Happy (belated) New Decade and Happy Chinese New Year!

And that means... it’s that time of the year where everyone writes New Year’s Resolutions!!! I know many people do not believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I actually agree with you. I think New Year’s Resolutions when written in a lofty way are bullshit but goal setting is not. I believe that if you treat your resolutions as a GOAL rather than a lofty VISION, there’s a lot to be gained. I always feel that even though I don’t reach all of my goals, I end up making significant progress, more so than if I had not set them in the first place. 

My framework in setting my New Year’s Resolutions boil down to three main steps: my ideal situation, goals that will achieve that situation and what are the actions that I will commit to / habits that I will fall back to in order to achieve my goals. So I broke these down to four parts… 

Part 1: My Ideal Situation

What does this look like? 

Generally, I like to start these a bit before the New Year starts but time is just a social construct. Anyways. Some questions I ask myself are: where do I want to be in one year, who do I want to spend my year with, and what are the baseline accomplishments I want to have in order to feel that the year 2020 was a good one? 

What does this mean for me? 

Along with where I want to be in one year, I also asked myself where I wanted to be in a few years. As many of you know, I just started my first full time job. I have been learning a lot and also really thinking about what path my career as a software engineer will look like. Work has opened my mind in many ways including technical and career wise, so I wanted to take some time to digest the information. 

I went into Electrical Engineering wanting to go into engineering management so on top of school work, I also focused a lot on building organizations in college. However, after starting work, I realized that isn’t what I want for the next few years even though the path to becoming an engineering manager seems quite clear. I have friends who can guide me in this path, mentors who I trust and a leg up in terms of experiences. However, I’m starting to feel that I want to be an Individual Contributor (IC) for longer than I originally anticipated. 

Part 2: Writing The Resolution

Next part is actually writing the resolution (the goal). I generally follow the guideline of a SMART goal. Goals should always be SMART which stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Result Oriented and Timebound. If your goal is not SMART, you are just cheating yourself. Trust me. 

I learned this really early on as a senior in high school through a leadership organization that I was super involved in. I’m linking it here. 

So one of my resolutions this year is to get promoted! We have 2 opportunities to submit a promotion application every year, once in June and once in December. I’m aiming to get to the next level by June and worst comes to worst, December. This fits the criteria of a SMART goal. It’s specific in the way that it is clear what my career trajectory is. It’s also clearly measurable and result oriented since at the end of the year I can say definitively: I got promoted! It’s actionable in the sense that I know that I will need to submit a promotion application in June and/or December. Last but not least, the goal is time bound because I am giving myself one year to get promoted to the next level. 

Part 3: Committing to Actions and Building Habits

This part is what my friends from GLO would call an objective. Basically, objectives in this context are what you plan to do in order to achieve your goals. I broke these down into two sections. One section is a bunch of actions that I will commit to in order to achieve my goals  and the other set is a habit builder.

I will present the conventional definition of an objective first. I wrote a bunch of these for each goal and I framed them as actions (starting with a verb) since these should be actionable items that help me achieve my goal. You can think of them of things you choose to do to make sure you’re on track for reaching your goal. One objective for getting promoted, for me, was to work out a growth plan with my manager that would put me on the accelerated track to getting promoted and revisiting the growth plan after each project so we’re on the same track. 

I’m obsessed with building habits. I think James Clear put it very succinctly in his book, Atomic Habits. He is also an extremely well spoken individual and I can’t wait to review his book for you all. Building a good habit takes a long time but breaking it can take a very short amount of time. I wanted to challenge myself this year to commit to building 12 habits (30-day challenge) that corresponds with at least one of my goals. At the end of the month, I will evaluate if this habit is a keeper. 

In keeping with the job theme, one of my 30-day challenges is to work on a personal project (related to software engineering) every day for at least 30 minutes for the month of August. This one will probably be a keeper for at least a few months since I think there’s a lot to be learned from working on personal projects that I can apply at work as well. Also, learning more outside of work that is related to the topic will also be extremely beneficial in terms of understanding the reasoning behind design decisions and providing opportunities for you to grow in the company in the future. 

Preview of my Resolutions:

Goal: 

Increase net worth by $24k and save $10k for down payment for a house

Objectives: 

Keep monthly living expenses to <$1000 
Budget $300 every month for short trips 

Habits:

No Spend May & No Spend August where everything goes towards savings or necessities

Goal: 

Get to 51kg by September and maintain until EOY

Objectives: 

Eat out a max of 2 times a week 
Create grocery shopping list of 15 vegetables, 2 proteins and 5 fruit portions on Thursday night

Habits: 

Fast at least 16 hours everyday (intermittent fasting) 

Goal: 

Get promoted by EOY

Objectives:

Create at least 2 web apps that I can showcase online 
Work out growth plan with manager that puts me on the accelerated track and check in / revisit after each project

Habits: 

Work on personal project everyday for at least 1 hour