2022: Year Ahead

I know 2021 wasn’t the easiest year for most of us(looking at you, billionaires), but overall I was lucky enough to have an OK year. But alas, it’s the past, and in this post I’m going to focus on the future. Unlike previous years, I’ve decided to make my goals public, hoping the possibility of public humiliation will keep me accountable. If I don’t meet them, my 2022: Year Behind post will be very disappointing.

Go slow

This is the single most important thing for me this year: I really need to stop rushing things. The whole education system programs us to go as fast as possible and Amazon’s “deliver at all costs” approach has definitely exacerbated this bad habit for me. There was a time when I would actually enjoy the “process” (journey, if you will) instead of just rushing to the destination, and I really want to get it back.

Back in college I constantly took detours while studying. I enjoyed not only branching out, but also going as deep as possible to learn more. I was doing a breadth-first search with optional depth-first search when I encountered something interesting(there’s an interview question hiding here). I used to ask “how can I use this” instead of the typical “are we going to use this in real life”. Funnily enough, I use some of those “detours” at my daily job and I can’t remember how many times they came up during my interviews.

This’ll be the foundation of my “growth mindset”, so I have to make sure I’m mindful of my pace, no matter what I’m doing. Just need to embrace the struggle instead of cutting corners!

Write more

This was probably my biggest failure last year. I only published one post, which is really disappointing, especially since I do enjoy writing. But this is the year I finally get it done, I can feel it! I already have a couple of “prompts” in mind, but please let me know if there’s anything you want me to write about. It’s mostly going to be about building the habit, so I won’t be too selective about the content. It’ll be more on the quantity side instead of quality – I have been procrastinating under the disguise of “perfectionism”, but no more!

I’m planning to publish at least eight posts this year. Hopefully more than that, but that’s the success threshold. Writings will continue until the morale improves!

Do less

I don’t do resolutions, but at a given time I usually have a list of things I claim to be focusing on. These can be anything from “cooking” to “traveling more”. However, looking back, I can clearly see that I usually spread myself thin by trying to do too many different things at the same time. I’m planning to break this habit this year. Because it’s obvious that I’m slightly better than mediocre at a lot of things, but great at, well, pretty much nothing.

This obviously goes hand in hand with “going slow”. I will need to stay focused even when the progress is slow instead of rushing to the next shiny thing. In return, I’m confident doing less will help me do more in the long run.

Read fewer books

Every year I participate in Goodreads’ “Reading Challenge”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, you can basically set a “reading goal” and track your progress. I have been (successfully) hitting 30 books for the last couple years(except last year I believe.)

“Why would you want to read less?” you might be wondering and the answer is simple: I need to go slow. I realized that I’d rush to finish the books to meet my goal, especially come November. It’s a textbook example of Goodhart’s law: number of books read has become useless because it became a target for me. I think we can all agree that understanding 20 books is much much better than blindly rushing through 30 books.

In order to actually achieve my goal, I am going to switch to active reading. I’ll actively take notes while reading a book and will re-read as necessary. My S.M.A.R.T goal here is to having “takeaways” and “action items” for each book, so I have something concrete when I’m done.

PS: This is only for non-fiction as I’ll continue to consume fiction books in audiobook format, which makes exercising less boring.

Conclusion

I was able to establish a couple of good habits in 2021, but I have bigger (and fewer :)) goals for 2022. This year is going to be all about “macro” habits to build a foundation for my future goals, so I am for once excited for the new year. I mean it can’t be worse than 2021, right?