will visualize a better future/relationship with that person/in that area.