Obligatory New Year Post 5

Hi readers! The 5th of the "Obligatory New Year Post" series! This time is resolutions for 2019, and reflections for 2018!

Before I actually read past year's resolution and evaluate on how I did, I would like to say first that off-hand, 2018 is a rather bad year for me. People almost always say that the past year has been great for them despite ups and downs, yada2... But for me, 2018 all in all has not been that great. Despite the ups like my New York trip (which didn't turn out as awesome as I hoped it to be), reconnected with her (an opportunity which I totally blew), and kinda reconnected with her (not too bad, but then again, she went to the US so we don't have that many overlapping time for catch-ups, so..), 2018 has been underwhelming, to say the least. I didn't progress at all in terms of my self-discovery and making myself more comfortable with girls. I didn't manage to push myself to exercise regularly, didn't meditate regularly... Basically all has been a mess.

Let's formalize the mess.

1. Go for most opportunities available

I didn't even keep track of opportunities coming my way... But I do remember not taking up the opportunity to lead a vertical in the newly reorganized team at work; though to be fair the tech lead was probably expecting someone more senior anyway.

2. Don't ghost any girls I'm pursuing

I'm totally ghosting someone right now... Or I don't even know if she still considered me ghosting. Probably she already moved on.

3. Go to a mainly-Chinese-speaking country for >=5 days.

This is actually quite a stupid resolution, on hindsight. Still, I did it so technically I fulfilled it, though it didn't have quite the impact I hoped (which was me maintaining my Chinese fluency).

4. Exercise >1 weekly

Lol. See rant in second paragraph.

5. Don't back out/compromise on any difficulties faced in doing my current project.

I think I'm surprisingly doing okay in this aspect... Or I've just reduced my expectations lol.

6. Go for a meditation retreat

This should be changed to a plural. But yeah, technically I did go for a retreat.

Seems like turned out that I actually did about 50% of my resolution! Still, those are the easier and easily measurable resolutions, which, as it turned out, is not actually very effective in making me a better person. It's basically just me fulfilling marking scheme like in the school days, and once I've achieved it, I'm done. Either I need to make the "marking scheme" more difficult, or go back to more vague resolutions. I decided to do the former.

So below will be the resolution for this year:

1. Seize opportunities that you hesitate to go for

2. Don't ghost anyone!

3. Improve Chinese fluency

4. Exercise >1 weekly

5. Progress in your career

6. Progress spiritually

Looks the same as last year, you might say, and you will be right. The difference is that I'm going to make a plan.

Flashback: So a couple of months ago during my work's offsite (like a team bonding-cum-holiday event), I talked with a colleague who I shared a room with, and he asked me how I've been doing at work. Not sure how he asked it exactly, because I don't usually answer such questions in detail and yet our conversation sort of flowed. He told me that he felt the same as I did when he just started off working, that is, felt lost; like he didn't know how to make progress in his career, and he didn't even know if he's making any progress. The difference is that he actually took the initiative to talk to his manager about how he feels, and they made a work plan to make things more concrete. He told me about how he read the book about OKR (look it up, it's basically how Google defines their vision and mission for a time period, being a year or a quarter), and it is actually a way to formalize expectations and measuring what you did for that particular time period against it, and how to divide it into smaller bite-size pieces that are manageable to be done in a quarter or even a week, for example. I was so fascinated how his original thoughts was so similar to mine, I'm guessing a lot of people who just started off working probably felt the same too. I haven't got the time to find this book yet, but I'm about to do what he told me, which was the gist of it. I'm going to break down those resolutions into quarterly resolutions, and then breaking it down further into actionables that I can check against at the end of the quarter, whether I've done it or not (now I'm starting to sound like a manager. Well, I guess I'm a manager of myself).

It's going to be really long if I were to elaborate it here, so I'll grab a pen and paper and do it there. For now, just know that the above is my 2019 resolution, which, for the most part, is basically 2018 resolution, but with improved execution (hopefully).

Happy new year and all the best in your life's endeavors! May you have the grit and perseverance to actually do your resolutions! :D