With the end of the year approaching us, it’s close to that time where we look back at our accomplishments for the last 12 months. Have you met your targets that you set for yourself earlier this year? Have you read more than 10 books this year? Have you been able to achieve your desired weight? Did you start that podcast you wanted to? Or launch your first business? For some people, they can tick off many of this year’s targets, but for others it may not seem that much of a successful year. I had a discussion with my friend recently about how we put pressure on ourselves but we forget how far we have come. This may be because we cannot see the financial gain or physical change of our small wins so we tend to ignore them.
You wanted to lose X amount of body fat or weight but you didn’t meet that target, however now you can do 5 pull ups clean. You wanted to read 10 books this year but you only managed to read 4 books; You now feel disappointed for not reaching that goal but think of the knowledge and experiences you gained from reading those 4 books. These may not seem as important as the main target you set yourself, but do not write off how important they are.
We all have ambitions to grow, evolve and better ourselves whether in our lives, career or health. While it is important to take note of our shortcomings we should remember our small wins too. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do well and I am guilty of this. In doing so we forget about the ‘ghost target’ we hit. By ghost target, I mean targets that we didn’t set for ourselves but we still accomplished. Think of a positive situation that happened this year that you were not expecting at the beginning of the year. This could have been being offered a new job without applying, the pay rise you never expected to get at work, you find yourself studying the Bible or even eating healthy and exercising more. When you are sitting down reflecting on the year gone, if you find yourself beating yourself up for not reaching a target look at the ghost targets you accomplished. These are wins we should also be celebrating when we feel that we have not reached a target.
I wanted to write more technical blog posts to do with programming, software engineering and business but I didn’t. However, I did write some blog posts on other stuff that I found interesting and also kicked off my “inner talk” series. I am disappointed in myself for not writing more tech blogs, but at the same time this is the year that I have done more writing than ever. In doing so I have improved my grammar compared to my earlier blogging, I have read more to help improve my writing and I feel much more confident writing.
Another one of my goals this year was to do more meet-ups and present at more tech conferences to share my experience as a developer. As I’m sure you can guess, I didn’t get all of that done, but I did manage to do a lot of work with my clients. For example, I did two in-house presentations to my client, and also was able to hold one-to-one sessions teaching developers what I knew on certain topics. I was not confident enough to teach one-to-one before as I felt maybe I was inexperienced, but to see the result and outcome of these discussions gave me great joy.
I hope this helps you not to beat yourself up too much if you did not reach a goal or target while working on them. Do take notice of your shortcomings, by no means ignore them, but at the same time take pride in how far you have come trying to reach your goals and enjoy your small wins.
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