Retrospective - 2022 goals and progress

This article was originally published in my blog but decided to translate it so my international friends could also understand it.

In previous years, I have mainly prepared annual summaries for myself. In a busy time, when life is rushing by, it's good to see what has been achieved and where I've devoted my limited time. This summary also shows me where I could have been more diligent and where I wasted precious time. Succeeding and finding a suitable path for achievements gives inspiration and motivation to set new and more difficult goals. Create new and better habits in yourself. To compare oneself, against one's self. In order not to become lazy and slow. So the retrospective is mostly for me, but if somebody feels motivated then the better.

All in all, I set my goal - to be a better version of myself in 2022 - to live a little healthier, to get as many new and interesting experiences as possible, and to find time for family, relationships, and self-education with the aim of leaving a more positive mark to the world.

Since achieving many objectives, especially bigger ones, cannot be done in one go, I tried to approach bigger goals with smaller steps. Some can say about it - forming habits, doing it regularly. Another says that I approached on the basis of #okr - I set a #goal and monitored the key results and sub-activities to achieve them.

I have grouped what was achieved during the year under bigger areas of interest, adding some thoughts and comments. In parentheses, I have mentioned a software or solution that has helped me monitor a specific activity.

In 2022 I did the following.

Physical activity and good shape, healthy lifestyles

• 2,273,939 steps (Google Fit data. Can't comment on how it counted it).
• 5 kg less weight by the end of the year. During summer, the weight loss was even greater, but the lack of regular exercise during the autumn season and delicious holiday meals brought back a few kilos at the end of the year. (Google Fit)
• 1133.98 running kilometers - Including one marathon (50003 steps), which was my long-term life goal, the so-called #bucketlist item. In general, it was a year in which I have run the most in my life. (Mapmyfitness statistics)
• 150 hours and 12 minutes of sports activities in different areas.
• 2 longer hikes - 30 km Scouts trek (47,897 steps) and Tartu maleva (Estonian Defence League) 24h/100km (105,816 steps). It took me 18 hours and 54 minutes to cover 100 km, achieved 5-6 place in the men's competition class, and 7-8 overall.
• 8,681 push-ups during the year. (Google Form)
• 94.22 bicycle kilometers - a little short, but it was not a personal goal either. Practically all of this mileage came while biking with a three-year-old child. (mapmyfitness)
• 6 hours 40 minutes of sleep was in my average day last year. (Suunto)

Physical activity measurement was largely done by Mapmyfitness, Suunto app, and Google Fit app. I used Mapmyfitness after Endomondo closed. Mainly for the reason that all old workouts were easy to export. This year (2023) I decided to switch Mapmyfitness to Strava though, as Mapmyfitness's has slow starting up, recording issues and just plain ugly and underpowered UI was something I couldn't stand in the end. As a general comment - I mostly went running at the end of the workday or early before the start of the workday. Longer runs (10km) were done on weekends. One of the goals of 2023 could be to focus not on kilometers but on the duration of sporting activities during the year. At the same time, it would probably be necessary to pay more attention to the sleep cycle as well.

Relationships and a hedonistic lifestyle

• 16 times to go eat out with my wife Reeni Mikkelsaar , in a slightly more luxurious place. In total, we visited 6 different regions as part of this, including 3 times we took part in the Delicious Tartu month and 3 times in "Forest to Plate" week. The most exciting experience of the year was definitely the dinner at Maagurmee restaurant during Uma Mekk's taste week.
• 4 times in the theater with my wife. Beatrice at the beginning of the year and the premiere of Romeo and Juliet, at the end of the year, probably left the deepest impression.
• 1 time at a music concert.
• 137 different beers during the year. Among them, 107 were brand new for me, that I had never tasted before. On average, I rated the beers with 3.21 points on a 5-point scale. The different styles and also the breweries I tried were both 64. And my favorite style continued to be Sour-Fruited. The best beers continued to be "Plaadimeri", "Fruits of Endor", "Incubus", "Punk IPA", "Sour Fruit Ale Strawberry" and "Sea Fog".

A positive mark on the world

• 5 times #blooddonation
• 446 hours of participation in the activities in Estonian Defence League. The longest exercises were Siil 2022 and Kotkalend, where I went as an evaluator.
• €655 in donations. Mainly went to three major places: Mondo , Armed Forces of Ukraine , and SA Tartu ülikooli Kliinikumi Lastefond . In addition, small donations and material aid to war zone in #ukraine and #ukrainewar refugees in Estonia.

Self-development and new knowledge

• 7488 minutes of French language learning in the Duolingo app. That makes about 125 hours or 5.2 days. In the process, I learned 2502 words. (Duolingo)
• 44 books read. With a total of 15174 pages, the average book I read was 344 pages. The books read included books that belong to the so-called must-read category, for example: "War and Peace", "The Secret History", "Ready Player One", "The?Hunchback?of Notre Dame", "American Gods", "The Handmaid's Tale", "H.G. Wells - Collection of Short Stories ", "Enders Game" but also Asimov's Foundation series and Robot series. I am especially proud to read the Asimov series, as they were on my list for a long time. A full reading year summary can be found on my Goodreads. (Goodreads)
• 22 days and 22 hours of podcasts listened. Since I use fast listening (1.2x acceleration), I would have spent an additional 5 days and 23 hours listening at normal speed. The most exciting fact is that I finally managed to listen to the very first seasons of David Vseviov's "Mysterious Russia" in 1997, 1998 and 1999. (Podcast Republic).
• 233 Days on Vacation - Mysterious? No. Just 6 months of it was paternity leave at home with the youngest child.
• 979 logged working hours - I contributed 106 hours to my biggest project.
• 1 foreign trip - in Sweden

I have mostly planned the time to read the book in the evening hours. Immediately after the children go to sleep, it is good to take a quiet hour where there is not a lot of noise in the room. Rarely, and mostly if it is a very engaging book, it also finds its way to breakfast or some other more leisurely moments. The number of podcasts listened to is quite large, but it must be taken into account that I mostly listen to podcasts alongside some other activity - most often while running, washing dishes, doing repairs, or driving.

Achieving financial goals to ensure the above

• 100% of the goal of fulfilling the 3rd pension pillar.
• 71.87% of the 2022 goal of the entire financial portfolio met.
• 53.44% of passive income 2022 target. By passive income, I primarily meant income from my investments: interest, dividends, sell at a higher price. The goal itself was a third higher than that of 2021.
• 97.5% of the goal to set aside money for investment and savings in addition to the salary.

Since I believe that my financial success in the future is related to my current financial decisions, discipline, and behavior, I have my own principles and actions here as well. Since this is a private sphere for me, I will not give more precise numbers here. I can note that I filled up my third pillar 100% - I always plan the entire income tax refund there and add the missing amount every month. I have also set myself a percentage of how much of my salary I will immediately direct to a savings and investment account without using it elsewhere.

Other facts

• 656 twitter posts
• 64 instagram posts
• 81 rainy days
• 13 completely clear skies days
• 7699 slack messages posted in work slack chats
• 1105 discord messages in university fraternity chat
• 30 Trello tasks for larger personal and home tasks were completed.
• 12,473 kilometers of total journeys in 2022 (31% around the globe) (Google data)
• 1,891 kilometers of it were low-emission travel - on foot, bicycle, public transport, etc. (Google)
• 9709 kilometers of driving (Google)

An average day

• 06h:40m Sleep
• 05h:10m Rest
• 02h:40m Work
• 01h:30m Podcasts
• 01h:00m Reading
• 00:25m Sports
• 00:20m French learning
• 00:13m Estonian Defence league
• 06h:02m Unspecified

As they say, measuring all kinds of average things is such a multi-pronged thing. On the one hand, it provides a good overview, but on the other hand, without context, it can be rather confusing. I summarized the different activities I was engaged in last year, and if all activities were evenly distributed over all 365 days, my "normal day" last year would look relatively centered on rest and sleep time, but well, the longer parental leave made a big contribution here, at the expense of the amount of work would certainly have been significantly higher in a normal year - at least twice as high.

Some profiles and tools:

• Exist - is software that combines different data sources for tracking self
• My Running Profile
• My Beer - Untapped profile
• My Twitter profile
• Mastodon profile
• Instagram profile
• My Reading profile in Goodreads
• My Duolingo profile

#settinggoals #2023 #2023goals #achivements #myyear