2025 GOALS REVIEW

DECEMBER 31, 2025

Overview

Every year I set goals for myself. These are individual goals that I hope to accomplish put into the 3 major categories: Personal, Professional, and Physical. Here were my goals and review of how I did, along with forward facing goals for 2026.

2025

Personal

Projects

  • Be a guest on a podcast or contribute to someone else's project I did not accomplish this I am now openly making jokes about wanting to start a podcast so that is progress
  • Do one public work outside my comfort zone (Stand up comedy, hosting a taskmaster event, improv class thing, present at the moth, etc) No attempts, no progress
  • Write 6 articles to post to my blog This is number six!

Chess

  • Have 3 games I'm very proud of (at least one over the board!) I had some sequences that I can remember being proud of. I would give myself a low passing mark here
  • Add to the chess community with a project (Collaborative Checkmate? Writing on the atomic chess betting? Helping with the chess club?) I made Collaborative Checkmate and added leaderboards to Chesser Guesser. I did some work on armageddon chess betting

Environmental

  • Actually use re-usable grocery bags (6 strikes allowed / year) This was a great goal and I actually did it Ordering groceries killed this one though
  • Source 75% of my clothes from second-hand stores for the year Did great until the last quarter of the year. I still think I held to the spirit of the goal

Professional

  • Establish myself as someone who can lead a team Yep.
  • Creating a "management learning journal" with monthly entries about lessons learned I did not do this
  • Reading 4 management/leadership books and implementing key takeaways I ended up reading a lot about management & leadership and implemented lots of takeaways
  • Navigate creating a good work:life balance with my added responsibilities and workload Unfortunately I failed here.
Overall I think I turned myself into a pretty good manager. I was proud of the team that I had build and the work that I was doing. A majority of this improvement came through soft skills, which was born from reading, LLMing and working with my professional coach A lot of my coworkers cosigned this -- mentioning that I was a much stronger manager compared to when I'd started. I feel really good about the growth I'd made here. That being said, I'm excited to be an IC again. I'm really jazzed to jump into AI tooling and hone my craft through building things

Physical

Fitness

  • Do something active (even small) 2.5x night a week (total of 130) I have 155 logged activities over the year
  • Go on 52 runs over the year I went on 12 runs. indoor biking really was the theme of the year
  • Develop a tennis serve I am proud of I did not improve my serve by a lot
  • Join a local tennis club Tennis has become a social sport and I am happy with that
  • Cycle a century I did this!
  • Get to the half lotus pose lol no

Diet

  • Stay veggie Yep!
  • Make a perfect Pad See Ew No but I did get a pretty good pad thai
  • Cook through 6 different legume/bean preparations with full dinners (aka black bean burgers, hummus, lentil dal, chickpea masala, etc.) #TheYearOfTheLegume The Year of the Legume was good! I expanded my knowledge of the legume and found it fun to dive deeper into a specific food category. I only added 2 new meals to my rotation but tried at least 6
Overall I am giving myself a B. I think I generally followed the goals and while I came up short on a lot of them I also had some quality achievements. I'm happy with this year and my individual growth

2026

Personal

Projects

  • Be a guest on a podcast or contribute to someone else's project
  • Write 4 articles or new project links to post to my website
  • Continue to take photos and videos
    • Use and understand my film camera. Take 3 rolls of film that have a cool photo per roll
    • Make 6 #content pieces
  • Learn to DJ: Do a 30 minute dj set to YouTube and or just audio every other month

Community

  • Continue monthly social posts
  • Host book club and make it cool/special in some way
  • Continue to support our 3 local favorites (Coffee shop, food place, brewery). Have one of them recognize us if we show up
  • Attend chess club 10x times

Professional

  • Build and ship a feature I am proud of
  • Navigate creating a good work:life balance with added responsibility of parenthood
  • Add something tyler-ish to our team or company's culture (Own the lightning talks, own a portion of an onsite, etc)

Physical

Fitness & Health

  • Do something active (even small) 2.5x night a week (total of 130)
  • Run a half marathon (I signed up for the Colfax Half Marathon)
  • Ride the Triple Bypass
  • Bench 225 x 3
  • Have a multivitamin 300 days of the year
  • Don't get injured in a major way

Diet

  • Stay veggie
  • Recreate and optimize two Taco Bell menu items (spoilers one is the Baja Blast pie)
  • Adopt and embrace the year's food goal: #TheYearoftheSlop