New Year Resolution

This is the second of my yearly review posts. I want to actively assess my life rather than just watching years slip by. Last year’s post: 2017 in review

2018’s goal

A quick recap on the goal I set up for last year

1 Find a new job — Update portfolio, actively looking for jobs/ natural networking, prepare interview questions. DONE! This is one of the greatest success in my goals, as I have been able to obtain a UX manager title and have a considerable increase in salary.

2 Gain a six pack — Work out 3 times/week, hire personal trainer. FAILED. This went extremely poorly, as I stopped working out and actually got a bigger belly 🙁

3 Have at least 8 hours of sleep, every day — Set up alarm clock at 23:00. Make myself accountable and have to lose something if I didn’t meet this goal. FAILED. This had a cascading effect on my health and relationship on people around me. As I constantly stay up late at night, I was unable to give 100% focus when I hangout with friends and in multiple occasions a lost my temper and had fights with my girlfriend.

4 Publish 12 articles — Set up schedule on calendar to publish every month.FAILED. I have only published 2 articles in 2018. I actually wrote a lot of articles and they all sit in the backlog. My writing was a little bit all over the place and I weren’t able to complete any of them.

5 Make 24 Origami models — Set up Origami time on my calendar. FAILED. I had set up systems to remind myself to create origami, but ultimately I created 0 this year.

6 Start a UX teaching course.FAILED. I did not complete any steps that would put me in a position to teach others about UX.

Reflection

Last year, I made 6 commitments at the start of the year, but I only followed through on 1 of them. I believe the main reason is that there is a lack of focus on the goals, they seem scattered and it seems like there is no strong reason for achieving them, it just made me felt good by writing them down.

This year, I’m setting 4 goals— but each goal are carefully picked to help me achieve a bigger goal, a big piture, a theme, and the theme for this year is:

The year of Taking control

I am going to implement 3 mechanism that will help me take . They are:

• Do things NOW — This means that whenever there is something I want to do, I will sit done and set up systems that will make sure I will do it
• Deadlines — Everything must have a deadline to avoid procrastination
• Focus on ONE thing at a time — Distraction is the main reason that cause me to unable to finish a task.

Goals for 2019

1. Gain a six pack — Gain control back to the shape of my body. I will start off by going to the gym 2 times a week, then slowly move to 3 times a week. I will commit to run at least 1 time a week.
2. Have at least 8 hours of sleep everyday— Gain control back to my health and temper. I will start off my turning off my lights at 12pm, then slowly move on to 11pm.
3. Publish 12 articles —Gain control back to something I committed. I felt a lost of control when I spend so much time writing but is unable to finish my articles. I plan to publish articles every month even NO MATTER WHAT. I will aim for consistency over quality and building a writing habit. I will do so by setting a weekly reminder to allocate time for writing,
4. Create 2 side projects — Gain control back to something I wanted to do, and had said I wanted to do it, but is unable to follow through. I will allocate 3 hours per week to work on my side projects
5. Bonus: Publish rabbit comic every week — This is a side goal that I enjoy doing on the side, and I hope I feel passionate continue doing it.

Another year complete. Time for a year in review post! This is the first of what I hope to be many review posts. I want to actively assess my life rather than just watching years slip by.

What Went Well

Health

I signed up from a gym member ship this year and I have been consistently going to gym 2 times a week. It is a good thing that it has now become part of my life and stuck as a hobby.

Gym 2 time/week @ Tue/Thur

Relationship

I am involved in a romantic relationship this year. My girl friend and I are currently been together for 9 months and is currently very stable. I consider having a healthy relationship as part of my Tripod of stability (Health, Relationship, Work), without those, I cannot pursue something greater.

Travel

This year, I went to Japan with my girl friend. This is the first time I plan a trip without my parents help. I enjoyed the time in Japan and I learned a great deal about what my GF likes and dislike, I believe this trip and strengthen our understanding with each other.

Finance Automation

I finally got my finance automated. It might come as a shock to someone that I did not hold a credit card under my name as I was 26 of age. The truth is I have been procrastinating about this since I was 21. The effect it has on me has been daunting. Liberating would not be enough to describe how I feel to finally did something that I should have done long time ago. Here is what I did:

1. Set up credit card.
2. Set up auto-pay for credit card.
3. Set up auto-pay for Octopus.
4. Set up auto saving account.

Writing

This year, I have published 3 articles on Medium that got quite a few attentions from the readers. I spent a lot of effort to write those articles and I consider them high quality. I am happy that someone actually read it, gave comments and liked my post, that made me feel happy and I am actually more motivated to write more this year.

Cooking

This is a great year for cooking. I started to take my cooking passion more seriously and committed to cook twice per week. The arrangement of aligning when the house maid is off (such that no one will cook at home) and my cooking schedule made it harder for me to slack off. I also met someone from the card game I played who happened to be a cook. I should consider asking for guidance from him from time to time.

What Did Not Go Well

You will see that a lot of things that didn’t go well is overlapped with things that go well, as I see there is always areas that I can do better if I push myself harder. This is the only way to be a top performer and become world class in my life.

Health

I have been staying up too late at night, for more than I wanted. I am most efficient when I get at least 8 hours of sleep and my current sleeping habit fails to achieve my goal.

Writing

In this year I have only published 6 articles. Far less than the ideal goal of 2 articles per week, and is only slightly better than last year’s 5 articles. The truth is that I had a lot of articles that I started in my backlog, but I lacked the discipline to finish them. Good things is that I do receive some positive responds from my reader.

This would be something I would continue to improve this year. I aim to double the amount of articles I published.

Origami

This was a poor year for Origami. I only created 2 turtle when my girl friend is around. When I look back I believe the reason for this is because I didn’t delegate specific time for this hobby. I should put origami as part of my calendar if I want to continue to pursuit this passion.

Work

Non of my goals of increasing salary nor getting a promotion has been met. To be honest I felt a little bit set back by the fact that the work I did was’t being valued.

I no longer feel passionate about going to work. Everyday I feel frustrated, annoyed and sometimes angry. The truth is, I have already decided that I wanted to move on, so whether I can reach my goal was more as a pride than something I really want.

On a plus side, I did learn a great deal of how to run projects and how to apply design principles in my work. I have been growing a lot in terms of design, and I do hope that the knowledge I have acquired is going to help me to find a job that I would enjoy.

Goals for 2018

1. Find a new job — Update portfolio, actively looking for jobs/ natural networking, prepare interview questions.
2. Gain a six pack —Work out 3 times/week, hire personal trainer.
3. Have at least 8 hours of sleep, every day — Set up alarm clock at 23:00. Make myself accountable and have to lose something if I didn’t meet this goal.
4. Publish 12 articles — Set up schedule on calendar to publish every month.
5. Make 24 Origami models — Set up Origami time on my calendar.
6. Start a UX teaching business — Go through ZTL course.