# reflecting: reflect regularly

one thought stuck with me from my previous post, @/grow. in there i propose that one should occasionally write answers to 4 questions. to recap, let me list those 4 questions along with a single word that summarizes the question's intent:

• achievement: what achievement of yours are you the most proud of from the past few months?
• failure: what are you not so proud of from the past few months?
• goal: name a goal for the next few months.
• peers: name a few people who you interacted with a lot in the past few months.

i think these are pretty good questions: they don't overwhelm you because they only ask you to list one answer. even answering with one short sentence is enough. and just because you list at least one answer, it already bumps you out of a fully autopilot life.

in that post i suggest that people work on these questions regularly with a mentor. however what if someone doesn't have a mentor? well, i think one should still ask those questions from themselves regularly.

i think i'll give it a shot every 4 months or so. i tried answering those questions and they are not that easy. as an example here's what i came up with yesterday after some pondering (keep in mind that the answers are about the surrounding +/- 4 months):

• achievement: i've created a good daily routine.
• failure: i still distracted myself too often with pointless internet surfing.
• goal: find an accountability partner to grow my peer list.
• peers: ak (initials only)

it took me a while to answer those questions but now i feel i have a bit more clarity about where i am and where am i going. although i'll try to do this regularly but probably i won't do it publicly. i feel doing it publicly would prevent being fully honest with the answers. the answers could often require a lot of personal context that would just not make sense without that extra knowledge. e.g. my "goal" has more nuance to it that i didn't elaborate above. or one might not want to publicize their failures and aspirations. though i might change my mind and i'll just keep updating this post or add a new post for every reflection point even if things don't make sense.

note that this reflection doesn't necessary come with any commitments. for instance i can now decide how disturbing the procrastination mentioned in the failure question is. if it is, i might start tracking it or try to prevent it. or i might just make a mental note of it (raise mental awareness) and see how it changes over time. furthermore, i might make plans to achieve my goal or i might not. but i can certainly give it an occasional thought how could i come nearer the goal.

doing it every 4 months means 3 reflection points in a year. i find that not too frequent and not too rare: it's just 4 questions that need single sentence answer after all.

i think i'll be able to tell if this is valuable or not after i did it a few times and have some historical data. so maybe after a year or two i'll know. it's a cheap experiment to try.

# edit re goals (2022-08):

set small, regularly occurring routine as a goal rather than one big achievement. whether you can finish something is not always within control. showing up regularly to do an activity is on you.

• bad goal: "i finish project x".
• good goal: "i make progress on x every workday morning".
• good goal: "i do x at least once every month".

this is pretty important but is something i forgot to highlight above.

# 2021-05-28 (4 months update)

• achievement: quite enjoyed work lately, felt productive, got good rating.
• failure: some stuff almost happened, but actually no progress on accountability partner front. starting to doubt i actually need this.
• goal: try out a very specific new hobby that might replace my need for the accountabilty partner.
• peers: ak

# 2021-09-26 (4 month update)

it's time for my second reflection update. well, i think i've managed to make some of the things i wanted but i've failed to fully go through my idea from the previous update. tbf, it was very vaguely defined, i don't even remember what it was exactly because i didn't write it down. i'll definitely annotate my journal with more specific notes in the future. and i'll aim at specific actions that are easy to measure success with.

i'll stop tracking the peers section from this point on. i'm way too introverted. i don't mingle with others, so it's just too depressing to track this. i don't really need/miss such mingling anyways. if i'd feel overly isolated, i'd probably continue to track this though.

also, i think i'll bump the update period to 5 months. i think the updates should be not divisible by the number of months in a year. this way each update is done at some different time rather than at the same time each year. it makes it less of a seasonal thing and thus less boring hopefully.

• achievement: i've managed to finish the golang rewrite of my server that i was wanting to finish for a quite a while now.
• failure: inadequate notes and tracking for my previous goal. at least now i know that i need to write things down, not just make mental notes when it comes to reflecting.
• goal: i'll add a new, special activity to my "monthlies". i've added details about this to my journal file under today's entry. more on these in a future post.

# 2022-03-11 (5 month update)

• achievement: i stuck to my monthly wellbeing event i prescribed to myself last time. it had the desired effect of improving my mood and life satisfaction. i'll keep doing it, but i'll move it to a quarterly event. while i definitely need some of it, monthly frequency might be a bit too much for me. i'm also very happy that i managed to finish my @/gdsnap tool.
• failure: i can't think of anything serious problem i had in the last 5 months. i think i had a good run.
• goal: i have a little project i'm working on again. my goal is simple this time: make sure i make some progress on it every workday.

# 2022-08-08 (5 month update)

this is now the 4th update. i really appreciate this reminder to think through my recent months and set some goals for the next. it really helps me reorganize thoughts, reprioritize matters in my life, force me to experiment with new things.

• achievement: in last iteration my plan was to make progress on my hobby project every workday morning. i skipped some days for various reasons, but i managed to stick to it in general. i did not finish my project. it's more work than i anticipated. progress was plenty so i'm pretty happy about the results so far. if i continue doing this, i'm sure i'll finish one day. working on it became a habit now, i don't even need to plan for this consciously anymore.
• failure: nothing spectacular but i'm questioning some aspects in my personal life lately. i've added some unfiltered thoughts and ideas about it to my private version of the update.
• goal: recently i got an ebike. i primarily use it for commuting but i also go on occasional joyrides. i wonder if i could find pals for such joyrides. i only found very serious biking groups which i didn't really like. so my goal for the next few months: organize a regular local meetup for short biking joyrides. i shall organize at least 2 meetups per month for 3 months. plus there's a small extra personal goal noted in my private version of the update.

# 2023-01-07 (5 month update)

i started having private versions of these updates. it's pretty neat because i can be more open there. i even started tracking notes about personal relationships again there. i no longer agree with what i wrote in the 2021-09-26 update with regards to not tracking this. my primary problem was with doing it publicly. but doing it privately is helpful.

but if i do private notes, then why do public ones too? mostly for accountability. i promised in this post to make regular updates and i don't like to go back on promises without a good reason. otherwise i would be tempted to simply stop doing this properly even though i find the exercise quite useful. if i ever stop this, i shall document it here why i stopped doing it.

anyway, here is the public part of my current reflection notes:

• achievement: i'm quite pleased that i managed to finish another hobby project of mine at work. forcing myself to do even the smallest progress every day really works for making me keep my motivation. i chipped away at it every day until one day the list of remaining tasks became empty. i suppose i'm getting good at estimating what i can finish even though i seriously underestimated how much time it would take. i wouldn't have thought it would take almost a year. but it's done so it's all good. i've managed to complete my personal task noted in my previous update too.
• failure: the bike meetup didn't really catch on. i pretty much did only the minimum here though. it wasn't a bright idea to do it in the winter. there was only one instance where another participant came. that was pretty nice though. anyway, i don't like organizing stuff like this so i don't think i'll continue this experiment. the lingering thoughts about potentially needing to go biking next morning and then needing to plan another event were somewhat anxiety inducing. maybe i can try again a few years later once i manage to make my mornings more free from work and family.
• goal: this time i'll take a break from project work even though i have my next idea queued up. lately i was doing less freewriting in the evenings and spent more time on work and youtube. to counterbalance this, for the next 5 months i commit to a new weekly habit. at least once per week i shall be device free after 8pm. no work, no youtube, no kindle. just freewriting. hopefully i can get back to healthier habits after some forced introspection.

# 2023-06-03 (5 month update)

• achievement: i found a few productivity hacks that really work for me. i don't know how they are called officially, i call them @/tlogging and @/imtasks. with these i think i got a bit more productive but i also feel that more stuff is landing on my plate in exchange. but now that i realized this as part of this reflection process (yay!), i have some ideas how to get fewer things to appear in my queue, i'll look into that. other than busywork and some small wins, there was no big notable achievement for me this time.
• failure: i'm getting worse at having quiet, screenless evenings. on one hand i keep checking what's happening at work. and on the other hand i sometimes tend to watch too much youtube. i have to be more mindful about this. my smartphone usage is getting worse too.
• goal: previous time i commited to have at least one day each week screenless from 8pm. i did manage to keep that commitment and it was super useful. but i kept it to the minimum, pretty much only once a week. this time i should try to be more aggressive. i commit to no work, youtube or general browsing after 9pm. i'll allow myself one cheat day per week as an escape hatch just in case. i'll also allow reading, taking notes or some light coding on my @/dasung screen but let's hope i can avoid that too. let's see how this goes.

and i added some notes about my social life into my private version of this note.

# 2023-11-14 (5 month update)

• achievement: fairly ok (but not perfect) adherence to avoiding computer after 9pm. i think this helped me a lot with getting through the higher workload at work.
• failure: i feel i might have spent way too much time on work lately. i have fallen back on making progress on my backlog. that's mostly because some of my projects had tight deadlines and therefore i have skipped my regular vacation weeks. i've managed to finish what i wanted. nevertheless i might need better habits to better handle this sort of situation.
• goal: work less i suppose. don't touch work tasks before 9am. timeboxing ftw!

# 2024-05-01 (5 month update)

• achievement: i managed to finish another work related hobby project i was thinking about for a while. it's a big relief. from now on i'll focus more on personal hobby projects that i can then share on my blog.
• failure: i got addicted to various websites again. i got some free time because i finished my hobby project and i was ramping down on my primary project at work. and i spent that excess time on browsing and youtubing. and slacking begets more slacking. slacking on the web began feel more inviting than starting my next task in the queue. this often led to breaking my limits and commitments. i was very unproductive in the past few months.
• goal: i need to stop browsing and youtubing. do it only on friday at most. i need to find a different relief outlet whenever the browsing itch comes up again. i should consider these in this order: write the itch down, freewriting, exercising, leetcoding, reading, walking, showering, daydreaming. i'll focus on the "writing it down" approach: whenever i want to check a website, i'll just write down the url into my slacking list. then on the next friday i can indulge myself in the slacking list. maybe this will be enough to calm myself? there's a weekly show i watch that comes out on monday. that might end up be hard to wait out but at least it will give my new commitment a good practice. let's see how this works out.

# 2024-09-29 (5 month update)

• achievement: i've managed to finish another big hobby project: @/difftesting. i'm really happy about this, i was thinking about this project for years now. and i've already used it in a few smaller projects and it works perfectly. the @/slackday experiment from the previous reflection turned out to be a big productivity boost too.
• failure: there were some up and downs here and there but i've managed to resolve everything. currently there's nothing that really stands out to me that i consider a failure where i need to make adjustments. perhaps worth mentioning is that i feel my social skills are now noticeably worsened. i'm going to work about ~2 per week so i meet and talk very little with others. and when i do meet people, it's getting more and more awkward due to my lack of skills. i don't have a proper second place (work), not alone a third place.
• goal: and as such i don't really have any particular goal for my next iteration other than keep working on my hobby projects. my next few projects are social related with the end goal of increasing my interests in socializing in my own weird way. the sooner i can finish them, the sooner i can experiment spicing up my life. they are massive projects compared to my previous ones though. but i keep doing one small step at a time per @/mornings and see where that leads me.

published on 2021-01-24, last modified on 2024-09-29

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