While I’ve always found New Year’s Eve night to be an inevitable letdown of hype followed by “Okay, what now?”, I’ve always appreciated that the New Year is one of the only times that society as-a-whole gets to collectively pause and reflect.
This one feels especially important, as it’s the end of a w i l d decade for both the planet and for many people.
For myself (and many other millenials), this decade closed off the teens into late-twenties chapter of my life…and did it in a nicely tied bow sort of way.
Between the end of 2009 and 2020, I:
- Graduated High School
- Moved to SF to attend San Francisco State University and study Photojournalism
- Graduated from SFSU with a B.S. in Computer Science
- Got my first few career jobs
- Got married
And while I’m usually somewhat fast to reflect back most years, I’ve spent the last few days of this holiday break really thinking about my goals and New Year’s resolutions for 2020.
Entering 2019, my central resolution was to slow down. To me, this was slowing down from both a work and mental level. I found myself moving too fast when it came to decisions, work, or general emotions. At times, I felt myself sacrificing quality for speed and it didn't feel like a good habit.
I don't think humans are necessarily good at achieving goals like this in a black-and-white/check-it-off-the-list manner, but I do honestly think I improved at slowing down and formed better ways to check myself going forward. This is something I'm still planning to focus on going forward.
For this year's resolution, I've decided on "Finish more" as my mantra.
This represents finishing more tasks/projects/goals that I start (or have started). I've never been much of a completionist, but I'm weirdly obsessive about my career and career plans. I feel that a lot of the core elements of my self-drive towards my career could easily be translated to holding myself more accountable generally towards getting things finished.
Too often I catch myself starting a book/task/goal, putting it down, and never coming back to it because I don't remember exactly where I left off. This fuzzy + unfinished state feels leaves me often unfulfilled and annoyed at myself.
I plan to hold myself to (starting and) finishing some of the below goals:
Life goals
Saving for a house 🏡, continuing to travel ✈, and progressing in my career 💻.
Personal development goals
Getting better at cooking + baking 👨🏻🍳, running more 🏃🏻♂️ + completing a 5K and/or 10K, biking more 🚴🏻♂️, and doing more digital illustrations 🎨.
Fun goals
Finishing more books 📚, video games 🎮, and movies 🎬. Additionally, there are a few specific trailing life-todo items on my list like getting my first tattoo ✒️ that feel like they fall under the fun category.
(Sidenote: I've recently started working at Slack, and part of this has been using emojis and reacjis more...they feel appropriate here for quick goal analysis)
Happy New Year's, and Happy New Decade. Let's do this.