My Goals for 2024

At the start of this year, I started it with a list of goals - At the start of the year, I did regular updates on these goals, and have tried to keep these as the year has gone. Given this year is coming to an end I would like to do a closing post on these goals and how they went, and posit some goals for 2024. I will say, that even though some of these goals were not achieved, having these at the back of my mind has been a good help in actually making sure I achieved something in 2023. I’m glad I did it, and I think this system was far more effective than my typical “I want to lose weight” New year’s resolution before this.

2023

I’m going to go over the goals in their sections, but overall I want to say that 2023 has been an interesting year. I think I am leaving it better than I entered it, despite the annoying voice in my head telling me otherwise. I got my driving licence, and my first IT certification travelled with friends on two separate occasions, and I finally have people who I consider friends IRL. I have said for a while I consider myself to be a man rather than a boy, but this year is good evidence of that. I won’t pretend that this year has been a total success, I am behind on the certification roadmap I set for myself, and despite the constant promises to myself to change, I am still overweight. However 2024 is a new year, and I look forward to whatever adventures it will bring.

Now to the goals

I am going to write more

At the start of the year, I set myself the goal of writing more and originally planned to try and complete the 100 days to offload challenge. This was a failure on the surface, this blog does not have 100 posts. I do however see this goal, overall, as being a success. I have a blog that I actively post on and am proud of. I decided to quit the 100 days to offload the challenge early on, and the reason behind that was I felt it was encouraging me to write (excuse my french) s**t. Take the starbucks post for example, this was not something that benefitted anyone from out being on my site - least of all me. Take this in contrast to posts I am proud of, for example LOL Limewire, HCPP 2023, and IPoAC. These posts took time for me to write down, and I enjoyed writing them. I think this blog will continue to thrive and flourish because of this goal, especially with my addition to the build-logs section.

I am going to be healthier

As I mentioned in the intro to this post - I am still overweight. I don’t know whether I can say this goal was a success, because it feels like a cop-out. I am going to talk to my therapist before posting this, and maybe she can shed some light on it. I will say this, however, this year I quit energy drinks. I also have killed off my on-off relationship with nicotine-related products. I think most importantly I have matured in my understanding of my relationship with food, and grown to understand that my weight is the culmination of 25 years of bad habits. It is not as simple as “just eat less”. You see, you do not get to my size just because you eat too much, it is a deep-rooted psychological issue that is likely related to the fact I have an addictive personality. I think having an open-ended goal was a massive help given that. Having an open-ended goal allowed me to deal with the multiple bricks that build up the wall of my weight i.e. energy drinks, or my compulsive need to order food. Within that light, yes, this was a success. The elephant in the room with me and health is my weight, however, and while I technically am healthier it feels more like a silver lining rather than sunshine. This is going to be something I need to continue to work on in the new year.

I am going to have no account overdrawn

This, surprisingly, was an out-and-out success - I can assure you, of all the goals I set for myself at the start of the year, this was not one I thought I would achieve. I will say this, I left it very late, and it required me to put away £250 every month of the last half of the year. I also have a lot of debt consolidated in my Monzo Flex account, however, this is not as bad as an overdraft because the money is automatically paid at the end of the month regardless. Doing this goal has taught me a better appreciation of budgeting, and my relationship with money as a whole. I think that building up this healthy relationship with money needs to be something I continue to work on in 2024, but I get onto that when I address next year’s goals

I want to read more

I did not achieve this goal. While I am constantly learning via podcasts and videos, I very rarely find the time to sit down and read. I think the issue is I set myself the objective of reading 20 books, and this wasn’t something that worked with my personality. This is going to sound like a redundant statement, but I don’t like doing things I don’t enjoy - I value my free time, and do not want to spend them reading for the sake of reading, just like I didn’t want to write 100 posts just for the sake of writing 100 posts. What is the lesson to take from this? I think that setting hard goals is not something that I operate well with. I need open-ended and flexible suggestions rather than closed and rigid commands. Something to bear in mind for next year’s goals.

2024 - Year of stability

I mentioned CGP Grey in my last post on this subject, specifically his theme framework. I didn’t go into much detail on it then but I plan to now. This goes back to this this video he made, where he goes on to say that your New Year’s resolution is likely not flourishing or just forgotten. It established the idea that you highly commit to it at the start of the year, only to abandon it a few weeks in. He suggests a better idea is to set a theme like “year of reading” or “year of health”, it is an intentionally open-ended and broad idea. In the year of reading, you might approach a decision of “Will I read a book or doom scroll Instagram for another hour” - It makes decisions easier.

My entire life has been somewhat jumping from sinking ship to sinking ship, bearly avoiding the cold plunge of the ocean. I am at a point in my life where I can begin to set down some solid foundations, to build up a life that is based on “where can I go tomorrow” rather than “where do I need to go tomorrow”. I want stability - I want to know how much money is going in and out of my accounts; I want to start saving for a house; I want to have a clear idea of what meals I am going to be eating; I want to know that if the absolute worst was to happen tomorrow I will be ok. That is this year’s theme, and the goals below are made with that in mind

I want to save more - I want to start saving money rather than just spend it as it goes into my account. I like having a budget, and it served amazingly useful in helping me pay off my overdraft this year. I think the best approach for this at first is going to be planning my planned expenses for the month i.e. haircuts, how much money I bring to the pub, what I eat at work. Once I have all these expenses accounted for, I can figure out where I can rebalance the books to get into a surplus.
I want to learn more - This is a fairly easy one because I am always learning - If I sit still for too long I get depressed. I do however feel a lot of my learning is not structured, and very ad hoc. I want to leave this year with more evidence of what I know, this does not necessarily mean courses and certifications, however. It does not even necessarily mean tech-related things either. I think think will aid my stability as it will make me more confident in my abilities, and could even help me grow in my career.
I want to exercise more - I used to enjoy going to the gym I would argue the gym has been the way I deal with traumatic experiences. Something about pulling 250kg off the floor breaks down daemons and lets you know “it will be ok”. Unfortunately, since I have started working full time I have found it hard to commit to working out, and now I have moved into a job where I sit all day I feel my fitness levels diminishing more and more. I want to commit to exercising more - how I don’t know, but I must find a way to do it. I want my fitness to be a state that I can grow from, rather than their constantly diminishing state
I want to rest more - One of my biggest problems is that I am always going - I am always studying, always thinking, always looking for the next project. I have been doing this for years in an attempt to run away from depressed thoughts. This does however mean I follow this ebbing and flowing path of hustle and burnout. I don’t want to do it anymore, I want a stable pattern of productivity.