The 2021 master plan
It is December already. Being true to myself, 2020 was definitely one of the best year for me professionally. I want to make 2021 even better.
Learnings
For the last 3-4 year, I have started realising the importance of planning and staying focused. I still have the tendency to move away from my plans and spend time on some random stuff. Sometimes I allow it to happen. Sometimes it is necessary to let it happen. You can clearly see that my 2020 plan was all over the place. I was a bit over ambiguous. Some unexpected events occurred and I had to adapt. I would take away four things from 2020.
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- I don't need to do a lot of things. I can do just a few things and do them well.
- It's hard for me to convince myself to work on anything which doesn't fit well with my bigger purpose of life.
- I get best out of me when I care about the process (well, it is just one more validation).
- I can't ignore my social time and commit all of my time only on my list. As I am staying in my hometown, there is a considerable amount of time spent on the social side of things, so plan accordingly.
The list
If you were asked to Pick the only thing you could do in a year, what would it be? What would be the next thing, What next, … Until you have enough items to work on for a year. I call this list The list. Every bit of my effort in this year will be spent to tick off the items from this list. One year is a fairly long time to stay focus. Try to break down your list items to month or weekly tasks. Depending on some milestones. Like - Run 10 KM under 50 min can be one milestone if I have a goal to complete a half marathon in 2 hours. Try to set milestones which are achievable within a few weeks (max 6 weeks). I will be working in a 6 unit cycle. My units are in weeks. After every 6 unit of progress in time, I am allowed to take an optional off of 1 unit. I call this as a free hit. I realised the importance of being able to take a break in 2020.
And here is The list
I was always interested in startup and along with the fact that breaking into top companies is not a joke. I thought I could grow more on the tech side in a small team. I would also get a chance to have a close look at the w’s of running a business. My targets were startups with a smaller team but someone with a good tech background to mentor me.
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- Continue exploring & polishing tech skills related to the current tech stack
- Complete remaining papers of MCA (I didn't focus on this in 2020 due to professional commitments. But I want to close this asap).
- Re-work on the foundation by practising Math every day.
- Polish DSA & problem solving
- Run a couple of PR half marathons, Go below 1.40.
- Continue cricket & be reliable at top of the order, Regain fitness to start bowling in the second half
- Start working on one of the ideas - the micro startup is the way to go. Start after Feb.
- Work on the social aspect - Update weekly progress - Tech writing (low priority)
And this is it. I will derive my weekly goals from this list. I have done some real analysis and introspection before coming up with this. But with 20-25 more days to go, you never know. After all, The only constant in life is change.
Let me know whats your 2021 master plan. We will discuss 2020 in a different post. Take care!