This post was edited a year later (on 1/2/2021), with updates on the status of these goals.
Professional
Get Healthie to (redacted)MM in ARR
We’ll get there if we have a similar/slightly better year than last year. Will be a nice milestone, and a continuance of the good, solid growth we saw in 2019.
Status: Achieved
Maintain Healthie’s profitability in 2020
Being a profitable company lets us control our destiny, and build the company we want to build. Now that we have a history of turning a profit, we should maintain that, barring any large new growth channels that prove worth pouring a ton of money upfront in to.
Status: Achieved
Spend time identifying first Angel investment
I’ve been strongly considering doing this in the past year, and I think I’m finally in the position of being able to do this (Spearhead/Indie.VC Scout programs be damned), if I find a company that I really believe in. This goal was originally “Make first angel investment”, but don’t want to commit to doing so, in case I can’t find the right company.
Status: Achieved. I made my first real Angel investment in March, into https://takeshape.io/
Start sharing and building a record of my thoughts
I’ve gotten really into Fred Wilson, and other bloggers, this year, and want to start doing something similar on a small-scale myself — both for my own sake (it’s interesting to see my prior thoughts), but also to try to become a greater part of the larger start-up community. Concretely, I want to blog twice a month, and tweet regularly, in order to end the year at over 1000 followers.
Status: Failed. I wrote 13 blog posts in 2020 (up from 0 in 2019), and tweeted a lot more, but ended up far below my quantitative goals here.
Fitness
Work out 4 times a week
8/2018 to 6/2019, I was regularly going to BJJ class 4 or more times a week. Since I got my Blue belt and moved out, it’s been a lot more hit or miss, and more like twice a week. I’ve been making a lot of excuses (some of them valid), as far as class times, and other engagements, but there’s no reason why I can’t fill it in with other excerise types like running.
Status: Failed
Win a BJJ match
I went 0-3 in 3 competitions in 2018/2019. I want to do a round robin tournament (to ensure myself matches), and finally win one. I signed up for a Grappling Industries tournament on 1/18, so committing to doing that (185lbs with Gi for those curious).
Status: Achieved. I thankfully got this out of the way last January. I won 4 matches, and finished 3rd.
Try striking
I have been doing grappling for over a decade now, but have never tried a striking sport. Want to check out a Muy Thai or a MMA gym, for a trial at the very least.
Status: Achieved.
Personal
Travel somewhere I have not been to
I travelled a fair amount in 2019, but outside of NOLA (which was amazing), all were to locations I had already visited (LA, Vegas, Philly, Toronto). I want to take a trip in 2020 to somehwere that’s new and distinct (maybe Prague?)
Status: Failed. COVID threw a wrench into this.
Play a real gig
Overall, I played less guitar, wrote less music, and played less open mics in 2019 than in 2018. With all that said, guitar remained a major hobby for me, and I’d still would love to play an actual non open-mic show. I don’t care if it’s in front of two people, more important thing it’s part of a show that people are choosing to go to.
Status: Failed. COVID made this impossible, but I don’t think I would have achieved this regardless.
Have a winning poker year
In 2019, I played 28 live poker sessions (probably around 100 hours total), and finished the year a few hundred dollars down (barring any remaining sessions in the next couple days). I am unsure if I’ll hit a statistically meaningful sample size of poker playing in 2020, but regardless, would like to win money overall.
Status: Failed. I only played 5 meaningful sessions this year, and ended down a little bit.
Read 30 books
After a year-long period where I didn’t read any books, I started actively reading again in May, and have read 18 books in the past 6 months. I want to continue this pace, and read 30 books in 2020. I mostly read non-fiction, so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know!
Status: Achieved. I read zero books from January to March, but read 31 in the last 9 months.
Continue surrounding myself with great people
2019 was a great year, in large part due to the people I surrounded myself with, from coworkers, to friends, to my roommates to my SO. I truly think you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and I want to continue to spend time with great people.
Status: Achieved. A lot of the “surrounding” ended up being via Zoom.