Ask HN: What is your new year's resolution?
What do you plan to achieve this year? Both professionally and personally.
Are you going to learn a new programming language? Familiarize yourself with a concept? Spend time with family?
Are you going to learn a new programming language? Familiarize yourself with a concept? Spend time with family?
443 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 346 ms ] threadI think, if you're going to set a particular time to focus on changing behaviors, you really want to start right away, with very small steps, and ramp up as you approach the time of focus.
Q1 for me will emphasize going even deeper on sleep improvements, and on organizing events / making friends.
If you're in the bay area, feel welcome to reach out
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29752304
Seems like you've been thinking about this for several years now!
Professionally, I have big plans to transition my team to GitOps. It's going to take a lot of cross-training, but I'm really looking forward to it.
Mine are modest, send 3 v5~v6 benchmarks in my area, red point a 5.11a and solo a multi pitch.
In terms of training plan, I’m generally very loose. I’m definitely blessed to be very lightweight naturally, and I think I’ve developed some pretty strong fingers over time. That combination lends itself to crimps which is definitely my preferred style.
Board climbing like on a moonboard or kilter board are fantastic to build power, but be careful how frequently and how intensely you climb on those. My fingers tend to feel quite tweaky after a lot of board sessions.
Ultimately climbing is a game of time and consistency. Listen to your body and keep grinding at it, and you’ll definitely see progress!
Good luck to you as well!
Outdoors in Aus. on the Ewbank freeclimbing scale, the blade line to Federation Peak is an easy (albeit highly exposed) 17 [1], whereas Cape Raoul poles [2] rate about a 22.
[1] https://zenandtheartofclimbing.com/50-classic-climbs-austral...
[2] https://zenandtheartofclimbing.com/50-classic-climbs-austral...
- A very fuzzy 10-year horizon plan-ish thought play. It has a few multiple scenarios and I let loose with no constraints. I gleefully calls this the "Big Picture" and I even have a folder with that name, complete with text, diagrams, inspirational pictures, etc. Some of the key timelines pivots around my kids -- 10th grade, 12, college, etc.
- Then a yearly plan that kinda/sorta/hopefully align with that 10-year thing.
- A more concrete quarterly actionable items that are an entanglements of work and family.
- Of course, then the monthly, weekly plan follows.
A lot of these plans moves around a lot and I'm fine with it. Recently, I have added a fork -- what are my Minimum Viable Failures as I age -- say, if I don't retire from active earning by 50-years, what should I change, focus, et al.
It is a fun exercise that I did. I'm also thinking of, one day, cleaning it up and write it out and hopefully help budding founders/entrepreneurs/doers/adventurer learn and adapt their own.
(1) I am building a community Makerspace / entrepreneur incubator lab in Latin America (related goal: Learn Spanish!). Agile product development methodologies, pairing, open-source product designs - High quality people, practices, tools, products and clients (and snacks). - If this is your jam, hit me up. I could use the help!
(2) I'm learning Ruby & Rails (For fun: Using ChatGPT to propose a learning path & resources, and planning to use Obsidian + MkDocs to document what I learn). I'd like to feel comfortable hacking together interesting SaaS tools for friends & interesting business ideas. I'm familiar with Python/Django, so please feel free to suggest your best Rails advice!
(3) Writing & Sales are the two most important skills for Entrepreneur mode, so I'm studying books in those areas and practicing. I've done roles as developer, consultant, product management, and solution/sales engineering, but I'm holding myself accountable to actually develop excellent Sales Skillz (after all - we all "sell" our ideas, suggestions). Wish me luck on that one!
(4) Fitness / sports - Getting back into Squash (the best game there is). My dream would be to play at a 4.0 level (currently 3.0'ish)
Wishing you all an excellent 2023 - full of happiness, health, good family vibes, creativity, and prosperity.
PS: Check out this video on focusing on New Years "themes" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE
// Mindset (Important)
- Think and Grow Rich https://a.co/d/fMmWnrI (listen to Earn Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret" daily while reading it - https://open.spotify.com/album/0bg1C7BwYZq5vXFpJOhZFM?si=wAB... listen to everything else he's done: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4gyPmRdEnJ6GVibKuQekoF?si=YD...)
^^ Take this one seriously, take notes, and when he says do something - do it, trust the system.
- Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders https://a.co/d/8H4AsQg
// Startup & Business
- The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building https://a.co/d/daElAvL (MUST READ - extremely actionable)
- A Radical Enterprise: Pioneering the Future of High-Performing Organizations https://a.co/d/d7LljeV
// Writing & Speaking
- On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction https://a.co/d/3Sb7vG4
- Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds https://a.co/d/gd0LJuU
- The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition https://a.co/d/bFYFQyo
// Sales
- Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook https://a.co/d/gM1yZt7
- The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation https://a.co/d/1FPKfmy
- Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal https://a.co/d/86WRDtR
-- Best of luck of your journey.
Where can I follow your journey?
my 2022 resolution was to be able to do a set of 5 pull ups. I only got to 3. I felt like my weight was holding me back, so I hope loosing a bit more will help me get closer to the 5.
For the last year I've been working a job where I need to be in the office in the mornings, have a few hours break in the afternoon, then have meetings in the evening. By the time I'm done I'm completely drained, and more often than not my kids are already asleep.
I've come to the conclusion that however hard my team and I work has basically zero impact on the company as a whole, compared to whatever seemingly tiny decisions some exec makes. So it makes no sense for us to be working hard and burning ourselves out. I've progressed enough with my career (>10 years experience) that I'm not concerned about future career prospects.
If anyone has any suggestions of how to find more sustainable roles I'm all ears.
Do the most high value work with those hours possible until your work budget is zero.
Stop working until it recharges.
Decline meetings that are too late. Ignore unimportant emails. Go spend time with your kids who are literally growing up without you.
All jobs will take what you give. It is on you to set boundaries.
* update my already published ebooks rather than working on a new one, will likely take more than a year
* create interactive apps for exercises
* contribute to FOSS (been doing some small PRs, filing issues etc, want to do more)
* find something new (that's not related to writing) to keep me creatively busy
Personal:
* this month I finally went for a trek after about 5 years, planning to make it a habit again
* may be start cycling again too
See my blog post (https://learnbyexample.github.io/2022-year-in-perspective/) for my 2022 year in perspective
I'm a hobby collector! Feel free to to reach out at hello@taylor.town if you'd like to chat about creative outlets :)
It'll probably be quite iterative, e.g. giving it reqs and bits of relevant code to output a draft spike doc, feeding the API docs to complete the spike doc, getting AI to ask questions of scenarios I didn't think about.
And then generating tests and drafting architecture from that spike doc.
Goal at the end of the year would be to have an actual pipeline for creating code from reqs.
The final test would be creating a ray tracer with it - something I don't know how to do yet, but it should be quite doable.
Oh and lose 20 kg.
Very inspiring!
Though I did decide i need to better document my tech fiddlings within the house better.. so I just run up a tiddlywiki for internal documentation and am spending the day filling that out :-P
My primary goal in 2023 is re-focusing on fitness, wellness and reclaiming some personal time that was ceded to work.
I’m also looking to try some lifestyle experiments like not shopping on Amazon for a month in an effort to reform our household shopping habits.