New Year, New Challenges

2020 is finished, and a new year is upon us. At the beginning of a new year, I like to think about what I want to have accomplished by the end of the year. I think it’s important to specifically set goals. Otherwise, what happens is that time just passes, and pretty soon another year is gone, and I may look back and wish I had done something differently. Some things may come up naturally and be more easily accomplished, but others require planning a series of smaller steps, or at least specific reminders to get something done on time.

A good example would be learning Chinese. I’ll be going for the HSK (Han Shuo Ke) Level 4 Certificate this year, which means that I need to continuously study character meanings, a bit of grammar, and even some writing. This isn’t something that I can put off, and I need to at least register for the test by a certain time of year. I did this in 2019 for HSK Level 3 and had no problems, so if I study a little bit every day, I should be ready for Level 4 this year.

Learning a language is just one of the categories in which I like to plan advancements. There is also my career, which was the main focus of the previous year, and will continue to be an important subject for the foreseeable future. I want to continue to improve my skills as a CTO. I want to keep looking for better ways for our developers to deliver their solutions and corrections to our application. This past year, I have personally grown a lot as a Lead Developer. Now that I have a solid grasp on our application, I want to shift a bit of that focus onto increasing the skills of other developers. This involves things like implementing best practices in the development process, but starts with just having more discussions to clarify what we are doing and how that is going to further our long-term goals.

There are other subjects that I will include, such as improvements to our home, or improving our childrens’ English skills. Most goals have to be conscious decisions that are planned accordingly, otherwise the children will speak English at a decent level, but spelling, reading, and writing will all be delayed. Even though one subject can be the focus for a year, I feel that it is important to have a variety of different types of things that are all addressed. This achieves a sense of balance, and ensures that things don’t get forgotten or left unaddressed the whole year.

In the same vein of thought, I try not to make my goals too big for any one subject. I just want to make small advancements each year, but to make sure that the challenges which I do take on, indeed get done. For example, my plan for our home this year is to finally finish the bedrooms, which basically just need carpetting, and to redo the downstairs bathroom. That is plenty of work by itself. It’s true that I have other plans for our kitchen and eventually the basement, but I’m not going to overwhelm myself thinking about all of that right now. I’m just going to prioritize a couple of important things, and those other improvements can be goals for subsequent years.

In my mind, half the battle is already won by simply recognizing the importance of the process. Once the annual goals have been defined, they are not easily forgotten. Certain things, like reading a book a month, used to be difficult to manage. Now, it is an automatic process that I organize each year. It’s not even really part of my list of goals anymore, because I don’t need to think about it. A new year is a new opportunity for new things to get done, and to feel good for being organized enough to plan out the important challenges which should be addressed.