For the past several years, I’ve been posting my new years resolutions online and then at the end of year, reviewing my success. So here’s 2016’s goals, which are ambitious.
Projects
- Complete my Duolingo Tree for German – I am currently 50% done with my Duolingo tree.
- Teach 2 personal finance classes – In 2015 I taught one personal finance class, and I have two more in the works this year.
- Secret unnamed project with Beeminder and Aaronpk – to be announced
- Have 4 maniac weekends/personal hackathons this year – already tentatively planned
- Take birthday bike camping trip on Olympic Peninsula
- Take three short overnight bike camping trips – Already tentatively scheduled
- Chair the Harry Potter Alliance board development committee into a successful HPA10 Gala
- Produce & release Transportini Season 1
- Write 50 words a day mini-habit
- Publish annual birthday data statistics zine
- Read 1 Economist article every day – This is another minihabit, helped by the fact that MY LIBRARY GOT THE ECONOMIST DIGITALLY FOR FREE! Yay!
Relationships
- Host 3 porch happy hours/dinner parties – we moved into this apartment because of the epic balcony, now it’s time to have some people over
- Create automatic triggers for friend/family check-ins – There will be a great more to come on this front, but I’ve let the “upkeep” of my friendships lapse in the past year (partially due to The Great Offspring Boom of 2015 which meant a lot of squirmy babies/tired new parent friends). I find it hilarious that my job involves managing a database to make sure that I check in regularly with donors and see how they are/have coffee with them, and yet I don’t do it with my own friends. For a long time this seemed “off-color” to have robots tell me to reach out to my friends, but it turns out that it’s mostly just nice to talk to my friends. If I use robots to manage everything else in my life (which I do), it’s just wrong to say that my friendships aren’t worth the same courtesy.
Fitness & Health
- Take a staycation from work after Cycle Oregon – I did a bad job of managing work-life balance this year and planning ahead for downtime.
- Be able to do the splits by year-end – This is the perennial new year’s resolution. Actively looking for suggestions to stick to this. Beeminder didn’t work. Nothing has worked. Maybe a photo project?
- Run 365 miles – Last year was 221 miles, this year I have beeminded 365 miles.
- Continue coffee only on weekends – It’s been working well to break the addiction and cut costs and to manage RA symptoms.
- Continue 2 booze-free days each week – This has been a good awareness-builder as far as breaking the “open a beer after work” habit.
Financial
- Save 50% of my income- to be clear, this is real savings, not deferred spending. I am not allowed to include saving that is for future consumer purchases (such as travel or a new computer.) I have been successfully doing this since July of 2015, so as long as I can stay the course I hope to be successful.
- Buy no new clothing- the one exception to this rule is shoes and gloves. I am allowed to get clothing for free, and to sew anything I would like (including purchases sewing notions as necessary.) I have plenty of clothing, and I have the skills and tools to sew clothing if I need more for some reason (except gloves, hence exception.)
- Buy no more cheaply-made shoes – Contrary to the above resolution, if I am going to buy shoes, I am not allowed to buy cheap shoes anymore. I am sick and tired of my shoes self-destructing in 3 months- my goal is to be frugal, not cheap.
- Max out my Roth IRA – Self-explanatory. $458/month to my Vanguard Roth
- Max out my IDA Savings account – Put $100/month into my Oregon IDA account until it reaches the $2000 max, which earns me a 3:1 return. It will be maxed out in August of this year.
- Complete a no-spend month – One month this year I would like to be a no-spend month, spending nothing except rent and utilities and groceries. I haven’t picked this month yet.
- Have my podcasting habit break even – I currently spend ~$804 annually for the privilege of having a podcast and podcasting studio- by 2017 I would like to have made at least that much income from sponsorships
- Continue meal planning/packing lunch – This is one of the best things I’ve done for both my stress level, my nutrition and budget, I’d like to continue it.
Disaster Preparedness
- Build up 3 weeks of food storage – I usually operate on a week’s food storage or less. When the Big One comes, I’m going to be screwed.
- Store 28 gallons of water for myself & Aaronpk & Indiewebcat – Same as above
What are your thoughts? What are you doing this year?
I had an acquaintance once who had a spreadsheet of her social connections. She go down the list (I forget the temporal quantity ) and reach out to make plans. If they didn’t connect they got bumped to the bottom of the list and I think k she had like a three strikes kind of rule (not sure # of attempts) after that I think she’d drop them off the list and up to them to reconnect. I don’t remember the particulars but liked the idea. It made her reach out to her friends and find out the connections worth maintaining in terms of reciprocation.
The real issue is that absent skating, there’s no natural consequences to not stretching/building flexibility currently. Other things I have good discipline in have natural consequences – money management, meal planning, studying german. Not stretching? Eh, I can’t touch my toes without some work. Oh well.
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