Tyler's 2020 Goals
Recently I published my 2019 Goals and my retrospective on those goals. Now it's time for my goals and intentions for 2020.
Cook more, Eat less
I started working with a personal trainer at the end of August 2019. I've gotten a lot stronger and seen a lot of progress in my ability to do the workouts. Unfortunately, I started putting on more muscle weight without losing fat weight (and my goal was to lose weight).
If I get home from a long day, I'll always go for the more convenient option over the healthy option. Purchasing food also usually means finishing whatever I buy. Not the greatest. It also just gets really expensive to mindlessly swipe my card every time I eat.
I want to spend more of my money buying bulk food items that are healthier and preparing about a week's worth of meals ahead of time. For breakfasts I've been either doing eggs (if I'm home) or making oatmeal with fruit/peanut butter the night before.
Primary goal: I want to lose 50 lbs by the end of year.
Steps to get there: I'm going to stay consistent with going to the gym, branch out into other more athletic activities and be smarter about how I eat.
Get the f*ck out of town
I got a bunch of camping gear for Christmas and I'd really like to put it to good use. My dog's finally old enough to probably behave well on a camping trip and I'd just like to spend more time outside. (#OptOutside)
In addition to camping I'd like to travel more and go to some places I've never been before, even if it's just for a night or two.
Primary Goal: Go camping at least 4-5 times and visit 3 states I haven't been to in the last 5 years.
Steps to get there: I'd like to do a Yellowstone/Tetons road trip in the spring or summer that would take care of the states. There are a lot of little campgrounds in western Washington that I could do some smaller 1-2 night trips.
Technical development and follow-through
On the professional side of things, I want to dive really deep into some new technologies and see how they can help my team. I've gotten to a point in my career where I feel like the one with the answers, not the questions and I want to better equip myself with engineering knowledge.
My team owns a handful of various applications that help run the Microsoft network, and they were developed by a handful of various groups. I want to raise the bar for customer interaction and experience and bring a similar look and feel to all of our team's applications.
This year I want to take more time to study new technologies and patterns deeply so that I can articulate their benefits to my team and encourage adoption where necessary.
Primary Goal: I want to work to make sure that my team builds and delivers web applications that people enjoy using by reducing the time it takes them to do complicated tasks.
Steps to get there: I am going to continue building the web app shell that will standardize look & feel, authentication, logging, etc. across all of our product offerings.
Be someone people want to be around
I was listening to the Pod Save America Resolutions episode and co-host Jon Lovett was sharing his and listed these three things:
- Be positive
- Be generous
- Be disciplined
He listed those three things as the things that will help him be someone people want to be around. That really resonated with me, so I'm gonna steal it.
I don't consider myself a negative or stingy person, but I rarely go out of my way to tell someone how great I think they are or make myself more available than I already am.
The practice of coming up with resolutions is generally balked at because no one sticks with them. For me, this practice is more about externally processing where I want to see my life go. I'm not sure what exactly my life will have in store for the next year. If I'm disciplined enough to make even some of these things happen; I'll be happy.
Primary goal: I want to make sure that I'm doing my best to brighten the lives of the people around me. I want to lift up and support my friends and family when they need it, and I want to be disciplined enough to be able to sustain it.
Below the cut
- Read more articles, not just headlines
- Patron more local artists
- More concerts and live events
- Get out more with friends
- Do some kind of daily stretches/yoga for the things that hurt