Personal Goals Review 2024 #3

Here we go again. As has become my pattern at year end, I set out some personal goals for 2024 and did a review in Q1 and Q2. It’s now time to review progress at Q3.

TL;DR: Achieved cycling goals and patchy progress elsewhere.

>> Read 50 books. Read 33 so far. Trajectory will be that I’ll miss this target unless I speed up a bit. Progress on the sub-targets:

• Read two Victorian classics. One read so far: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• Read three books to educate myself more about race. Read so far — Inglorious Empire. Plus the novel White Teeth (second read).
• Finish the long-neglected Biography of Ceasar — no progress.

>> Summarise 100% of non-fiction books read. On target. Read and summarised 17 so far.

>> Cycle 4000 miles. Achieved! 4,171 miles cycled so far (compared to 3,446 miles this time last year). Trying to keep going and see if I can get to 5,000 which will mark a personal best since I started tracking this in 2019.

>> Cycle a Gran Fondo each month. 14 done so far this year. Done at least one each month apart from June.

>> Cycle to Work 3 times a month. 18 so far this year. Not worked out an easy way to discount the weeks when logistics make doing this impossible, or I’m on leave etc. But still part of my weekly intent.

>> Get 3,000 Twitter Followers. 2,952 currently. Have started using Blue Sky as a preference to this increasingly toxic platform, so may need to look at this goal next year.

>> Get to my target weight. Not terrible, not great. Perhaps need to revise my idea of what a realistic target actually is.

>> Write weeknotes. No target (intentionally).

>> Write two “Thought” Pieces. One written — How not to suck at NHS job offer negotiations. Have a couple more in draft.

>> Do Some Substantial Research. Still chasing up the FOIs I sent out in November 2023. Turns out that using FOI as a data gathering tool in the NHS is painful and some have still to reply >300 working days after my request.

Next update — the finale in Jan 2025