A Look Back on 2016

I felt that I should, similar to what I did this time last year, review how I did when it comes to accomplishing what I set out for myself for 2016. You can see what I outlined for myself last January here.

The three categories in which I set targets for myself are as follows:

Goal – Something I want to accomplish that is measurable and relatively continual. eg. exercise X times per week or decrease sugar consumption by X percent. These are often habits I want to build into my life an my hope is that by doing it for a year, it will stick.

 

Theme – A central topic for the year – something I can spend time thinking about and take a few concrete efforts towards. eg. build community or rethink what health means. These are often abstract ideas that are hard to measure but important to spend time focusing on.

 

Challenge – Something I want to conquer. Crossing an item off my bucket list. eg. climb Mr. Everest or learn to tight rope walk. These are binary, I either complete them or I don’t.

2016 Goal: Become Conversational in German

I had a similar goal in 2015 of becoming fluent in 2 new languages. My score on that goal for 2015 was a measly 2/10. I decided learning languages was still something interesting to me, but that I would try to limit the breadth of what I was trying to accomplish and allow for more focus. To further entice myself, I committed to going to Germany and/or Austria at the end of January 2017.

Score: 2/10

Unfortunately, once again, this past year I didn’t really apply the focus I needed to on this goal. Until re-reading my post just recently, I had entirely forgotten my commitment to travel, and despite have done a few stints where I was pretty rigorous and regular in trying to catch back up on my German or learn more, I can’t say that I’ve gone any further than I did in 2015. I might revisit this in another way another year, but for now I think I need a new strategy.

2016 Theme: Have More Fun

A lot was going on in my life when I chose this as my theme for the year. I had just started doing regular therapy, had recently lost a friend, and overall was not in a very happy place in my life in many respects. I chose this because, as with the decision to go to therapy, I felt it was important to focus on my personal well being in a much more deliberate manner.

The specific manner in which I tried to implement this theme was that whenever I was going to do something, I would honestly ask myself ‘Do I really WANT to do this?’ and then in cases where the answer was no, unless I otherwise had a strict obligation to do it, I would do something else that I would otherwise want to do.

Score: 11/10

I was initially worried about this theme not really meaning much or having a very minimal effect on my day to day. I was also a little worried I would have trouble quantifying how I did with incorporating this theme in my life.

I can say, with complete beaming certainty, that my life has changed completely due to this theme. Despite 2016 being a very tough year in many respects with regards how the world has changed, it has been an extremely positive and growth inducing period in my personal life. I could go on and on about each of the individual ways this theme has positively contributed to my happiness, but I feel like that’s a little beyond the scope of this post. If you are interested, feel free to read this post, or simply ask me in the comments or personally via social media or otherwise.

If you need a drastic change in your life and want to feel more in control of your life and happiness, I strongly suggest you take up this theme.

2016 Challenge: Visit 12 New Dropzones

I was hoping to average a visit to a dropzone that I had not yet frequented once every month. I knew going into this that it would be pretty easy to get a part of the way there, but that the last few was where things would get challenging.

Score: 8/10

• Skydive Arizona
• Skydive Davis
• San Jose Skydiving Center
• Parachute School of Toronto
• Skydive Toronto
• Skydive Taft
• Skydive Perris
• Skydive Elsinore
• Vegas Extreme Skydiving

I managed to go to 9 new dropzones out of the intended 12. Until just now, I actually thought I had done better. I decided to give myself a little bit of an extra boost in score (1/2 of a point out of 10) because I ended up doing something I had not accounted for or expected - I spent 1.5 hours over 3 different sessions in the wind tunnel working on my skills. While this doesn’t technically count towards the challenge, I felt it was in line with the spirit and purpose of the challenge which was to improve my skydiving skills and try them in new environments. Despite not reaching the desired total, I’m definitely satisfied with the result.

Recap And Review

Score: 21/30

I almost doubled up on my score from last year! I’m quite satisfied with the improvement, but there is clearly room to keep working on this. I can’t truthfully tell myself that the year has been a complete success unless I can reach a score of 27 or more. The question becomes, where do I go from here? What have I learned year over year that I can take into 2017 and hopefully set better goals that remain challenging and rewarding, but that I’m much more likely to succeed at?

I have no doubt the reason I succeeded so evidently with my theme for the year was because it was very clear from the beginning that it’s primary and immediate purpose and benefit was to improve my happiness and quality of life. It became all about being realistic with what I wanted, and upon seeing how quickly it was allowing me to be happier on a daily basis, it was obvious that continuing to do this would only accelerate it further. Similar to my challenge last year, even though it wasn’t the easiest thing to do, especially initially, this was a very simple concept and implementation. Clearly, simplicity is a key, recurring factor to success here.

When it comes to the challenge of going to a dropzone a month, I would say that I was also pretty successful. I didn’t necessarily hit it out of the park, but the definition was clear, I knew what was feasible and where the limitations would likely be, and I managed to do pretty well. There were a few nearby dropzones I could have visited to add to that tally and did not (Tracy, Byron, and Monterey Bay). Whether due to comfort at my home DZ, laziness, lack of time, or one of many other possible reasons, I didn’t complete the challenge as fully as I could have. Despite this, I am very happy with the result and have learned more than I could ever have hoped for (both in terms of skydiving skills and in terms of what things I find exciting and enjoyable about skydiving).

Last year I felt like I had set the bar for learning languages in 2015 a little higher than I could handle. I reflected that this, as well as consistency and purpose had in large part combined for the poor result I had with the goal. While I do think consistency and purpose had a part in things again this year, I can in no way say that the bar was too high on this goal. The goal was set at a level that was achievable, and open to interpretation. I had difficulties with consistency again, though even that isn’t all that great of an excuse. I’ve had a 20 - 30 minute commute to and from work every week day morning and evening since June. For a while I did pretty good, but even that didn’t keep up for too long. As much as I’d love to learn a new language I think something that’s important to reflect on is why I was getting bored with learning the languages in the first place. The actual learning process was very enjoyable and rewarding, so that leaves me to thinking the change needs to come in HOW I’m learning these languages. I think Duolingo is a great tool for this, but I just don’t think it lines up all that great with the way I learn - at least not when it’s the only thing I’m doing to learn. I don’t think I’ll explicitly set another goal like this in 2017, but I will probably try different ways of learning German (and possibly other languages).

Similar to last year, and especially after seeing the improvements I’ve made, I am 100% going to have to stand by this method of setting a goal, theme and challenge for the year in comparison with resolutions. They’ve simply worked much better and been much more top of mind. I’ll be posting again soon with what I’m setting out for 2017 on this topic. Have you set any goals or resolutions for the new year? Do you have any big plans, or any hopes/fears for 2017? I would love to hear from you in the comments.