Reflection of 2023 and The Plans for 2024

A happy new year to all. I know I am about 1 week late to wish you but hey good things take time. Honestly, I can’t believe that 2023 is over. A lot has changed in my life this year, which I wanted to share with you all. This has been the first year, where I lived consciously and achieved a few of my goals. Life threw a lot of challenges in my way but I didn’t sway from my path. I feel extremely proud of the system I was able to discover for self-improvement.

As I say goodbye to 2023 and prepare myself for, what looks to be, a tough 2024, I thought of sharing my system with you all.

But first, some context.

Context

By the year 2022, I had discovered a big problem with myself. Lack of consistency. I was not at all consistent with any commitment in life. I found it frustrating.

How did I find my problem? Well, when I was purging my laptop of old junk files. I saw file after file of incomplete writing projects. I felt disgusted that I was not taking my hunch seriously enough to write consistently.

Every writer has to be a good reader. That is the rule. So I decided to change my focus from writing to reading. By the end of 2022, I was reading books, 4 pages a day thanks to the Atomic Habit book. I learned that your aim should be reading each day rather than trying to finish the 300+ pages book. When you focus on reading each day, eventually the book also finishes. With this new idea, in mind, I started reading book after book.

I started sharing my thoughts on those books via book reviews over fb. I noticed that I had published some articles irregularly on FB in the last few years. So one goal I had in mind was to publish at least 1 write-up on FB each week. I joined a lot of writing groups to get inspired. Whenever I would read other writer’s posts, they always used to publish a link to their website. I dreamed of owning a website where all my writings are under one roof. But even before I could start thinking of building one, I had to prove to myself that I was a writer.

What is notion and how I discovered it?

The notion is a lifestyle management tool. Well, it is the most simplistic definition I can provide because the notion can be configured for anything. It is this flexibility that people love. 2023 was just around the corner when I discovered the tool notion. I saw a YT video of how a doctor uses notion to juggle his doctor duties and manage a professional YT channel. I felt wow if a doctor could use the notion to fulfill his life dreams, so I must too.

If you are interested, here are some of the interesting Notion YT to get you started:

So I explored Notion and set up some goals for 2023 with a focus on 4 major areas of life. 1. Health. 2. Book reading 3. Career and 4. Writing.

Why notion is even required?

I was thinking the same until I read a book called get things done. Here is my review of it, in case you want to know what’s it about. – https://rollingtales.in/book-review-how-to-get-things-done-in-life/

This book told me that our brain is incapable of holding on to things. It is made to execute things but not to remember things. So you need a trusted system in which you can capture things. When things are captured in a system, the cognitive load on your brain is reduced. You have more bandwidth to execute things than to remember what to execute. Your system should send you reminders of pending, repetitive tasks. Your system should help you apply filters so the right tasks can come up when required. A simple to-do list just doesn’t cut it. You need a system that has intelligence.

This all can be done in notion. You can build your very own second brain in Notion by which you are left with only to execute things.

My goals and it’s layered review process-

These were my exact goals for 2023- HERE

And before the drum rolls begin to unveil the results, I want to let you know the review process I followed to achieve this.

It is important to break the projects into goals and goals into activities.
1. Health. 2. Book reading 3. Career and 4. Writing. Projects translated into goals (HERE)
These goals translated into daily activities which I used to monitor on the habit app (HERE)
The habit app generates a score for each habit, which I use to key in my weekly review board. The weekly review was focused on whether I was following up on the laid-out process of activities. I used to monitor the scores each week
Once in a quarterly, I used to do an output review. If the process is followed, is the output in line with our goals?

Screenshot actuals from 2023

And now the drum roll…

What did I achieve this year?-

Proud owner of the blogging website – rollingtales.in – as I was dreaming once, I was able to bring in all my writing under one roof. Finally, a dream I realized
Got my wheelchair working again – my wheelchair was broken for the last 3 months of 2023. With a lot of decisions to make, I finally made it work most cost-effectively.
Finished 9 books.
Wrote 85 notes related to these 9 books
Revised 35 of the 85 written book notes in my weekly review.
Wrote 2.11lakhs words as part of journal entries
334 days document of 352 days of the year 2023… Moments captured forever
Weight reduced from 72kg to 68kg
42 articles written and published on the website

And on the personal side, below is the list of achievements that I am very proud of-

Became a father of a baby boy. Thank you, god.
Until now, I have always had help in managing a function, be it from friends or family but when it came to my son’s naming function, I managed that function all alone. I am proud that it created a happy memory for all of us.
Got promoted at the office – a large credit of this is due to the get thing done book. I designed a task manager for the office which helped me ensure no tasks were left unattended.

Well, there are a few things I wished had gone my way in the year 2023-

As I was seeing improvement in consistency, I wanted to find out if I could start a side hustle around writing. I invested money in a few sites where writing consistently could lead to earnings but due to various reasons on integrations with Indian payment apps, they have stopped the payment to Indian writers. So that was a bummer.
Towards the end of 2023, I started writing on Quora, so that is yet to materialize into any earnings.
For my website, the Google Adsense approval is pending. With increased activity and rankings, I am hoping this might work in 2024.
I had a project called Building Bridges. I realized that often we are so lost in our lives, we don’t connect with our loved ones regularly. I started this project in mind to connect with my friends and close family members regularly however I failed to achieve the objective I had set for myself
My focus on diet was not too strict. Since the weight was reducing, I didn’t focus too much on diet. This year, adherence to diet is going to be one of the critical goals.
Professionally I tried learning CISA but found out that I am not interested and no matter how much I force myself it didn’t work out. So in 2024, I have decided to focus on other areas of career growth.

What is the plan for the year?

Health
- To exercise 90% of the days
- To meditate 90% of the days
- Only 12 times a year, diet breaking is allowed

Output should be weight reduction to 65kg

Book reading
- 10+ pages per day for 90% of the days
- Write notes for each book I read and revise it once in a year
- Publish book reviews for books that inspired me

Output should be Complete 12 book

Building bridges, not wallsv2.

Output should be A list of call count and recurring reminders for calling

Career
- Take on the adventure of a new role given in the company

Output should be a good performance rating at the company.

Writing.
- 90% of the time write journal entries for the 2024 year
- 90% of the time write a new blog per week

Output should be– 52 articles published on the blog

Wheelie project – towards the end of 2023, my wheelchair’s pin was broken. I had to go through a lot of struggles related to getting it repaired. I also learned a lot about the active wheelchair market in India. The active wheelchair can be a game changer for a person with a locomotive disability. Currently, there are a few vendors but a good light wheelchair costs anything between 2-6 lakhs. So considering this pain point and trusting my system to achieve goals, I have taken an ambitious goal this year, apart from continuing to follow the goals of 2023, is – is to conceptualize lightweight affordable wheelchairs exclusively for Indian users.

Fingers crossed.

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