Inspired by Jason Lengstorf's blog entry, here is my own 2018 retrospective. I am publishing this in the hopes that I will be more accountable and therefore hopefully increase the changes of actually achieving my resolutions!

What went well?

2018 was actually a very good year for me and here are the things that are standing out:

1. Managed to take care of our baby boy (without any outside help)

Our second son was born in October 2017, and my wife and I decided to take care of him without any helpers. Living in Singapore, having a nanny is more or less standard, but for various reasons, a nanny does not work for us. Also, with my parents living in another country and the passing away of my mother-in-law a while ago, this was not an option either.

Today, I am really proud of me (and especially my wife) that we have made it through the year. It was often difficult, but ultimately it is very rewarding to be able to do that, and I it will only get easier next year... :-)

2. I got promoted!

Yes, I got promoted at my work, despite the big focus on my baby son. Nothing more to add here.

3. Got my hands dirty on coding again

Inspired by the focus on engineering and the change to an engineering culture at my work, I found the joy of coding again, though there is a lot to catch-up. I have mostly focused on JavaScript, with a few success stories of prototypes that I have created. There is even one prototype (an Apollo GraphQL server), which I have created and is now being used by an engineering team and is successfully running in production!

4. "Regularly" went to gym

I am using quotes here, because it should say "regularly, whenever possible". Meaning that unless I fell sick, or I had to help out at home with the kids, I went to gym 3 times a week (in the early morning, before work).

What didn't go well?

1. "Just us" time

Looking after the baby was challenging, and has unfortunately also impacted the time my wife and I were able to focus on us. A dinner, or even just sitting together for a while and talk (about something else but children), was almost not possible.

2. Wanting to do too many things

Have you ever been in the situation where you open Netflix, because you have some time to watch a show, and there are so many shows you want to watch, that you become frustrated and end up not watching anything at all, and instead just go to bed? I experienced this all the time. And not only while watching Netflix, but in almost any situation where I had some me time.

3. Body transformation

Despite going to gym "regularly" (note the quotes here again), I did not gain any muscle mass (or not a lot, anyway).

4. Spending time coding

Although I consider it an achievement about actually spending time on coding (see above section), I would have liked to focus even more on it.

What will I change going forward?

Like Jason, I want to set myself some high-level goals for 2019, with more details in "90-day-goals".

High-level 2019 goals

• I want to start to meditate. Mindfulness was something that was on my mind for a while now, especially since hearing about it from co-workers as well as reading about it on gatesnotes.
• I want to become a more hands-on engineer. Further work on prototypes, pair with senior engineers, etc. Ultimately, I want my name to regularly appear in our code repository at work.
• I want to start a blog, where I regularly write about my progress. I was thinking very long about this. Should I really make this public? Isn't this personal and I should keep it to me? Ultimately, my hope is that when I write this down and make it public, I will feel more accountable for it, and therefore increase the changes to actually achieve these goals
• I do have goals to address family time, but I consider these too personal and would not want to blog about them

90 day goals for Q1 2019

In the next 90 days, I want to:

1. Find out more about Mindfulness by reading the book THE HEADSPACE GUIDE TO MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS by Andy Puddicombe. I only heard good things about it and I am sure it will kick-start me.
2. Create a simple app using Flutter and build the same as a progressive web app. Flutter may be useful as it is one of the options we are thinking about at work to write the next version of our app with. At the same time I want to continue focusing on JavaScript
3. Create a blog (already done) and personalise it more. Currently, it is using the default gatsbyjs template.
4. Write at least one article about each of my three 90 day goals above.

That's it, wish me luck! :-)

Tags

• 2019-resolutions