Personal Goals Review 2021 #4 (the finale)

As has been my habit for a few years, at the end of 2020, I set out some personal goals for 2021, which get reviewed every quarter. Links to previous reviews in 2021… #1, #2, #3. Here goes for the end of year review.

Here’s the TL;DR summary from the spreadsheet I’ve set up. I achieved 4 goals and missed 3 which were related to my weight and distance to cycle.

Details on progress….

>> Read 50 books. Achieved. I read 57 books this year.

I had a few sub-targets:

Read three Victorian classics. Missed. I read two: Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. Although I read it, I can’t bring myself to count A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens given its brievity, so call it 2.1 at a push!

Read three books to educate myself more about race. Achieved: White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo, Jews Don’t Count by David Badiel, How to be less stupid about race by Crystal M Fleming.

Finish the Biography of Ceasar. Missed. Didn’t even read a single page.

• 36 novels — top picks: Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.
• 9 leadershippy/technology books — top picks being Think Again by Adam Grant, Humankind by Rutger Bregman and Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.
• 4 books related to my Christian faith. It is my aim to read one a month, so missed that target by a mile.
• 3 books widening my knowledge about the experiences of racism and what I can do to support as mentioned earlier.
• 3 random non-fiction — including Parliament: The Biography Volume 1 by Chris Bryant. Volume 2 is on my bookshelf..

>> Summarise 100% of non-fiction books read. Achieved. As per my habit for the past few years, the summary is simply a three-sentence summary on the index card I use for a bookmark.

>> Cycle 4000 miles. Target Missed. Cycled 2,023 miles, ran 48.7 miles and the difference in walks (about 300 miles). Breaking my collar bone in May skuppered my ambitions this year as it was the start of December before I was given the all clear to ride again. In the meantime, my fitness took a massive nose dive.

Getting the nod to start cycling again in December gave me hope I’d be able to complete the Rapha Festive 500 — this is cycling 500km between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. It rained every day I went out and it was slow and painful, but I did it, and hopefully gives me a bit of a platform to build on in 2022 and I continue to recover.

The depressing graph below shows Strava’s calculation of fitness level based on heart rate and recovery times. My number was about 125 in May on the day of the accident that bust my collarbone and the number plummeted down to 14 by the end of November, now back up to 61, but still a long way to go, given the way the numbers decay over time between activities.

>> Cycle a Gran Fondo each month. Missed Target —5 completed, all pre-collarbone.

>> Write 10 Blog Articles. Achieved. 12 published. The most popular one was How not to suck at NHS Job applications with over 4,400 on Medium.

>> Get 2,000 Twitter Followers. Missed. All those thousands of folk who read the Medium article failed to follow me! I have 1,871 followers as at 1/1/22.

>> Get to my target weight. Missed Target. This is totally linked to the amount of cycling I’ve done. I’m not into restricting eating, so the inevitable happens when I’m not exercising as much as I like.

>> Spend more time with my family and friends. The collarbone enforced this anyway, but we have enjoyed time together as a family. We’ve still been keeping away from folk as much as practicable, so we’ve not had many friends round for meals this year.

>> Write weeknotes. No target (intentionally). 45 done this year. Managed to do one for every working week.

>> Write two “Thought” Pieces. Achieved. I wrote 5 things that are potential candidates for this category: Where are all the NHS Trust CIOs?, How not to suck at NHS Job applications, Why you need a CIO on your NHS Trust Board, How to recruit your NHS Trust Board CIO, How not to suck at NHS Job interviews.

>> Achieve a Coaching Qualification. Missed. I didn’t really pursue this during the year.

>> Achieve Certified Healthcare CIO Status. Achieved. Really pleased to get this, both for myself, but to promote the professionalism of the NHS CIO role more widely.

Other metrics:

• Gigs attended: 1 — Working Men’s Club at the Leadmill, Sheffield. Great to be back watching live music.
• Football Matches attended in person: 2 — neither of them league games.
• Trips to cinema: 2, both Marvel films with the kids.

Conclusion

Totally dominated by the broken collar bone. I’m hoping for an injury free 2022…