New Years Goals

Everyone has New Years Goals. At the end of the year, during the reflective Christmas season, we think about what we can do better in the following year. Most of the people want to do more sport, become a healthy lifestyle, quit smoking, etc.But also most of the people forget those goals very quickly. After a few days, the everyday life overruns us and we fall back into familiar patterns. The following list is a summary of my new years goals. The last few days, I was busy formulating my goals that I concreted during Christmas. This post is an approach to keep track of the progress of my goals. I will review the progress periodically and update the post in order to see how how well I have achieved my goals.

Healthy Food/More Sport

There is good food. And there is bad food. Usually, the bad one tastes better than the good one. And usually you eat a lot of “zero calories” – calories that you eat but that don’t satisfy you – when you eat the bad food. And more usually, the bad one is quite everywhere and cheaper than the good one. Our fast life style tends us to “optimize” every single step of our everyday life. This includes also our way how we eat. And so, I made eating at restaurants to the rule a long time ago.

This is bad. While we have a very high standard regarding to restaurants and the food served, it is a different level of a healthy life style when you prepare the food by yourself. And thus, I want to start cooking my food at home and make the way to a restaurant the exception. The second “bad food” in my life are sweets/chocolate. There are sweets every where. In every super market, restaurant and even at bus/train stations are sweets/chocolate. I want to get rid of this. Sure, it’s not absolute renunciation and you should allow yourself something every now and then, but my goal is to make it an exception in my life. Maybe once a week or month (or so).

Parallel to the healthy nourishment, I want to do more sport. I want to increase the time spending at the gym from 3 times per week to 5 times per week. Since the gym is on the same street as the office, this should be doable.

Getting a constant in the new Job

With 2019, I started to work as a Senior PHP Developer at Check24 Vergleichsportal für Sachversicherungen GmbH, Germany’s biggest comparision portal for different products, such as insurances, travels as well as simple shopping. I consider this as an important change in my life, since I think that the job suits to me very well. And according to this, I want to get a constant in my new team and take responsibility for the product as well as within the team.

After a different experience at my former employer, where I realized that I am a backend engineer and not made for the frontend, the position fits the best to me: the position (Senior Backend Engineer), the programming language (PHP) and the location (the city of Frankfurt am Main). By the end of the year I want to have achieved this goal.

One Book per Quartal

In the past, I read a lot. All kind of random stuff and even stuff I couldn’t make sense of, which just interested me. But then, especially starting with the university lessons and side projects, I lost this habit. Over the last few years, it got worse and worse and especially the last year, I read only 2-3 books (or so).

I want to change this. And I would like to tie in with Mark Zuckerberg’s resolutions: one of Mark’s previous goals was to read 25 books a year. I want to start with a book per quarter in order to get back into the action:

Two new Programming Languages and a MUP

I worked a lot with PHP. I launched several PHP based libraries and projects and can now say for myself that I am very confident with it. And since I now also have a job in the PHP environment, it is time to learn new stuff in order to improve my skills. One of these programming languages is Python, the other one is probably going to be any JavaScript framework (React, Angular, etc). Let’s see!

Another thing is to create a “Minimum Usable Product” (MUP). I do not have any idea yet. There is “TodoList”, which is a possible candidate. But there are another ideas in my mind as well. Stay tuned!

Give a bigger Fuck to haters

Not kidding, this is also a goal! Especially the last year, at two companies where I worked, I met a lot of (high ranked) people who just hate! My demand on myself during this time was to satisfy every party on projects on that I worked. And the most of the time, I noticed that this was for nothing as people hate because they hate! So, the goal is: let the hater’s hate and give a fuck!

The end of the year

At the end of the year 2019, I want to achieve (hopefully) all of the goals above. This blog post is therefore “long term” and will be alive during the whole year.