With the end of the year I have decided to take some time to look back at the one that finished and assess how it has been.
More specifically I wanted to ask myself two questions: What I am proud of and what could have been better.
Here's a sum up of it.
For the first time in a while I managed to stick with a good and sustainable exercise routine. It started out with a 3 days a week practice that already gave me massive and tangible benefits.
In the second half of the year I increased to 4 days a week and, while I have not adhered to it 100% of the weeks, I managed most of the weeks and it feels great.
One of the main reasons for keeping it has been using FitBod to come up with the workout. While not perfect the app does an excellent job in removing the friction of figuring out what to do in the gym.
No time spent having strong opinions.
Specially with so many things happen in the world this year such as elections in Brazil and Denmark. I feel I managed to form my opinions without having to fight anyone and still being able to listen to and try to understand the ones that think differently.
Some other important actions were:
In November I joined Zoios as a full-stack dev. From the beginning it felt like the right move and the main points that come to mind are:
I was lucky enough to have some good time with the team outside of the office in my second week. I feel like it served as a shortcut for getting to know the team and building rapport.
Starting a new job is a chance to reconstruct how I want to be perceived. This time, the change was subtle. I decided to see myself as someone who bikes to work.
Previously, I was a bit lazy about it and pushed it away, but now it is flowing more and more smoothly.
The distance I have from the office is also within the sweet spot for biking and the cold weather motivates me too.
I was stoked to realize that this was the first time that I managed to watch the Queen's New Years speech and understand what she said. I am not claiming that I understood every single word of it, but I did get all the points. Slowly but surely improving! 🎉
Keeping my weight in check is also a focus of mine. I feel like I have relaxed my eating habits quite a lot in the second half of the year and that have some obvious consequences.
Good news is that I am getting back at it now.
For the past few years I have managed to track my usage of supplementation, foods and its effects. The same way that it happened with the diet, I feel that this year the tracking and the supplementation fell a little to the side.
A new strategy/system is necessary to bring it back in a way that is useful for what I want to improve.
Having more empathy never made it to the top of my list of things to focus on. I guess that is about to change.
During this year it has become clear to me that I can be overly critical towards others and myself.
However, what has become clear is that I am not exercising a lot of empathy and being judgemental. That affects me and the ones around me negatively. Nobody likes to have Mr. critical around complaining about everything.
With that in mind, trying to understand before judging is the new objective and I am counting on feedback to figure how to go about this.
This year I have not been in touch with my friends as much as I would have liked to, and this time, covid is not an excuse.
I feel that it is necessary to talk more, meet more, and be a little closer. The energy I get from being close to the ones I like, family or not, has no replacement and I miss it dearly.
With that said, there will be no new year's resolution. I am firm believer of systems instead of goals and will be focused on tweaking the systems in my life to get me closer to where I want to be.
Jorge