New Year’s resolutions: Bye 2019, hello 2020!

Writing a blog takes time and it’s easy to lose the track, lose the commitment, not being constant, run out of ideas, or just to give up #NoExcuses. At some point, I decided to not continue with it (but I kept it).

Today I want to write about this new year’s goals. One of them is continue with the blog, so that’s why I am writing these lines today. Been a long time since my last post here!

But before sharing this year’s goals, let’s talk about what happened last year, a little retrospective…

Year 2019 Resolutions

1. Health: Get in shape, lose weight. Had spent a year without any physical activity or regular sport.
2. Learning: Finish ThePowerMBA, and continue with Data Science and ML learning. Start seriously a Kaggle competition.
3. Work: Didn’t set any new goals, in middle of digital transformation and a huge rollout, goals were inherited from previous year. Only goal would be to keep motivation, help team, and make the right decisions when transformation would have arrived.
4. Mindfulness: Second try to include mindfulness practice in my day by day.

And what happened that Year 2019?

Let’s start with the good news:

• I succeeded losing weight, but the most important, I was consistent in my training.

How I did it? I was already paying monthly a gym service, but I was lazy enough even to cross the street to go to the closest gym. Fortunately I received a 50% off promotion for Freeletics, app that I tried time ago when I decided to quit from my Crossfit box. That changed everything. I paid the annual subscription, and after a blank month, and a shy start, I began step by step doing the coach workouts at home. Since then, almost 600 workouts, 3 small injuries, and from level 1 to 40. I built my weekly routine, and reached the weight I considered a great goal (before xmas).

• Regarding learnings, I also finished ThePowerMBA course. Someday I could explain more in detail what is, and my experience. Probably I will use some learnings in future posts.

Now, the not so good news:

• Wanted to join a 5km run, but between injuries and laziness, didn’t do. Also wanted to visit once a week the gym.
• I tried several times to compete at Kaggle, but I never take it seriously. When I said joining seriously a Kaggle competition, doesn’t mean to win or finish on medals, just mean being regular or consistent. Also, I stopped learning DS or ML, so It will be harder to start again.
• I didn’t succeed with Mindfulness. I read most of SIY book again, and did half of an Udemy course.
• At work, it was harder than expected to find motivation. Changes affected. Personally, I don’t think it was a good year.

New Year 2020 resolutions

Now that I reviewed last year, let’s set the goals for this year.

1. Health: Keep it up with Freeletics, and add 5kg to the lose weight goal. The main goal for this year would be to move the workouts to the mornings, this is the real challenge! That would mean to wake up earlier, but have free noons to spend with family and other topics. This year I would like also to join an OCR competition, 5km run, or 2km swim. That last one would mean to swim again, which is even harder to me.
2. Learning: This year I would like to continue with DS&ML, compete at Kaggle, and read a book at least every 2 months. I would like to improve also my public speaking.
3. Work: This is a very complicated year. Will finish rollout and transformation will arrive. So the goal will be to release ongoing projects the best, to keep the team motivated the most, and to find the best place for them in the new organization. Regarding myself, it will be an important year to make personal and professional decisions. I have to find where my place is in the new organization.
4. Mindfulness: 3rd try. Third time lucky!
5. Blog: It is moreless related to the second, writing about interests or topics means also to review, investigate, and learn about them. The goal for this year would be to write at least monthly, at the blog for personal thoughts and biz topics, and i was thinking on Medium for more technical topics, tips & tricks. I decided to do it (if possible) in english as a way to force myself to improve fluency.
6. Family: As David Bonilla pointed in his resolution’s post (see comments), I should include my commitment with family, so here it goes. I want to spend more time with my wife and kids. As I previously said, changing my morning habits – wake up earlier, workout, mindfulness, reading, learning, etc – should give me valuable time after work. Also, I’d like to date my wife once a month.

Having an entire year, goals seem feasible. But experience of past years say that not all the goals will be achieved.

I started the year with a little knee hurt, nobody said it would be an easy pathway ;)

Well, these are my goals. How about yours?

Thanks for reading, and see you soon in my next post!