Ask HN: What Are Your New Years Resolutions or 2018 Goals?

But seriously, nothing major. I just want to incrementally improve my writing, coding and health and reading.

In early 2017 I set these very specific goals that all revolved around some kind of measured productivity: Learning, doing, making. Then, (my theory is it's because I was on vacation at the time, feeling rested), I set and almost immediately _increased_ the expected output. Memorize a word a day in German? No problem! That's only 365 words...let's ramp that up to, say, five words a day? I can do that with mnemonics...

Well, I gave up on that goal within 10 days, after returning to my normal hectic life. I couldn't even let myself dial it back; I had to quit it entirely (so idealistic, so brittle an approach).

Fortunately, I had also calendared monthly check-ins on my resolutions. I analyzed my progress and realized:

- I should just trust myself to make up little goals as I go along. My interests changed enough throughout the year that a few single, hard commitments were more like a distraction from my normal, fluid mode.

- I achieve a _lot_ even excluding any resolutions. I decided to track my accomplishments starting this year (and backfill previous years as best I could remember) in a milestones.txt file. So in 2017 I finished 10+ different personal web projects, completed my 15+ year-delayed university bachelor's degree, started a new business, became an Extra class ham radio operator after starting in the hobby 2 months previous, bought crypto for the first time, learned to use a transceiver and had my first QSOs, got into AMSAT and (attempted to communicate with the pileup that is) Fox-1B, downloaded Russian SSTV images from the ISS, invested in individual stocks for the first time, became a certified handwriting analyst, joined the National Space Society, and finished two other certifications. So with all this, exactly why did I think I needed any new year's resolutions?

- Any resolutions I have should probably be general directions. This will hopefully prompt me to be more flexible and make needed course corrections along the way, rather than heading toward some fixed point.

Finally, the huge outcome for me was realizing that all of this productivity results in higher anxiety and higher chances for depression (just based on my journals). So I pay a price for achievement. It should be obvious, perhaps, but like a moron I just thought that to achieve big things meant to become happy. A risky thought! There's much more to it.

For 2018, I plan on branching out into new hobbies. I'm in danger of becoming a one dimensional person. I think about code most of my waking hours and most of my friends are engineers too. I plan on picking up biking, taking dance classes, or improv classes to meet new people.

That, and keeping a journal of some kind.