At first, according to my last year’s resolutions post, I thought this year’s resolutions would look like the image above. Fortunately after reviewing a bit further, I did manage to accomplish 5 of 7 goals, so it’s not that bad.
- I went to Google I/O
- I got back into the open source community in Mexico giving talks in Puerto Vallarta
- I traveled several times to San Francisco
- I didn’t initiated my entrepreneurship with a startup, but I started freelancing and got some ideas around.
- I lost some weight and did a bit more exercise than the year before.
This 2011 has been a year with lots of changes. The good times have been great, but the bad times have also been very deep. It’s been a year with a lot of travelling, learnings and experiences.
For this year, I’m still having trouble setting up my goals. I’ve been thinking about this post for the past two weeks and still things look blurry. Maybe because of all the things that happened last year and I still don’t have a clear mind to see where I want to go. Right now I feel this 2012 is a blank sheet of paper. Anything can happen.
Still, I don’t like having absolutely no plans. There’s a saying that has been sounding in my head for the last months: “If you don’t decide what to do with your life, life will decide for you…and it might not be what you wanted”. So I must set a few goals at least.
Improve health by getting fit.
I need to get closer to my ideal weight. I need to loose about 10kgs. I’ve been loosing weight with little effort following some tips from The 4-Hour Body
. I interrupted my diet but I will restart it since it has given me good results.
Quantify and monitor life.
I would like to start monitoring and quantifying more the things I do in life so I can take decisions based on real numbers not just on appreciations of what I’ve done. For example, I just told you that I did more exercise last year than the year before. That’s just a hunch. I really can’t tell exactly by how much hours of exercise I exceeded the year before. Also because of my high cholesterol detected a few years back, I must test my blood regularly. I want to keep track of my health improvements and blood tests so I can motivate myself to keep making good health choices as I watch my progress. Things like that can be measured and tracked, and will aid me when taking decisions in health, financially and other aspects of life. Reading Sacha Chua’s blog has inspired me to start tracking and monitoring life.
Keep exploring startup ideas.
Release early, release often. Last year I did release the changes I had promised, but I’ve also had time to develop some new ideas but haven’t been published. I’ve been approached by a lot of people with ideas and the most common thing is that no one executes. I did some prototypes but nothing got published. And if it’s not published, it doesn’t exist. Those ideas must get out of my mind and my local machine and out there to gather feedback in hopes that one of them might also get some wings. If not, I still win, by learning what doesn’t work and why.
Keep the traveling going
It’s very refreshing and inspirational to travel around and change locations out of your routine. You know what they say, that sedentary life is bad for health. I think it not only applies to a sitting down in front of a computer kind of life, but also a not getting out and staying in the same places can age your mind.
Write more.
Even if it’s not a blog post to publish. I want to do writing as a mind exercise of setting my thought clearly and in order in a written form. Writing your thoughts, memories and ideas down helps organizing your mind and it’s cool to be able to go back and read what you’ve thought before, how you felt, etc. The mind can’t retain all the details. The book Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past
was a very inspirational read about getting into writing, as well as a good guideline on how to start and what to do.
