Hello future self, and people who have way too much time at their hand. This is an attempt by me to start getting into the blogging game again. I have given this a lot of try historically, and have found it difficult to stick to it. Well I could say that “found it difficult to stick to it”, is the story of my life, but one cannot fault me for trying. As one of the most iconic fiction character once said, ‘Doing better next time, that’s what life is.’ So here I am trying to do better this time.
It’s pretty late in the year to really start planning or listing out 2023 goals, but its better late than never. I am going to look at it from a Financial year perspective, as we are still “technically” in April which is the first month of the next financial year. I haven’t given this a lot of thought so this might end up becoming quiet a big draft. I did create a goal for myself in 2022, but 2022 wasn’t a “normal” year for me. So most of the plans of 2022 either got discarded, or someone(a wailing someone) stole the thunder and prioirity for most of the year. Having checked off mariage, changing a job, baby, buying an apartment all in the span of 15 months, I find that it has been quiet a ride, and I have mostly stumbled my way across most of the decisions. It would be nice to have a plan again, and it would be nice if I could try and have some measure of predictability in the upcoming year. I think it would be nice to break my aspirations into various buckets.
So I have broadly the following roles Professional, Personal, Family man
Professional Link to heading
I first need to identify the metric over which I want to work. The relevant metric at my current job is number of MR’s per month. IMO that is a decent metric. But that can’t be the only metric. At a conventional company the Story point that you close in a Sprint is also a good metric, to really encapsulate your effectiveness. But the nature of work within my team makes it so that there is no standardization between the weights. Its pretty consistent until the weights are 1 or 2 but as soon as the weight per issue starts to scale the consistency starts to drop. And most issues tend to be 3 or above. There is another daily metric which is the number of “Activity” and while that isn’t linked officially to any performance, it isn’t difficult to observe that high impact individuals end up having very high “Activity” per day. Their activity graph is very dark. So the leading metric for my Professional work are
- Activity (target 30+ daily)
- MRs/month (target 15/month)
The numbers taken here are aspirational and so are “moon-shots”. I have to find my current numbers and figure out subgoals per month to try and move the metric to the goal state.
Personal Link to heading
I tend to be an over ambitions person while putting forward any goals for myself. In the past I’ve had multiple scenarios where I’ve taken more than I can chew on my plate, and consequently failed to achieve anything. But keeping in mind the “doing better next time” idea, here we go again.
I wish to listen to atleast 15 books thoughout the year. I am not really fussed about the genre of book. I tend to listen to a bunch of fiction and then jump to non-fiction books which I go through 2 in a row and after that I stop. Until I start listening to fiction again. Just like most things in life, my audiobook journey is a cycle. Since January I have finished the entire FirstLaw Trilogy, Sharp Ends, Red Country, and one parenting book ‘How to raise successful people’. I am currently parallely listening to 2 non fiction books, ‘Deep work’ and ‘The art of Impossible’. I have ‘The lean product Playbook’ and ‘The staff engineers path’ in my list so its safe to say this goal is going very well in the right direction.
I wish to write a bunch as well, this plan is in line with that. If I end up writing 24 posts by the end of the year on on any topic, I will count this goal as a success.
On the personal software development front, I’ve not spent lots of time building personal products even though I feel I would be fairly good at it. In my head building personal software products has always been associated to monetizing the said software to make money. And that has limited me from trying a lot of “fun” ideas that I’ve had over the years. Hoping that admitting this here will make me realize how that thinking has been a limiting factor in what could have been an arsnel of products which could have been a lot of fun! So this year, I am going to build atleast 2 indie software products. There are lots of ideas in my head and I have already started working on one. If I launch two products this year, I will consider this goal as a success.
After we move to the new apartment which I don’t see happening until end of May, I wish to make use of the Gym in the society on a regular basis. But going to the gym isn’t a goal in itself. As I dont really feel jacking up with muscles is really something that excites me, I wish to go towards the cardio and flexibilty end of working out. Right now I can’t run for more than few minutes without losing my shit(sigh :p). I wish to be able to run atleast 30 minutes straight (baby steps :p), so if by the end of the year I can run 30 minutes straight without feeling like my heart is going to jump out of my chest after I’ve done it, I’ll consider that a success. Where as on the flexibility front, I’ve done a bunch of yoga last year along with Nimisha during our pregnancy. I could touch my palm on the ground while keeping my knees straight. Having stopped yoga since Karan’s birth, I am back to the point where the maximum I can reach with a straight knee is my shin. Without being over ambitious I will be happy to reach to that level of flexibility again. Knowing myself I do need to have a “continuity” goal as well, else I will start skipping gym convincing myself that I will be able to achieve the goals even if I start 2 months before dead line(story of my life). So as long as I have gone to the Gym 160 times in the next year, I will consider this goal successful. I will have to think about how I track my visits to the gym though.
For someone with a keen eye, they would have noticed that most of the above “personal” goals dont have a leading metric. By that I mean there is no metric (besides probably the gym visits) that suggests that I am working towards the goals. There are only lagging metrics i.e the final output. Maybe adding the leading metric for the above will be a different post.
Family man Link to heading
As a family man what are the metrics that I should try and “optimize”? Maybe that’s just an engineer looking at a normal life and trying to figure out which KPI matters the most. This is my first time thinking about this role, for most of my life I have not had to think about others while thinking about my next year. But this time I do, I have a wife and a small baby both of whom expect some things from me. The expectations and satisfactions from them aren’t as objective as lets say MR’s/month. Spending quality time with them is a good leading indicator. But how much time is “quality” time? Without overthinking this alot:
- One vacation
- Two birthday parties
- Atleast one Date night every month
- Baby duty after I am home and on Sundays
- One shared activity/workout?
Maybe also add them to the medical insurance :p
I think the above sounds like a good plan for the coming year. I need to have atleast quaterly checkins to ensure progress and course correction. The next retrospective should be in July 2023. I will post an update!
Thank you for reading!