Reece Martin

If you’re not familiar — on Sundays, I sometimes write “off-topic” posts on my blog; transit and city-related posts usually come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so if you’re only interested in that, see you later this week!

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Right before 2023 ended, I released a blog post on my goals for 2023: both as a fun accountability device, and to perhaps inspire some readers in their own new years goals.

The main idea of setting goals as opposed to resolutions for me is that resolutions are often a bit too brittle: you shouldn’t feel like you’ve failed just because you miss going to the gym one day (though this is bad and will set you down the path of not meeting your goals too). I personally find a better model is one where I’m headed towards a goal, and that means a day off just means another day where I have to do way more to get back on track; this is a good reminder to myself the cost of being lazy if I want to hit my goals — i.e. don’t go for your 5K run one day and suddenly your next run is a 10K!

With that groundwork laid, let’s take a look at how things are going in each goal “category”; you can compare my progress with my initial goals mentioned in the last blog post linked above.

Personal Goals

1. I wanted to get rid of stuff and declutter, and I’ve actually done alright at this. I’ve sold a few things on Facebook Marketplace, and I posted a ton of books I had sitting on my shelf that I didn’t need for reference but had already read on Twitter and sold them for a little pocket change and a bit more space for the next books. I’ve also cleared out some of the old clothes that I don’t wear, but have an attachment to (oh, memories).
2. I’ve also managed to trim my email quite a bit. This means just not responding to a bit more than I would have historically, but also consolidating email on just a few days so that the time for me to mentally switch over to replying isn’t duplicated too much on multiple days. I’ve also found scheduling emails to go out a few hours later has been a godsend; not only do you usually not need to reply to an email immediately (and for me I am already waiting a few days), but this also means that 1) you don’t get replies from keeners before you’ve finished clearing your inbox (thus ruining that lovely “all read” look) and 2) you can pause the send to change the email if you’ve forgotten something.
3. Taking weekends off has — not really happened. This is not great, but I think given I’ve been on a pretty healthy sleep schedule this might kind of be the price of doing business. Fortunately, weekends are not being spent doing things I need to do every week and instead I am slowly grinding away at tasks I’ve long had to do, but hadn’t gotten to.
4. Fortunately, I have cut my social media use down a lot, both by consolidating replying to messages for short periods of time, not having Twitter etc. logged in to my computer, and by just kind of not even dipping my toes. Twitter in particular has this way of taking a 5-minute tweet and turning it into 5 hours of checking your replies every 10 minutes that eats an enormous amount of time. Mastodon doesn’t have this problem because it has far less people on it.
5. Book reading is also moving along nicely, I’ve been reading two books at a time for the last two months flipping between them if I get bored, and in January I managed to get through like 3 books this way, which I am quite happy about.
6. Getting back into programming and proof-writing has more or less not happened so far, though I did get “How to Prove It” (getting new things when my first goal is literally getting rid of things means that needs to be an important thing), though I do hope that I can make slightly more progress in February. Not having tackled a yearly goal by the end of January is bad because we are approaching 10% progress for the year, but at least I started using Linux again which I think should earn me some points (I discussed this more here).
7. Spending more time in nature also hasn’t really happened, however I did manage to go to Blue Mountain, a ski resort near Toronto that at least gave me some of the skiing vibes I remember from my childhood growing up on the west coast.

Health Goals

1. So far this year I have not really lost weight, but my body fat has gone down which I take as a win. The reality is when I am stressed (which I am from all the work laid out in the personal goals section) I stress eat, and that makes losing weight tricky. Hopefully February will bring increased willpower.
2. On a more positive note, my sleep schedule as mentioned before has mostly been maintained, though I have been tempting fate a bit by staying up late and sleeping in (including today!) which I need to cut back on. You just can’t get something for nothing with shifting around your sleep.
3. Food tracking has happened, which is part of how I am so well reminded that I need to trim things, at least I have mostly cut out things like sugary drinks and frequent ice cream!
4. One of my biggest “health” goals this year has been improving my flexibility, and I’ve actually made a lot of progress on this (in particularly touching my toes), though it has been painful and slow going, plus I’ve been stretching for what feels like an hour a day.

Job Goals

This year I am happy to say I’ve actually nailed the job goals, which while seemingly easy (working less) have been quite the mental hurdle to get over. I started the year changing all the branding on the channel, and I indeed made just four videos in January and each of them went up about a week early on my Patreon, which is something I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to do. I have written a few less blog posts than I’d like, though I’d like to think that the ones I have written have been some of my best in a long time.

Financial Goals

1. Pay off debt; I have continued to pay off debt as my regular payments come due, haven’t gone overboard, but things are moving slow and steady!
2. On the other hand, I have trimmed my costs. Some of this is basic stuff: I am trying to buy more off-brand stuff, especially for consumable products where the difference is often almost nonexistent and for which there is dubious benefit to buying something (that will soon be used up) that costs more. I am also trying to collect more points on purchases, not as some crazy “I could buy a small house with all my points!” attitude, but just as a way of maybe saving 0.5-1% over time. I’ve also dumped a rather expensive credit card for a prepaid one with one of Canada’s financial upstarts because one of my “background” goals for a while has been to try and vote with my feet and support things I believe in. Since I am trying to spend less, having less credit card rewards has less of an impact, and at the same time trying to promote a more competitive economy is something I really believe in, especially because Canadian banks just really take their customers for a ride (for example very low interest rates on funds and extra fees for everything).
3. Since I am trying to end the year with much less, purchasing things has not really been a focus this last month. However, one thing I got recently was a classical guitar (I sold something I don’t use, which more than paid for it) which I play every day. In university and high school I often had a guitar around and playing some chords and riffs was always something I found quite relaxing. This one I purchased was both 1) used (I usually don’t buy used stuff which is bad!) and 2) a Yamaha which should mean it’s very solid!
4. My cooking skills have made little progress, hopefully this is something I can figure out over the rest of the year!

So, on the whole progress towards my goals for the year has been pretty good! I have made zero progress on a few things, but at least I am thinking about the places where I need to put more energy. Onward with 2024!