Review of 2021 Goals

Yes it is that time of the year where I look back at what I achieved in the first 3 months of the year whilst I was on detox, and then talked about doing for the next 9 months, with a review of my 2021 goals.

So the way this will work is that I will copy all the goals from my 2021 goals post, italicise the original goals, write about what I didn’t achieve beneath that and give myself a score.

Fun, huh? Well I like doing it.

HEALTH

Lose 10kg. I can do this. I think I will actually do this this year. I have fewer excuses. I work from home. I can easily eat a low calorie diet. I can sleep enough. I will have plenty of time where I cannot eat or drink out.

Result: I put on 1kg. It was going well, I lost about 6kg, then the Euros happened with all the midweek drinking, but even by mid-November I was 4kg down, which is a reasonable achievement considering the amount of fun I’ve had.

Then I had food poisoning and ever since then I’ve just had no desire or energy to eat healthily and exercise, plus a heavy cold, Christmas drinking, now covid and Christmas alone – the weight is piling on.

Score: 0%

The detox, or two. I’m loosely aiming for a 3 month detox to start 2021 and to help me achieve quite a bit of the below. I intend on drinking on my birthday in late January, and Christmas 2, though I guess Christmas 2 will be April at the earliest.

Result: My detox ended on 20th March, which is a little early, though bearing in mind the emotional shafting of the longest most miserable winter ever, I don’t think this is too bad. Didn’t do a second short detox. I didn’t have the motivation.

Score: 70%

Reduce wine at home. One of my major downfalls in 2020 was the bottle of wine on a Friday night, after a few beers. And the bottle on Saturday night. This needs to be the exception, rather than the rule. One bottle, at home, each month?

Result: Well I mostly stopped buying wine on my weekly food shop. Alas, towards the end I just started buying shit wine from local shops.

Score: 40%

WORK & FINANCE

Pay rise. A pay rise is impossible when there is a company-wide pay freeze so if you can all buy a few more bras and pants I would appreciate it. However, if the pay freeze relaxes then I will put a case forward for one. I can earn circa 30-50% more elsewhere thanks to what I’ve learnt so far at M&S, but I like it there. 2022 would be move on year if I don’t achieve a pay rise.

Result: Well I got a pay rise. Two pay rises actually, including the company-wide pay rise. But it only came to 60% of what I asked for.

Score: 60%

Invest £10k. I love investing in the stock market – it was my favourite thing of 2020 and, of course, would have been my least favourite had I lost money. I am saving for a house deposit for some crappy new build in a scummy part of London, so to stick to my plan of having a deposit by the end of 2023, I must save £10k this year. Which does depend on both a pay rise and a lockdown so I cannot spend much.

Result: I’ve actually saved and invested around £12,500 by my quick calculation, so amazingly I’ve achieved something. Cheers, covid.

Score: 100%

Charity. Give at least as much to charity as I did in 2020 – which was £363.80, according to my calculations.

Result: I ended up feeling less charitable in 2021 and stopped actively thinking about giving to charity. Ended up giving £301.81.

Score: 83%

CODING

Learn React and put some React code live. If you actually remember what I write on these every year, you may recognise this. React is the thing I can learn that will boost my future earning power most. Plus it looks like we are moving to introducing it at M&S and I’m trying to get involved as much as possible…I’ve launched the Learn React teams channel at work, even though I know zero. So, learning is one thing – but creating something either for personal use, or shipping React code live to the M&S website is required to complete this.

Result: Well I did put quite a lot of effort into learning React this year and though it isn’t second nature like JavaScript, I feel comfortable writing it. Alas, part of this goal was to put something live, which I haven’t done. Started projects with React, both at home and at work, but both a very long way from finished.

Score: 50%

Create a web app. I have an idea in my head for a social media network and a dating website. Not sure I entirely want people to use either, as shit would just get too complex/heavy, but I want to learn how to make one, and also to look good for my portfolio.

Result: Well I started making a dating site, mostly to learn NodeJS – the back-end side of things. It kind of works but it is shite. I also started making a social media network. Which again is half-finished, and pretty shit, though is built in React. Well, half-built.

Score: 25%

Rewrite portfolio. I need to massively update my personal developer profile/portfolio. It is sooooo out of date. I don’t yet have any idea what to do with it, annoyingly.

Result: I wrote a blog post. Does that count?

Score: 0%

Rewrite a blog. A couple of my blogs are way out of date and could be much improved, DJ Mix Of The Week and House Minimal Techno Disco both spring to mind. At least one of them needs redesigning and modernising.

Result: I started rebuilding DJ Mix Of The Week with something called Frontity which is basically React for WordPress, but my build randomly stopped working, and there seems to be no way to integrate the server side things like comments and newsletter sign-up – a shame as the technology is sweet but it just doesn’t do what I want it to do.

Score: 10%

STUFF

Upgrade my life. Didn’t do very well on this last year, but over the course of the year I need speaker stands, computer speakers, monitor, office chair, laptop, keyboard (yes it needs to light up) – all this needs upgrading in 2021.

Result: I bought an office chair. The deal is that I buy shit when I reach a new weight goal. Alas, I didn’t get to buy much. Office chair is a massive upgrade. Also alas, I still cannot get rid of the old shitty thing.

Score: 10%

Declutter. I surprised myself with starting a decluttering project in 2020. I have a loose goal of maybe owning 10% less stuff, but quite how I count that is another question. I managed to get rid of 134 of my 2,058 CD collection last year, so if I can get that to 300 removed this year, plus sell/bin my Mixmags then that would be a good achievement.

Result: How long have I been idly decluttering for? I definitely own a little less stuff, I’ve now got rid of 277 CDs (well, sold or currently listed on Ebay), most of my Mixmags are either sold or on Ebay too – though still more to go.

Score: 50%

Plants. I need a nicer front garden when I sit out and drink beer in 2021. So plant some plants in planters.

Result: I bought some planters. I bought some compost and put it in the planters. I planted some wildflower seeds in the planters. I watered the wildflower seeds. Daily. For weeks. Nothing happened. Kind of a metaphor of my life really, but I tried.

Score: 50%

ENVIRONMENT

Zero food waste. I feel that zero is probably impossible but it is easier to measure and should push me towards thinking of solutions. I don’t feel that I waste much anyway and I get my fruit and veg from Oddbox so I’m actually saving food waste already (and you should sign up – you get £10 off and so do I if you use my link).

Result: Well this was quite interesting. I started a spreadsheet to keep an eye on my food waste, plus kept a list of half-eaten/opened foods which I think forced me to make more effort into reducing food waste. I still waste too much, but definitely less than I used to.

Score: 60%

10% green investments. If you know me, you’ll know that I enjoy investing in the stock market. I’m going to aim to put 10% of what I invest in purely green investments – so things like solar companies, sustainable infrastructure, wind power, etc.

Result: Well, I currently have about 15% of my portfolio invested in oil and gas, along with around 15% in mining – but if you think you are going to have a green revolution without using some oil, gas, copper and cobalt then you are deluded to fuck. About 4% of my investment portfolio is in purely green shit. Which is probably a lower proportion than a year ago. Oops. But ESG is over-valued in my opinion. I’m only counting liquid investments – my shares in Oddbox are illiquid, but now worth around £4k from a £250 investment which is decent.

Score: 25%

20% green charities. I do give a bit to charity, fairly haphazardly as to what I choose, so this goal is to ensure that 20% of what I give goals to environmental causes. Charities that don’t disagree with free-market liberalism – as making people poorer doesn’t make people greener.

Result: Erm, I didn’t keep records of this. Definitely £20 went to green charities, maybe more, which would be 6.6% of my charitable giving.

Score: 33%

So what?

Well all that gives me a success rate of 41.6% on my annual goals.

Is that good or bad? Well, it isn’t great, is it? In 2020 I managed 48.7% and that included shit I couldn’t do like go on holiday. Doesn’t mean 2021 wasn’t a good year of my life, there was decisive progress in some areas of my life, like my career – which is kind of important – and pays for me to achieve other goals.

But I perhaps prioritised fun too much, as per usual. Well, much of life is fun – but by fun I mean drinking, and not all drinking is actually fun, especially sat at home reading crap on the internet like pointless goals that some fool has set himself that he perennially fails like losing weight.

Anyway, even if you are bored to fuck after reading this, I feel a bit more motivated to smash some 2022 goals…over the next 3 months anyway.

Need to write some first though…