Another year down means another year re-evaluating my goals and coming up with a new list of things that I would like to accomplish this upcoming year.
To wrap up 2018 in a sentence: being a parent is hard! My daughter was one-year old for most of the year which opened up a whole batch of time constraints I never could have planned for. For one, she went from crawling around to running (and dancing!) everywhere. Just keeping up with her led me to get the majority of my 10,000 daily steps in. Pretty much anytime she wasn’t asleep my time has been 100% devoted to her which is pretty great but not conducive to accomplishing some of the goals I had planned from last year. That’s OK though, as I think I’ve learned to manage my time better around her, so here’s to hoping that 2019 is full of personal milestones!
Professional Achievements
- Was issued our site’s second patent and have a third one in development that (hopefully) gets written-up this year.
- Because an IEEE Senior Member, having accumulated 10 years of experience, detailing professional growth over the last 5 years.
- Led our radiation test team to one of the busiest years (both, in terms of schedule and revenue) since I have joined the site eight years ago.
- Concluded a sizeable contract that involved a tremendous amount of teamwork and effort in order to get it completed on time.
Personal (+ Family) Achievements
- Hit over 50,000 downloads of my Number Sense material in October — and just checked it earlier today and have eclipsed the 80,000 download mark (!!)
- Completed a revision of my widely popular Number Sense manual and added several dozen pages of new material.
- Although I feel well short of my 1,000 mile goal, I ran for 376 miles across 70 active days (my schedule, both at home and at work, got immensely busy starting in June).
- Helped throw a successful 2-year old birthday party at our house and had a wonderful year watching my daughter grow up!
- Had two great vacations with both sides of my family that resulted in some epic family photo sessions.
Where I Fell Short
- Still haven’t taken the Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam (ugh!) — I’m currently re-evaluating whether I want to even try for it now or not…
- Did not read as many books as I set out to rad. I wanted to shoot for 2 per month (24 total), but wound up reading 16. As a result, I’ve augmented my reading goals for this year.
- Feel incredibly flat with my math reading. I did get through some books (like Paul Zeitz’s The Art and Craft of Problem Solving), but overall I was very underwhelming.
- Although I’ve made incredible leaps with regards to time management, I can always improve (see: this year’s goals).
I took 2018 as a re-calibration of my expectations. Although my goals seem to remain roughly the same for this year, I think I’ve developed a better mindset on how to actually workup and execute them. So without further ado, here is my 2019 list:
- Run 1,000 miles. I’m off to a good start so far: 3 weeks in and 63.0 miles down! I need to average about 2.75 miles a day which is totally do-able. I’ve signed up for the Salt Lake City marathon and have a stretch goal of completing a 100-miler by the end of the year.
- Read 20 books. For this year, I’m going to shorten the number and focus more on quality and reading the types of books I personally find enjoyable. I’ve already rolled through Naked Statistics and am half-way through The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, so I’m off to a good start there, too.
- Keep up better with the website. I’ll admit it, sometimes sitting down on my computer and hashing out a post — regardless of length — is a bit of a slog. For 2019, I want to write-up at least 1 post a month and not just be pigeonholed into discussing what’s happening my life. I want to actually do more projects and report back on those findings. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from my Number Sense material and I want to expand by doing short instructional videos for each of the tricks.
- Take my scheduling to the next level. Move from effectively planning to actually executing the majority of the tasks I have planned.
- Do one thing around the house every day. Pretty self-explanatory!
And that’s it! As usual (in order to combat the planning fallacy), I’ve made a small number of goals that I can break into accomplishable sub-pieces rather easily.
Here’s hoping that 2019 turns out to be just as productive as some of my past years!