This year is almost ending. Although there is no reason to believe that anything will magically become better come 2021, all of us tend to make some promises to ourselves that we hope to keep at least for a year. 2020 has turned out to be truly transformative for me and I want to take this opportunity to write down all my learnings from this year and set some new goals for the next 365 days. So let’s get started…

The half

I had never read a book from start to finish. On my summer intern in Japan in 2019, being without internet during long train rides provided the perfect opportunity. With numerous failed attempts at reading fiction, I took up a short non-fiction Screw it let’s do it by Ric Branson on Kindle and read it exclusively in trains. Completing it was a massive achievement for me then :)

Since that, I have read 3 other books, and each of them has positively impacted my life. Reading non-fiction is a very efficient way to enrich yourself because some person in the past decided to distil his thoughts about the exact questions you’re asking and put them in writing in a way that’s easy to understand. That is a treasure trove of knowledge, and my goal is to find more experiences that challenge your current model of the world and force you to take account.

On a completely different note, I have also struggled with hair loss for about 4 years now. I finally took the plunge and shaved my head after a lot of support from my close friends. It is fascinating how much we worry about things that we can’t control. For a long time, I had struggled with low self-confidence due to this and my weight, and I wanted to change that. Going into 2020, I had two options - be a fit bald man or a fat bald man. The choice was obvious.

2020

Throughout this year, I have been focused on improving my fitness by home bodyweight workouts and being watchful about what I eat. Many YouTube videos later, I have lost 11kgs this year, and it has made a huge difference in my life. The mental satisfaction after pushing yourself and completing a workout exactly as you had planned is very addictive.

I also realized that I actually enjoy eating healthy and that helps me try new eating habits. I like to experiment with my body and learn by observing the effects. Hope to do that a lot more in the next year.

Forming a habit is tough because it needs consistency. What I have learnt is that

Regularity is rewarded much more in the long term than your immediate skill

and regularity is not possible if you don’t love what you are doing. It’s important to enjoy every part as it keeps you motivated. Focusing on one thing at a time, that is losing weight, has helped me improve in other areas of life too. I will try to write on these in another post soon.

One of the biggest realizations from this year would be that I can learn anything I want to as long as I am willing to put in the effort and time.

The next

It’s gonna be fun, and I’m excited. At the start of the year, I had not imagined that I would be writing this, especially after 2 years of writing nothing. I plan to do more of this. Putting your thoughts into words helps solidify them, find mistakes in arguments and opens you up to different viewpoints which only develops your thinking. So beginning today, I want to write “2 crappy pages” a week. I don’t have a specific theme; it will just be an account of everything floating in my head.

I also want to double down on my reading, as that routine got hampered by the placements this year. Looking forward, I am excited to just keep improving myself and be open to being influenced by different people and events. Let’s see how it goes, onwards and upwards :)