This year I wrote my goals publicly. One of my reasons is that I want to be accountable for it. It is easy to set a goal, what is hard is to do the things to achieve the goal itself. I set a lot of goals this year. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing to do. I feel like 2019 was not my year. I didn't achieve anything or do anything significant. So I decided that 2020 should be my year or at least better than last year.
I separated my goal into areas: health & personal, finance, learning, traveling, and relationships. In this first part of this post, I want to review each area.
My biggest goal this year is my health. I was overweight in 2019 because I don't exercise regularly and I eat unhealthy food. I am still 23 years old so I did not feel the impact at that time. But I know that this habit will have a bad impact in the future.
3 times/weekSo the first goal that I want to achieve this year is to exercise at least 3 times a week. Currently, I am on a 60 days streak of running. I can't believe that I can do something like this. I started with 2 times a week and now it becomes a habit. I lost a lot of weight and I am healthier now.
5 minutes meditating per dayI did try to meditate but recently I stopped. I haven't felt the benefit up until now but I will give it another try.
5.30 AM every dayI am an early bird, that is why I set this goal. To be honest the goal is not to wake up earlier but to get enough sleep. Sleep is one of the most important activities for me and lately, I have been catching up on my sleep.
The fourth goal is to cook my own meals. I think this one is the easiest for me this year. Since moving to an apartment with a kitchen, I have been cooking my own meals.
I spend most of my time on Twitter now. I uninstall Instagram once in a while and I don't think I enjoy Instagram right now. My screen time is around 4 hours a day now. I am still planning to reduce my screen time and do something more productive instead.
I am publishing my monthly quantified report regularly. The hardest part is just to be discipline to track everything that I am committed to track. I am also still experimenting on how to properly store those data in Airtable. I feel like this a really fun personal project to do and I can really know where my time will go.
50% of income per monthsI saved more than 50% of my monthly income which is nice especially in this very uncertain situation during the pandemic.
I bought a Nintendo Switch about 2 months ago. I don't know whether that purchase is unimportant. I really enjoy playing games on it.
I stopped putting my money into the stock market during the pandemic. I mostly put my money on cash. I have prior investment and I am still going to hold on into it.
2 books per monthMy current approach to books has changed. I usually read 2-3 books at the same time. It works fine for me because I am a person who gets bored easily. I also take more time to read books right now because I take notes on it.
The current online course that I am trying to finish is about web development. I go back to the course every time I need to apply something to my current project or work. This way I can learn by doing.
The other course that I bought was a mistake. I don't think that it is worth the investment, sadly I can't do a refund for it. This is a lesson to learn in the future that you need to do a lot of research before putting an investment even on education and your personal growth.
My initial goal was to learn German but currently, I am learning Korean for fun.
During this time I don't think I can fulfill my traveling goals. The conference that I should have attended also got canceled.
I haven't met them for a while now. Once the situation gets better I will definitely visit them.
Also because of the pandemic, I could not meet my girlfriend a while ago. I can finally meet her now and I am grateful for it.
Reflecting on what I have done for the past 6 months, I do have things that I really need to improve. Here are those things that I have in mind:
Sometimes when I don't feel like doing anything I just play video games. Don't get me wrong, I am not against video games. It is okay to enjoy your leisure time too. You don't have to put yourself on hustle mode at all times.
If you see from my monthly report you can clearly see how I spent too much time playing video games compares to the time I spent reading. I don't think that this is a good thing in the long run.
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.” - Charlie Munger
It is clear that if you want to improve in life you have to read. Not only read but also applying those you have read into your daily life.
I am planning to reduce my time on TV, Video Games, and Phone this July and spend those time either reading or learning something new.
This has also been in my mind for a while.
How much time do we spend consuming things compares to the time we spend creating?
This one is related to my previous point. I want to read more but I want to create more. Creating something has been a struggle for me. I want to write more but sometimes I feel like I don't even want to write and when I want to write I always think that what I am going to write will not be good enough.
I guess this is a part of writing itself, fighting resistance.
I used to sleep at 9-9:30 PM every single day. But my sleep schedule is really bad right now. The weird thing is I can't wake up late in the morning. So no matter what time I go to bed I will just wake up around 6-7 PM. And I don't usually get a good 7-8 hour of sleep right now. I need to get back to my old sleep schedule. Those Netflix series can wait.
This is all I have in mind for now. I have some things to refocus and improve on right now. The rest of my goal has been going great and I will just have to keep being consistent throughout the rest of the year.
Thanks to Cullin, Alexander, and Binyamin that helped me during the writing process.
Shoot me an email if you have feedback on this post or we can talk on twitter.