Tag: goals

2016

Writing a post about what my goals and resolutions for 2015 was a great idea. I think being public and open about what I wanted to achieve was added incentive to actually completing those goals. In the same vein here are my resolutions for 2016 –

  1. Always be there for family, friends, and romantic interests (for lack of a better term): It can be hard sometimes to make time for the people who love you and the people you love. I don’t ever want that to happen. As Kurt Vonnegut (via the character of Malachi Constant) said in The Sirens of Titan —

    “…a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

  2. Keep volunteering: I managed to do some volunteering in 2015. I would love to put in more hours of volunteering in 2016.
  3. Stop procrastinating: I’ve realized that I tend to procrastinate quite a bit. While it hasn’t negatively affected my life in any way I think it’s a terrible trait to have and I will work on removing it in 2016.
  4. Be open and honest: I phrased this as “Be less shy” in 2015, but I think this is a more accurate description of what I am aiming for. I wrote a post explaining my rationale behind this decision. I still stand by that. After living life with this philosophy last year and seeing its (positive and negative) outcomes I cannot fathom living any other way.
  5. Learn Rust: Learning Rust or Erlang was one of my goals for 2015. I’ve decided to narrow the scope and focus on Rust.
  6. Read 24 books: My goal last year was to read 12 books over the course of 2015. I ended up reading 25. I’m very confident that I will be able to complete 2 books a month on average.
  7. Read 24 research papers: Same as last year. I will do a better job at tracking and writing about these this time around.
  8. Write 36 blog posts: 3 posts a month. Based on my posting frequency last year this should be doable.
  9. Get better a playing the guitar: I bought a beautiful guitar last year. My goal is to get noticeably better at playing it.
  10. Fitness goals:
    (a) run a mile in 8 mins (my best mile time is currently 9 minutes and 50s. I’m terrible at running sigh)
    (b) do a handstand
    (c) squat twice my body weight
    (d) run a half marathon
    (e) +20 lb weighted muscle-up

Let’s see how many of these I can achieve in 2016. It’s going to be a fun year!

List

Goodreads recently announced their list of the best books of 2015. I used their list from 2014 to determine what I wanted to read over the course of 2015, and this morning on the bus ride to work I used their latest list to plan (part of) what I want to read in 2016.

Here is the list I’ve come up with so far:

  1. The Girl on the Train
  2. The Nightingale
  3. Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
  4. Seveneves