This illustration from Tim Urban is the perfect way to start off the new year!
Let’s not get discouraged about the plans that we didn’t complete, the opportunities we didn’t win, and the dreams that we didn’t fullfil.
Instead, let’s get excited about the plans that are worth pursuing, the opportunities that are worth winning, and the dreams that are worth chasing — as there are many of them still available for each one of us!!
Wish you all a very happy, prosperous, and successful 2022! 🎉👍
The one resolution everyone should have for 2021:
“Become a creator”.
Create anything from scratch:
It could be anything.
Don’t be just a consumer.
Be a creator.
Wish you a very Happy, Healthy, Prosperous, and Creative 2021!! 🎉 🎆
I’ve started this practice a few years ago — to retrospect on the last year’s achievements, misses, and learnings and define the goals for the next year at the beginning of the new year. I have written about why I started doing this exercise in my previous post, but if I want to summarize it in one sentence — it would be — to be accountable and answerable.
But before I begin, wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2019!
Overall, it wasn’t a great year for me. Primarily on the family front, but also on personal and professional goals front. While I made satisfactory progress across many areas, there isn’t any particular accomplishment that I’m very proud of.
Let’s look into what went wrong along with why it went wrong in certain situations —
The biggest loss
The biggest loss for me and my family was my dad passed away in May 2018 due to a heart attack. On one hand, it felt like it was a sudden death, on the other hand, it happened over 4 months.
He had the first heart attack and stroke at the beginning of Feb, which resulted in semi-paralysis and speech-loss. With his strong will-power, medication and the support of close family members, he recovered pretty well and was getting back to his normal life, but eventually lost the battle to another attack and passed away at the end of May.
On the health front, I failed on most of my goals.
Workout
My key goal was to complete 3 routines of P90X-3 — that is 30 minutes intense exercise for 90 days — and repeating it 3 times in a year. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish the entire routine even once. I started it 3 times but ended up giving up in the middle after 4–5 weeks into it.
So in short, collectively I’ve worked out only for 3 months than the planned 9 months.
Meditation
Overall, I failed to meditate consistently. I did it only on a need basis — more like 1–2 times a week.
Food
Overall, I have been following good food habits like reduction in sugar consumption, eating less junk food,etc., but since I have failed in a consistent workout, I have also slacked in eating a lot healthier food.
On the work front, we have made great progress, but again, we failed to achieve our planned goals.
After raising the pre-seed capital in Oct 2107, the biggest focus for Avoma last year was to build the minimum sellable product and technology. We launched the first version of our product in beta in Sep 2018, launched our partnership with Outreach.io, onboarded some paying customers since then, and built a team of an amazing group of 9 full-time employees.
So overall, we made a lot of progress, but I still feel we could have done a lot more on the customer acquisition front. I think if we could have sped up our product execution to address some of the feature gaps and invested more in our Sales and Marketing initiatives early on, we would have won some more deals that got pushed to the next year and some deals that we lost to competitors.
Reading
I did a decent job in reading a book per month. The books I read are (with my ratings) –
Currently still reading:
Blogging
I failed miserably in this. My last year’s goal was to write a blog post per week. I only wrote 1 article about last year’s retrospective for this blog and 4 articles for Avoma blog.
Even though I had many thoughts and point of views to share, I ended up not prioritizing blogging over other important tasks at hand.
Playing Guitar
This is something I had not planned for 2018, but ended up starting at the tail end of the year. I’m still a beginner (3 months into it), this has been one of the best decisions I have made to invest 2–3 hours every week to learn guitar.
Playing Tennis
This is another thing that I had not planned for 2018, but also ended up starting at the tail end of the year along with Guitar. In Tennis also I’m still a beginner (2 months into it), this is also one of the best decisions I have made to invest 1–2 hours every week to learn tennis.
For 2019, I won’t be changing a lot of things from my 2018 goals — just a couple of minor changes.
If you haven’t already done any retrospective for your 2018, then I would highly encourage you to take a moment and think about it and write down what worked well and what didn’t in 2018 and what are your goals for 2019 — even if you don’t plan to share it publicly, write it for your own benefit.
Once again, wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year to crush your 2019 goals!
I’ve started this practice last year — to retrospect on the last year’s achievements, misses, and learnings and define the goals for the next year at the beginning of the new year. I have written about why I started doing this exercise in my last year’s post, but if I want to summarize it in one key reason — it would be — to be accountable and answerable to the world about my new year’s goals.
But before I begin, wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2018!
Overall, it was a great year. I made satisfactory progress across many areas and I feel good about it. Having said that, I still feel I could have done better in a few areas.
As mentioned in my last year’s goals, my 3 big priorities were —
On the family front, I enjoyed spending a great time with family in general.
Travel
We traveled to India, Hawaii, and Tahoe together and spent a great time with the extended family as well.
Daily routine
The most important habit I’ve been following for the last couple years that I continued even last year was — I try to be home from work between 5–6pm instead of staying up late till 7pm or so such that I can spend more time with the kids before they go to bed by 9pm. I catch up on work after they fall asleep.
On the health front, overall I did decently well, but I’m personally not very proud of it.
Workout
My key goal was to complete 3 routines of P90X-3 — that is 30 minutes intense exercise for 90 days — and do it for 3 times in the year. Unfortunately, I finished the entire P90X-3 routine only once, and then for 2 times, I started the routine and gave up in the middle after 4–5 weeks into it. So in short, collectively I’ve worked out only for 5 months than the planned 9 months.
Sleep
Overall as planned, I continued to sleep well for an average 7 hours/day. Even though we had an infant baby and I had my ambitious startup plans, I managed to get a decently well sleep. Obviously, a lot of that credit goes to my wife! 🙂
Meditation
Overall, I had not planned to do meditation in the last year but learned to do a guided meditation, Pranayama and different breathing techniques to meditate well. I learned this in the 2nd half of the year, but managed to do 20 mins meditation in the early morning at least 3–4 days/week.
Food
As I started exercising actively, I adopted some good food habits too. Most importantly, a drastic reduction in sugar intake — for example, no sugar in Tea, Coffee, etc., but also, in general, less consumption of sweets. In addition, I’ve also increased protein intake mostly through plant-based supplements in smoothies/shakes and energy bars.
I’ve also seen, when I didn’t exercise as per the plan for the half of the year, I lost my control and ended up eating more junk food. So the lesson learned is — when you exercise actively, the guilt of eating junk food is very high.
On the work front, I think I’ve made good progress, but again, I’m not completely happy with my own accomplishments and believe that I could have done more.
Startup
The biggest focus for the last year was to start my new venture. I started exploring the problem, solution, etc. since Jan 2017, finalized what I want to work on in Mar 2017, assembled the co-founding team in Jul 2017 and officially started — Avoma, Inc., and raised a pre-seed funding in Oct 2017.
We’re still in a stealth mode and have launched the product in private beta to a few early customers and iterating on our product. So technically while we’ve made a lot of progress, obviously, I would have wished this would have happened a lot sooner and we would have achieved a lot more things by the end of this year.
Programming
While my initial goal was to re-learn programming and launch a meaningful application by the end of the year, ideally for my startup only, unfortunately, I just learned different programming languages and frameworks but did not end up building a real-world application.
I learned Python, Django framework, Javascript, React and Redux. I’m still not an expert in any of this. Since I was not an expert yet, I was being a bottleneck in our startup’s product development efforts while other cofounders were pretty strong technically. So I ended up getting out of their way and let them handle the end to end product development.
Reading
My last year’s goal was to read a book per month. While I read 10 books in the entire year, I must admit — I didn’t really read them each book per month. Sometimes it took longer to finish a book more than a month, and sometimes I read smaller books and could read more books in a month.
The books I read are (with my ratings) –
Blogging
My last year’s goal was to write a blog post per week. I failed miserably in this. I only wrote 14 articles in the last year. One of the challenges was — writing a thoughtful article takes around 5–8 hours per post. So sometimes even though I had a lot of lessons and point of views to share, I ended up not prioritizing blogging over other important tasks at hand.
In short, for 2018, I won’t be changing a lot of things from my 2017 goals— just a couple minor changes. My goals for 2017 were pretty decent, and I plan to just repeat those this year too.
If you’ve read until this point, then I would request if you have any suggestions to improve my thinking or to achieve my goals, then please free to comment or send me an email at aditya dot kothadiya at gmail dot com.
Also, if you haven’t already done any retrospective for your 2017 and planned your 2018, then I would highly encourage you take a moment and think about it and write down what worked well and what didn’t in 2017 and what are your plans for 2018 — if not publicly, but at least for your own benefit.
Once again, wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2018! Hope you all crush your 2018 goals!
One of the things I observed in my 2016 retrospective was — I had achieved the goals that were clearly defined and had a clear action plan to execute them.
For example — I achieved the goal of improving my fitness by doing P90X3 routine, which required exercising 30 mins/day for straight 90 days.
On the contrary, I did not achieve the goals that did not have any clear action plan. For example — reading a book per month or blogging actively.
So for my 2017 goals, I thought why not apply a methodical approach so that I can be sure to achieve those. I know what I want to achieve, but it didn’t have a clear strategy and specific action plan.
For strategy, applying a top-down approach helps me start with a big picture and then break that into smaller milestones.
At the same time, for a specific action plan, using a bottom-up approach helps me define a day-to-day routine.
One of the goals for 2017 is — to exercise for 9–10 months. So from a top-down strategy perspective, I plan to do 3 repetitions of P90X3 routine. So every 3 months, I will complete a P90X3 routine, and in between take a break for a few weeks.
At the same time, from a bottom-up tactical perspective, I plan to allocate 45 mins to exercise on 6 days a week — preferably at a consistent time every single day.
Similarly, for reading one book per month goal, my strategy is to read ~300 pages book per month.
And my tactical plan is to read ~15 pages per day. So I need to allocate dedicated 15–30 minutes to read ~15 pages every single day.
You got the point. I have done a similar exercise for my other goals about blogging, programming and building a startup venture.
My hypothesis is – having some kind of system and method in place will be crucial in making consistent progress on the goals I have defined.
The top-down strategy is important as it removes the uncertainties of how I’m going to achieve a bigger goal by breaking it into smaller steps.
The bottom-up plan is important as it creates daily habits by consistently allocating a dedicated time every single day.
Now this is a plan. Certainly, it might work or fail. We will see. I will update in 3 months if it worked or not.
I have never written any retrospective blog posts or shared my new year goals on this blog before. So this is a new tradition I’m starting. There are a few reasons why I thought it would be an interesting exercise to do –
It’s been a few months that I wrote something on my blog and I have been wanting to start writing for many days. And since we’re at the junction of ending of 2016 and beginning of 2017, I decided to get back to writing by doing some retrospective of my life and planning for the next year.
As a Product Manager by profession, I have been doing Agile Retrospectives with my scrum teams at the end of every sprint. As a part of the process, the whole scrum team reflects on their execution in the sprint and discusses how to become more effective in their execution and adjusts their behavior accordingly. We typically discuss different topics and categorize them in one of the below buckets –
So I thought it would be very valuable to do a similar exercise for personal life for 2016 and based on that decide what are the plans for 2017.
By sharing my new year goals and plans publicly, I will be accountable to achieve these goals and write a similar retrospective post at the end of the next year.
Below are the key activities that I pursued in 2016 and for each activity, I categorized it if I want to continue doing it in 2017 or stop doing it in 2017 and if there is anything new that I want to start doing in 2017.
My most important goal for 2016 was to become physically fit. And it wasn’t about just doing 10,000 steps/day to achieve a Fitbit badge, but really push my physical limits and get stronger. So I started doing the P90X3 routine. If you’re not aware of it, it’s 30 minutes a day all body workout routine for 90 days.
When I started it for the first time, I could only do it for 30 days, and then something happened and I couldn’t continue. Then I again started it for the second time and I could do it for 60 days. Then again something happened and I couldn’t finish. Then finally, in the second half of 2016, I started it again for the 3rd time, and I could finish all 90 days.
I think collectively in the entire 2016, I must have exercised 7 months. Ideally, this should have been 9–10 months. But I’m still happy with the strength and fitness I’ve achieved so far. By no means, I’m a very strong person yet, so the ultimate goal is still not achieved.
So I will continue to do P90X3 in 2017 as well and my goal would be to exercise at least 10 months in the entire year.
When 2016 started, my goal was to read a book a month. It wasn’t a very hard goal, but somehow I still couldn’t achieve it. I barely completed reading only 3 books and 2 books are still in progress. I never prioritized reading books and didn’t allocate any dedicated time every day. Instead, I read a lot of articles shared on the web whenever I used to find some leisure time in between different activities.
Books read:
Books in progress:
Obviously, I will continue to read in 2017 and my goal would be still same — to read a book per month.
I didn’t have any specific goal for Blogging when 2016 started, but I knew I wanted blog actively. Unfortunately, I wrote only 7 posts in the entire year. I definitely failed in showing consistent discipline for blogging.
For 2017, I will continue to blog and my goal would be — at least a post per week.
In 2016, I got addicted to podcasts. I probably listened to 200+ episodes from different hosts in the entire year. I learned a lot about different people, various topics, sometimes inspirational stories and sometimes tactical advice.
I have already shared which podcasts I’ve been listening to.
I will continue to listen to podcasts in 2017 as I absolutely love them and my goal for 2017 would be to listen to any podcast for at least 20-30 minutes/day while commuting.
In 2016, I wanted to sleep well every day — at least 7 hours a day. Overall I believe I achieved that goal, and it definitely helped me to have fewer health issues and have better focus and energy during work days.
I will continue to have good sleep as a priority in 2017 as well. Even though I’ve more ambitious plans for 2017 in general, I’m making a mental note to not compromise on this activity.
As I started my professional Product Management career since last 4 years, I pretty much stopped programming. That was a big mistake. I should not have stopped programming altogether. While I don’t need programming skills for day-to-day work, but I’m a builder at heart and enjoy software development. In 2016, I thought I will start coding again and will build some software for fun, but I couldn’t prioritize it. I barely started coding a little bit at the tail end of 2016.
So I will continue to start programming in 2017 and my goal would be to build a meaningful software application by the end of 2017.
I wanted to learn guitar since my college days. I tried learning it a couple of times, but have never been consistent in continuing it. In 2016, I was inspired by my nephews and decided to start learning guitar again using self-learning process. I started watching videos on YouTube, used few iPhone apps and started learning and practicing playing guitar. I did that for a few weeks but very quickly realized that I have other important priorities on my plate and I was running too thin on commitment on different activities. So I decided to stop learning guitar and put it on the backlog.
Unfortunately, in 2017 as well, since I have other important priorities, I will have to stop learning guitar and put it on the backlog.
One of biggest mistakes in 2016 was outsourcing my old part-time software project. Since this project has paying customers and there were a lot of bugs reported and new feature requests asked, I outsourced the development of this project to an offshore development provider in India. But overall it was a very bad experience.
Partly it was my mistake. Since I did not have a lot of time, I did not give detailed attention to those developers. At the same time, those developers took advantage of that, which ended up in longer development cycles, unethical behavior, and extremely poor quality software. I wasted significant money and was completely dissatisfied with the outcome. The short-term benefit in the cost savings with a cheap labor turned out to be an expensive mistake in the long term.
I will definitely stop outsourcing anything in 2017, especially when I don’t have time to micro-manage them. Either I will learn to do things myself, or hire quality resource locally or just say “no” to any such activity which requires outsourcing.
In 2016, I did not have any goal to start my own startup. So there is nothing much to retrospect here.
But for 2017, my goal is to start a new venture. The thoughts are still in early stages, so I still need some time to get more clarity. I will be spending some time in early 2017 to learn new technologies, explore few domains, meet few people, and tinker few concepts. I’m personally interested in exploring artificial intelligence domain, but if I’ll find a meaningful problem to solve in that domain is a different question, which I will continue to explore.
While this may sound a lot of goals, if I want to prioritize only top 3 goals or focus areas for 2017, then they would be –
These are the “big rocks” for me. The rest activities like Reading, Blogging, Podcasting, etc. are the “pebbles”. (Learn more about Big Rocks, Pebbles and Sand).
If you’ve read until this point, then I would request if you have any suggestions for me to improve my thinking, or help achieve my goals, then please free to comment or send me an email at aditya dot kothadiya at gmail dot com.
Also, if you haven’t already done any retrospective for your 2016 and planned your 2017, then I would highly encourage you take a moment and think about it and write down what worked well and what didn’t in 2016 and what are your plans for 2017 — if not publicly, but at least for your own benefit.
Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2017. Hope you all crush your 2017 goals! Fight on!
Aditya Kothadiya 