hi, happy new year and welcome to my new publication where i’ll be reflecting on my life and sharing what i’ve been learning, building and thinking about + some other things i find cool over 2024. my goal is to be intentional about my life more and frequent reflection is a means to that end. follow along if you’re interested in my journey.
let's talk about new years resolutions. i don't recall a single year of my life where i set specific resolutions for myself and then stuck to them. i've never seen new years resolutions work for most people i know in real life. because you can't expect for yourself to set grandiose goals and radically change your life just because the calendar changed without taking specific, determined actions to do so. so i never believed in them.
nevertheless, i'm going to set some "resolutions" this year because i think it's worth trying. i hope to make this work, because i've learned to set better goals than most people following the smart framework and also, i'm fortunate to have a network of people trying to actively improve themselves by doing the same who would keep me accountable. i'm gonna treat my new years resolutions as a forcing function to reflect on my life at the start of the year, set my priorities, and make a public commitment for added accountability. so here they are:
get physically fit: i'm determined to improve my physical health this year. i'm going to workout daily for half an hour, be more active, and eat healthier everyday.
get really good at school: it's the final few months of my senior year of high school. i need to work hard, prove myself and perform at my full academic potential because i’ve been underperforming so far. which means practicing physics, chemistry and math daily, understanding everything and also being on track with all my school work. for 4.5 months, i’ll deprioritize everything else to preparing for my school exams.
get wiser: wanna read more this year. aim for one book + two long-form podcasts a week until may.
get better at communicating: i want to get better at communication in all forms. writing clearly will also help me think clearly which is an added advantage. one reason i started this publication is to get into the habit of writing and publishing daily. i also want to get better at short form writing, which i’ll practice through tweeting. and, once i get better at writing, i’ll also get better at speaking - i’ll practice that by airchatting more. but i’ll make sure to not spend more than 30 mins a day in this.
be intentional with time: i switched my iphone for an older iphone which only has imessage, phone, music, safari and email. all my other apps are on my ipad and mac and i can be more intentional when i open social apps instead of just checking them and scrolling everytime i’m free. i don’t want to be distracted and waste any time this year. i also want to timebox on my calendar and set more hours for deep work.
that’s all i had for today. these are my top priorities this year (at least till the end of my senior year). i expect to change some of this and i’ll add other stuff to it in the second half of the year when i go off to university, which will be a new arc of its own. there’s a lot of other smaller goals i have w/ respect to learning new things, building stuff and side projects, networking and improving my relationships.
but like I said, i’m not really treating these as actual new years resolutions for the entire year - so today i only listed down the most important ones.
thanks for reading so far! i’ll be writing here almost daily and i’ll keep y’all posted on my progress w/ these goals :)