A decade of goals
Ten years ago, I wrote a list of things I wanted to get done in 2015. This is the whole thing:
Finish the books I already started:
- Moby Dick
- For Whom The Bell Tolls
- The Information
Rebuild my blog and start blogging again.
Build an iPhone app.
Build a little robot or something else physical. Try nodebots or something similar.
I added a few things later in the year, some tiny – “Floss every day” – and some pretty big – “Buy a house (or condo, or whatever).” and “Have a baby.”
I didn’t mean for this to become a thing, but I did another one in 2016, and then it just sort of kept going. Now it’s 2025, and I have a decade of these.
These aren’t New Years resolutions, and some barely even count as goals, but a lot of this stuff gets done, and I don’t think it would if I hadn’t written it down.
Part of why I think they’ve worked for me is that it’s become a mix of banal and ambitious – rebuild my blog, get passports for the kids, read a certain number of books, take a family vacation. They’ve gotten more structured over the years and lots of things repeat.
I like using gists because I can write comments and leave notes on them. I revise them a lot and can go back if I need to. They’re easy to share. Markdown is an easy format.
Looking back, there are goals I never hit. I’ve still never competed in jiujitsu, and I haven’t finished Moby Dick or For Whom the Bell Tolls. Maybe those will happen this year. The baby born in 2015 is now helping me play with circuits and wants to build a lightsaber.
One goal I added this year is to publish one piece of writing every week. I’m doing that now. See how well this works?