My Personal Goals for 2022

I’ve been doing this annual goal setting for a few years now. I’ve found it good way to keep track and more effective than New Years Resolutions.

TL;DR: Most targets from 2021 rolled forward, two removed and one added.

>> Read 50 books. [No change in target]. Last year I read 57 books. The target has remained at 50 for the past three or so years — reading a book a week on average still feels like the right balance between an achievable target vs making it another burden. Sub-targets within this are to:

Read three Victorian classics. I had this target last year and read a Hardy and Gaskell. Hardy and Elliot still need some attention according to my tracker.

Read three books to educate myself more about race. This is the same target as last year. This reading list from Strand Book Store continues to be a good source of material.

Finish the Biography of Ceasar that has been neglected for about three year, so much so that it doesn’t even appear on my “currently reading” log each week. This was on my target last year and I made zero progress. Persevering again.

>> Summarise 100% of non-fiction books read. [No change in target]. I’m still finding the three-sentence summary useful when I’m trying to remember which book said what thing.

>> Cycle 4000 miles. [No change in target]. This still feels like a stretch target for a normal year.

>> Cycle a Gran Fondo each month [No change in target]. A Gran Fondo is 100km; I managed 5 in 2021 before breaking my collar bone. As I said last year, being able to do a Gran Fondo and not feel like death at the end of it is a good indicator of my fitness levels, so I’m keeping this one in.

>> Write 10 Blog Articles. [No change in target]. 10 still feels like a stretch on top of week notes.

>> Get 2,500 Twitter Followers. [Revised target]. This is a completely pointless and arbitrary target. I aimed for 2,000 in 2021 and missed it by about 150.

>> Get to my target weight. [No change in target]. My weight is totally linked to how much exercise I’m doing. I don’t like to stop eating and so the impact of not cycling due to a broken collar bone took it’s toll. I’m turning 50 early in 2022 and think its too ambitious to get to the target by then, I’d at least like to finish my 50th year nearer to the target.

>> Write weeknotes. No target (intentionally).

>> Write two “Thought” Pieces. [No Change in target].

>> Write some software. [New Target]. Last summer I read Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky and did an exercise in there that made me write down 5 things I wanted to achieve. Last year I achieved 3 of them. The two I didn’t make any progress on was research on a big family holiday, which we’ve deferred until things are more certain re Covid and the second was on writing a piece of software. I’ve wanted to write a plug-in for the superb application Audacity for a while. Dunno if my skills are too outdated, but I thought it would be fun to have a go.

Targets Removed. For transparency and accountability I need to declare two targets have been removed from 2021’s list:

• Spend more time with friends and family. Certainly something that I want to keep doing, but there’s no meaningful measure of it other than gut feel, so I’m taking it off the list.
• Achieve Coaching Qualification. Although this was a target for 2021, I didn’t pursue it with much energy, however I have done a lot of coaching sessions with various people, so I’m going to put my energy into that for 2022 and see if I want to consolidate that into a qualification in 2023.

The End

Next update — April 2022…