Happy new year! Recently I’ve started to reflect more on myself, and every half year or so I try to set some new things that I can focus/work on. I’m writing my goals for this upcoming half-year here so that I can hopefully feel more committed to them, and follow through with them as best as I can. In no particular order:
- Allow more time for socializing/focus more on socializing
- Continue to take care of my health, especially my diet
- Work on anxiety/general confidence
- Write one blog post per month
- Reduce screen time on phone
- Focus less on money and more on experiences/value gained
- When in conversation, be fully present with no distractions
- Arrive early to things whenever possible
- Do one thing at a time
Focus More on Socializing
There were a lot of times in the past semester where I would either be hanging out with friends and feel the need to get back to working, or I would have the opportunity to go hang out and not go because I felt like I had work to do. I definitely still want to focus on work and being productive, but I want the emphasis to be on productivity. I believe that I can do the same amount of work in less time if I’m focused (see my last goal), and I want to use some of this extra time to socialize more. I find that I’m usually at my happiest whenever I’ve been around people, and that I’m often in a worse mood if I’ve been isolated for a while.
Continue to Take Care of My Health
I think I’ve already been doing this a bit better, but I want to continue to eat as well as possible and to exercise a good amount. My goal is to do at least 4 workouts or cardio-related activities per week.
Work on Anxiety/General Confidence
For this one, I had two situations in mind. The first is presentations—for some reason, I’ve started to get extremely nervous when doing any kind of presentation (to the point that it impacts how I talk). Though I’m not quite sure how I’ll get better at this, I want to be more conscious of it and work towards reducing that anxiety.
The other situation is in conversation; I’ll often overthink things that I say (either during or after the conversation), and I feel that this hasn’t been beneficial for me. I’ll look to be more in the moment in each conversation I have, and then accept how it went afterwards.
Write One Blog Post Per Month
This one is pretty self-explanatory, but I want to write and publish one blog post on this site at the start of each month. This is the first one!
Reduce Screen Time on Phone
I’ve been pretty inconsistent with this one in the past, as I’ll average anywhere from 3 to 5+ hours of screen time on my phone per day. Considering that there are about 16 awake hours in a given day, 5 hours is a lot! I want to consistently average less than 3 hours per day, and use most of my screen time for more important things like email and messaging.
Focus Less on Money and More on Experiences/Value Gained
This is another thing I’ve struggled with. I don’t like to spend money unless it’s on a physical item that I’ll use for a while (e.g. music equipment). In other words, I usually hesitate to spend money on food, going out, etc. I don’t want to start spending all of my money or anything like that, but I want to be a bit more okay with spending larger amounts of money on experience-based expenses. If something is expensive but it will likely lead to a memorable experience, then I’ll be okay with spending money on that thing.
When in Conversation, Be Fully Present With No Distractions
Whenever I’m in a group or 1-on-1 conversation, I want to fully engage in the conversation and not be distracted. I’ll often go on my phone or laptop, and I almost never get any value out of leaving the conversation to do this. I want to be either all in or all out—either be fully in the conversation, or leave if I want to go do something else.
Arrive Early to Things Whenever Possible
This one’s simple: in the past I’ve always aimed to arrive on time to things, but inevitably I end up being late most of the time. I want to do a small mental shift so that I aim to arrive early; this way I’ll arrive on time in the worst case instead of being late.
Do One Thing at a Time
This one relates to the theme of minimizing distractions. In general, I want to minimize how much I multitask and instead commit to doing one thing at a time. I’ll set a target amount of time that I want to work on something for, and then do only that thing (as much as possible).
Conclusion
I wrote 9 goals here, which is pretty ambitious. However, I think that I can at the very least see improvement in each thing I’ve listed. Most of these goals also aren’t measurable in any concrete way, so I will need to check in on myself regularly. This should be a good learning experience, and I’m excited to give it a shot. Thanks for reading, I hope you have a great year!