2022 preview
Someone told me January is next week, next month, and next year. Not sure why I found that statement fascinating.
Anyway, as the year is almost about to wrap up…I thought it might be a good idea to note down, if not for anything, a reminder of the things I’d like to focus on come next year. The purpose is for them to merely serve as a guiding compass and not metrics that I have to hit by all means.
Albeit I’ve read them several times now, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and The Tao Te Ching (Two books I urge anyone who hasn’t read to try out) have heavily influenced my mentality going into this new year. Having experienced burnout myself, and seen people close to me suffer from exhaustion and fatigue, I am very intentional about pacing myself.
The most important thing for me is to ensure I have fun and grow as much as possible. Everything else has to fit within this framework.
So here goes my “plans” for the year:
Finance and investments
- Focused investing with a 10–15% ROI. I know that’s a long stretch and I’ll most likely not hit this goal…but what’s the point of setting easy goals. I intend to spread this across securities, bonds, angel investing, and mutual funds. I’ll also read on cryptos maybe buy in a few once the mania cools down.
- Find a way of getting into the S&P 500 index fund to hedge against the Kenyan shilling. I’m very specific on Vanguard.
- Level up in securities analysis. I have a couple of books lined up in this regard e.g. Securities and Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, The Snowball, and most importantly to apply the learnings
- Level up on real-estate because this is a line I’ll eventually like to pursue at some point
- Get to $10k+ active monthly income
Engineering and projects
- Level up in various concepts especially around system architecture, memory management, and processing. Aside from that, I also intend on publishing technical articles once I am comfortable with those topics. My stack is going to remain primarily JavaScript/TypeScript, Kotlin, and Rust.
- Build more during my “spare time”. I want to build at least 4 “mini-products” but if I can hack 6 or 7 that would be great. The goal for me is to ensure I finish a project once I start. I suck at this. But given how much I can very easily get bored working on one thing for a long time, I intend to not only work on it faster (1-month prototyping and a maximum of 3 months testing for utility) but also switch up various projects. Part of this also includes various revamp’s on roometo.com. Automate a lot more things and get it to cash flow positive.
- Understand the web3 and what the fuss is about beyond the surface level. I don’t think I’ll work actively on any web3 project…but just having a deep understanding of the technology should suffice.
- Work towards senior engineer by taking on tasks that have more impact. I believe in being intentional about ranking up and intend to work more closely with my manager on this.
Experiences and learnings
- God-willing do a lot more traveling (covid and all). Might f*#ck around and decide to backpack a few countries in Africa for the next 8 months or so. I’ve been toying around with this idea and I’m highly considering doing it before some “responsibilities” are handed down to me.
- Get back to learning French. Will most likely use some online tool to get to basic proficiency before enrolling for a class or finding a community.
- Try out a lot more recipes. Yes, I am going to leave that goal as ambiguous as it sounds.
- Improve on my swimming because I think swimming is a basic life skill. I can move through water, I don’t think I swim well.
Wellbeing and others
- Change of wardrobe 🙄🙄
- Have a house makeover although I should be moving out entirely to a new space. The theme is bound to be minimalistic. I’ll try to maintain a mood and Pinterest boards and do it how I want it.
- Get a car, maybe 👉👈? This for some reason is not that big a deal to me and I couldn’t care less if I got it or not…Anyway, regardless, I intend to shop around and see if I can find something that I like within my budget. I had started the process last year…but as you can tell, haven’t gotten around to doing anything about it yet
- Eat healthier 😂😂 or try to. I’ll start doing meal preps
- Workout more often…not to bulk up but get into shape
- Meditate more and continue therapy
One more important thing is that I intend to say NO a lot more frequently than people are used to and try as much as possible to be true to myself, unapologetically.
- No, I am not as extroverted as you might think. I need time away from people from time to time to recharge.
- No, I am not doing anything but I don’t feel like going out or seeing someone today
- Yes, I switched off my phone. You didn’t do anything wrong…we are not on bad terms, but sometimes the phone gives me anxiety
My philosophy for the year is Wu Wei. Whatever flows, flows. I’ll not force anything and if plans change, I’ll adapt accordingly. Let’s see how this ride goes.
