It has been a really long time since I last sat down to really think about my goals for the new year. And I mean, really thinking about it purposefully. Now that 2022 is finally over, and we’re in the beginning days of 2023, I wanted to seize this moment to lay out my goals for this coming year. It has been quite a long time since I last achieved all of my New Year Resolutions. The last time I managed to achieve 100% of my goals was back in 2013 – 2015. After that, things just kinda went downhill from there.
I’ve made plenty of excuses for myself since then, but nothing is further from the truth – I haven’t been taking control/ownership of my life. For years, I have allowed the circumstances, and people around me to help dictate/shape my choices. And when the outcome isn’t what I had hoped/desired, I would complain about it, but the truth was, I let it happen to me. So there’s nobody else to blame but myself.
Now that I’m armed with that self-awareness of what went wrong, I’m ready to take back control of my life.
Here are my goals for 2023, all of which have been broken down into THREE main categories.
Personal
Fitness & Health
For the first time in many years, I am ready to put effort into my own fitness and health. I hate to admit it sometimes, but in recent years, I’ve allowed myself to “let loose”, and since then I’ve been gaining weight every single year.
Learning from my own past experiences of trying to diet or hitting the gym 5 days a week, I understood now that the most important way to get fit and stay fit is to create a lifestyle that is sustainable in the long term. When we take things to the extreme, it usually doesn’t last for very long.
For this first goal, I’m going to aim to do a regular 5km run, 3 times a week. I’ll aim to reach a 6.30 pace at that as well. Something else I need to do is to cut back on my snacking. I still do that once every few days. I snack when I’m feeling anxious or stressed about something. So knowing how to properly handle/manage that anxiety level would be helpful to this goal as well.
In terms of my weight, I’m not at a very healthy level right now. I haven’t weighed myself recently, but I won’t be surprised if I’m over 90 now (which puts me in the mildly obese category). To have a realistic and achievable goal, I’ll aim to cut 5kg before June 2023.
Sure, if I can increase my workout frequency and watch what I am eating (in moderation), I think it is possible to reduce more weight in that timeframe. But I’ll set my goal at 5kg as a baseline.
Finances
The second area of my personal life that I really want to tackle in 2023, would be my finances. This one coincides with my professional goals as well. But without getting into that, I’ll just say two things:
1. Minimal Expenses
Having decided to focus all of my energy into being a UX consultant, I know that potentially, I would be able to make some decent income from my consulting gigs. By calculating what I can earn per gig (even at the lowest baseline), I can bring in roughly USD 5000 (SGD 8000~9000) a month. Yes, there would be operating expenses, funds for software subscriptions if that’s a necessity, and other miscellaneous project-related expenses.
But beyond those expenses, I aim to keep my own personal expenses down to the minimum. That means I’ll refrain from spending money at Starbucks, or eating out at cafes. Okay, maybe I’ll do that occasionally as a reward for achieving various milestones on a project, or after the completion of one. But I’m not going to repeat what I have done in the past. Yes, this also means I’ll be staying home a lot more too. Staying home, helps to reduce my overall personal expenses. My rule of thumb is simple, if I won’t die without it, I don’t need it.
2. Increase Savings
Next, this is one area of my life that needs a serious focus right now. I have spent a very long time of my adult life, living without any savings. It really is not the proper way to live. In the good times, it’s easy not to worry about my finances. But it is during those bad times that I really felt the pain of not having any savings.
Like the two-sides of the same coin, my goal to keep my expenses down to the minimal is to allow me the opportunity to increase my own personal savings. And yes, that means, working hard/smart whenever I need to.
The good news about being a specialized UX consultant, is that I have more time and energy to commit to more than 1 gig at a time. When I used to be a jack of all trades in the past, all of my time and energy is devoted to a single gig, and taking on a second would only affect the performance of both projects. This means that I should be able to bring in a lot more monthly income in the long run.
My aim is to be able to save up at least $3,000 ~ $4,000 a month for the next 12 months. It won’t be a lot at the end of the year, but it’s a start.
Mental Health
For the very first time in my life, I am recognising the need to seek professional help. I haven’t done that in recent years because financially, I just wasn’t in a good place. But now that my financial situation is slowly getting better, I think I’ll be ready to make some plans to seek counseling/therapy when the time is right.
I’m not a stranger to seeking professional help. Growing up as a kid, I have been visiting different psychiatrists, counselors and therapists for as long as I can remember. It’s mostly to help me deal with my chronic anxiety and depression.
In recent years, thanks to my growing self-awareness, I’m better able to manage it, hence, the do-away of the “chronic” part. But my challenges still remain. Anxiety is still a very big part of my struggles, and on top of that, I need to always keep my mild ADHD in check and manage it accordingly.
I’ve realized that I need to seek professional help because it’s easy to think that I have everything under control when the times are good, but it’s during the most difficult times that things will start to relapse for me. That is when I really need help to manage what I am going through.
While things are certainly getting better (slightly), mentally speaking, I know I’m not totally out of the woods just yet. It’s going to take me months, maybe the rest of the year to work stuff out for myself. And I could really use some help with that.
Material Stuff
One area of goals for me is always dedicated to my personal desires. We all have things we would like to have. And I’ve learned that it’s okay to have those desires and have them among our new year resolutions. These goals actually do provide very good motivation too.
Upgrading my Custom PC
One of the goals I have in 2023, is to be able to upgrade my personal PC. I consider myself really blessed and lucky that I got to own a PC that has a decent RTX3070 GPU in it. In 2023 though, I’m hoping to upgrade my PC in something better. Perhaps even have a casing that would allow a dual-GPU setup in the near future. As a nerd, consultant, content creator and gamer all roll into one, I could see how my system would be able to sustain all of my needs in the near future. So yeap, when my finances allows it (probably in the later half of 2023), I would like to begin the process of upgrading my PC. I would an AMD Threadripper CPU, coupled with an RTX4080 perhaps.
Upgrading my Mobile Phone
For the past year, due to my dire financial situation, I had to resort to using a second hand cheap smart phone. I’ve been through bad times before, so I’m no stranger to living on the bare minimums.
For me, it’s much easier to differentiate between what my needs are, versus my wants. Therefore, I have no problem using a cheaper phone. After all, I just need it for the most basic apps and for communication, and yes, the occasional sharing of updates on my social media accounts.
But as a content creator, I miss being able to take great pictures and editing them with more sophisticated apps on my devices and then sharing them onto my social media. I was pretty good at that for a number of years.
It’s more likely that I would stick with an Android device, although it is also possible that I would be getting an iPhone at some point because of my UX consulting work. So yeap, I would have both eventually, but my main device would probably be Android.
Replacing my Monitor (Dual Setup)
Though the hand-me-down super ultrawide monitor that I’m using right now is kinda cool for certain applications (and playing certain PC games), it’s not exactly the most practical option for me when you consider everything that I want to do with my PC ie, work, content creation, etc.
That is why, in 2023, as part of my plans to save up, I want to be able to invest in a better monitor. I’ll be reverting to my previous favourite of 1440p (either 28″ or 32″), and another monitor for 4K.
One or both of those monitors will likely have HDR10 specs. That would be useful for the things that I want to do. Since it will take me some time to earn my income and also gather up my savings, this is something that’ll happen, most likely in the second half of 2023.
Replacing my Desk (with an Ergo Workstation)
If you don’t already know (chances are you probably don’t), the current desk that I’m using in my room right now, has been with me for the past 4…5 years. It’s getting old and mostly, it’s just not ergonomic enough for me. It’s one of those with cabinets on both sides so you’re forced to sit in the middle all the time.
In 2023, I aim to replace my old desk with one of those ergonomic ones where I can stand up and work after lunch. I like that feature because I’m always feeling sleepy after meals anyway (food coma). By being able to stand up while I work can help me to manage that sleepy effects after a meal. And perhaps also help me to be a little more productive during the day.
Collecting a Few More Audiophile Headphones
As an audiophile growing up, I’ve always enjoyed collecting headphones. My first was the HD600 by Sennheiser. I remembered saving up for an entire year before I was able to get it on my birthday. In 2023, I have my mind on a few models that I would love to collect. They can be rather expensive, so I probably won’t be able to get too many, just 2 – 3???
One of those that I have my eyes on is the HD800. That alone would cost S$2,799 (without including tax). So yeah, it ain’t cheap. I think it’s more likely that I’ll just collect 2 headphones in 2023. I need to make sure I still have plenty of savings left by the end of the year.
Professional
Consulting Gigs
Like I mentioned above, when it comes to my UX consulting gigs, I am excited and looking forward to being able to collaborate with different companies in the coming year. As someone that not only is strong in UX, but also has capabilities in UI design and frontend dev, I believe that I can bring that added value to potential clients.
Unlike in the past when I was a jack of all trades, being a specialist now means I can devote more time to different gigs. I can imagine myself managing at least 2 different projects/clients at any given time.
With 5 days in a week, I can imagine dedicate 2 days per week to both clients, and then having 1 day where I can work from home to work on any tasks that doesn’t require an on-site collaboration.
Even on the days when I feel it is helpful to be on-site, it won’t require an entire day. I no longer believe that how effective a person is at that jobs is defined by the number of hours they spend on it.
Being effective/efficient, to me, is about spending less time to get more things done. Simply put, I’m more task-oriented. As long as the tasks are completed, I’ll call it a day. So yeah, 2 clients at a time is optimal for me.
So that’s where I’m going to begin in January. I’m going to start looking for potential consulting gigs. Smaller scale projects can last anywhere between 1-2 months (sometimes 6-8 weeks), and bigger contracts can last anywhere between 2-3 months (or longer depending on the scope of the work).
On my end, I just have to make sure that I am not taking on more than 2 gigs at any one time (big or small).
Training Gigs
Because my consulting work won’t take up all of my time in a single day, I believe that it is also possible for me to commit some of my nights to conduct trainings (night or weekend classes).
Training is still one of the most effective use of my skills and talents. This is where I can really excel. Being a trainer also means additional income. Although, at this point, I’m not 100% sure how often I will be able to get a training gig. Most training gigs don’t last very long. They can span anywhere between 4 weeks to 3 months. It all depends on how spread out the timetable is, and the curriculum).
But my hope for 2023 is simple here, I want to start getting training gigs. Even if I only manage to do 1-2 in the entire year. We all have to start somewhere right?
Tech Speaking Engagements
After spending years away from the stage, I believe it is time for me to reengage with the tech community again. I’m ready to step back into public speaking. This includes seminars, workshops, and related conferences.
Some of these engagements may include a small fee (mostly they are a token of appreciation), but yeah, engagements like workshops and public speaking can be paid engagements too. It really depends.
Hardware
I did mention this before in a previous journal entry. So I’m not going to go into too much detail about it. But yeah, the most important piece of hardware that is related to my work as a UX consultant, would be to have a MacBook Pro. I already know what I want for that. It’s likely that I will need to complete at least a few months of gigs before I have enough money to invest in a proper MacBook Pro. What I need won’t be cheap, so I’ll need to be patient on this front.
Content creation
YouTube & Twitch
My YT and Twitch feeds have been rather neglected in recent months, but I suspect it won’t be long before I start posting videos again. I don’t exactly have a concrete plan/schedule for what I want to publish or do. In fact, like everything that I’m really good at, I’m just going to go with the flow of my inspiration. Whenever I feel like I have something meaningful to share, I’ll share it. It’s not going to be constricted to a particular schedule or timetable.
Truth is, my inspiration for content has never really followed a timetable. They come and go as they please. I just have to be ready to receive it when they do. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, some of my best works as a content creator wasn’t something that I had to force myself to do. Instead, they usually just flowed out of me naturally.
Ebook Projects
As a content creator, this year will be focused mainly on my ebooks. There are two ebooks that are currently in the pipeline. The first one would be UX-related, and the second one would be Python-related. The first one is clearly related to my professional work. The second one would be related to STEAM (coding), which is also something that I’m really passionate about.
The first ebook (UX) will be released during the 1st half of 2023, and the second ebook will be released during the 2nd half of 2023. It’ll take up a lot of my time as a content creator to work on both ebooks, but I know that in the long run, it will pay off in ways that I haven’t yet imagined.
I’m also doing it because that’s something I want to do in the long term. Calling it a passion/calling. I want to be able to share with the community what I’m most passionate about. Taking everything that I’ve learned and putting them into a book (with online learning materials to supplement it). It’s the kind of self-learning material (quality) that we haven’t seen in many years.
Personal Website
Finally, last but not least, this personal website that I have right now is not quite done yet. There’s still plenty of work that can be done to make it better. But what I have currently is limited. Like I have shared before in previous entries on this site, this website feels like something that I’m starting from scratch. It’s about “going back to the basics” if you know what that means. In terms of potential and enhancements, well, from where I stand now, I think there’s a lot of room for this website to grow and become better.
I believe it is possible that I could take the entire year to work on my personal website. There will be constant improvements and changes along the way, but by the end of 2023, this website would be much closer to it’s full potential.
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