2018 in review : How to invest into personal goals along with a hectic full time job !
Another year end listicle … You’d have bookmarked dozens of them, only to never open it again. But I promise, this blog post is a quick read, with some of the absolute best/crazy things I did in 2018, and hopefully some of them inspire you to make a list of your own, and live 2019 to the fullest.
Here are my personal goals that I achieved in 2018 :
- Crazy thing #1 : Did a Cross-Country Train Trip :
I solo backpacked for 6000km along the historic silk road of China (More about it here).
2. Getting comfortable with the waters :
I got better at swimming (Yea, I learnt how to swim at the age of 24, it’s never too late to start anything, right?)
3. Playing a sport 3–5 days a week:
I started playing lawn tennis.
4. Listening to Podcasts regularly :
I started listening to a16z, Hidden Brains & Business Wars podcasts. And occasionally followed This Week in Tech , How I built this & Masters of Scale.
5. Read one-book-a-month throughout the year (Actually touched 15 books, by Dec 31st 2018)
Here are some of the best books I’ve read in the last 24 months :
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl (About an Austrian’s survival in Nazi Concentration Camps)
- Inside the Plex (The best book on how Google went about revolutionising Search, News, Youtube, Android and everything else that we use today)
- Iacocca: An Autobiography (How the President of Ford got fired on his birthday; and went on to join a rival Chrysler as the President to turn around the company.)
- Genghis Khan and making of the Modern World
- Shoe Dog : A memoir by the creator of Nike
- A fort of Nine Towers (An Afghan’s memoir on sufferings in Kabul during the Soviet War & Taliban rule)
- Rebuild: How brands in India overcame crisis and emerged stronger
6. Doing all this required a change in my daily routine — I used the power of subconscious mind to build a habit — Our subconscious mind is active for a few minutes before we sleep and after we wake up, so I kept a whiteboard close to my bed which would be the first & last thing I see everyday; reminding me to do the following :
- Wake up at 6am.
- Play/Exercise at 7am.
- Browse Twitter (And not Instagram/Facebook), for a few minutes after that.
- Read a book/Listen to Podcasts for a few minutes.
- Head to office.
7. Crazy Thing #2 : Feel an adrenaline rush :
I hiked across the world’s most dangerous mountain trail (More about it here).
8. Documenting all the ups and downs of my life, to be able to connect the dots backwards someday :
I restarted maintaining a google doc, where I documented every month of my life in 2–4 bullet points, so that someday I can look back at it all.
Like Steve Jobs says : “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, You can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
9. Learning a Watersport :
I got better at surfing — Learnt enough to make surfing a hobby/holiday sport.
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But priorities change throughout the year and not all goals that you set at the beginning of the year can be achieved. And everytime I’m on a vacation, I reprioritise and commit to a few goals that I will achieve, by following the “60 seconds of flight takeoff rule”.
What’s the “60 seconds of flight take-off” Rule :
Just when my flight takes off from the airport, I close my eyes for the first 60 seconds, and commit to a few goals that I’ll achieve no matter what, when I’m back to Bangalore.
And this weekend, I’ll return to Bangalore from my vacation, and will commit to a few personal goals for 2019 during my flight — And probably blog about it next year ……
Some of these goals will be moonshot, and you should have such goals too — Because if you don’t imagine that it will happen, then it will never happen !
