2024 Year end goal evaluation

Reflecting on a year of goals is like flipping through a personal highlight reel—some moments make you proud, some sting a little, and others reveal surprising insights. As 2024 wraps up, I find myself doing just that: examining what worked, what didn’t, and why. This year wasn’t perfect—I made mistakes, struggled with decisions, and even abandoned some goals halfway. But it was also a year of growth, realizations, and setting the stage for what’s next. Let me take you through the wins, the lessons, and the shifts that are shaping how I think about goals for the future.

Ph.D.

The goal was to finish it, and it was achieved. The thesis was not groundbreaking and was not nominated for any awards, but that’s fine. I am satisfied with the quality of papers I published.

Post PhD

the goal was to find a full-time job. I truly struggled. I ended up accepting a software engineering job at Arista. I was hopeful about learning new things there, but now, after spending 6 months, it seems like a mistake. I don’t like the work, and I am not learning new things. The company and the people are not terrible, but not being able to utilize my optimization skills made me miserable. Thankfully, optimization jobs are opening up. I have some interviews scheduled. I am even considering some postdoc options as well.

Emotional Intelligence 

One of the goals was to record all emotions in the feeling wheel. The idea behind this goal was to be more aware of my feelings. Over the year, I was able to identify most of those feelings except the ones listed below.

Not covered feelings 22 out of 82 total: Awe, Inquisitive, Intimate, Sensitive, Numb, Withdrawn, Hostile, Violated, Indignant, Ridiculed, Resentful, Horrified (repelled), Revolted, Indifferent, Pressured, Fragile, Empty, Exposed, Persecuted, Excluded, Insignificant, Frightened.

Looking at the pattern, it seems that I need to identify certain types of fears more when they appear. During the year, I did a fear-setting exercise (as per 4-hour work week). So, that helped eliminate many of them. 

The other takeaway is that I also need to trust people more. After my Ph.D. my supervisors mentioned that I get defensive too often. So, this is a clear direction for improvement.

As per the other goal, I managed to write a one-line story each day and a journal entry each month except for May. This continues to be helpful.

YouTube

The goal was to publish 30 videos: 15 Modern Portfolio Theory, 10 MIP solver Reading club, and 5 Others. This goal was not met. I ended up publishing only 16. I lost motivation for modern portfolio theory after chapter 7. I might pick it up later. I published 5 videos in reading club series, 2 videos covering my thesis defense, 2 programming practice videos, 1 video about my work on SCIP, and one video on giving advise for MIP competitions. They are all useful. I am satisfied with the quality and the improvement. I just need to be more consistent.

Finance

The goal was to raise passive income to 900 PM. That was very easy to meet. Although this was supposed to be revised.

I believe I need to focus on both ‘Investment’ and ‘Cashflow’. My goals for the last few years have been around ‘Cashflow’ only. Whereas most of my wealth is created by my Google stocks that I never touched. And that is exactly how investments are supposed to work, it grows without any explicit action. It is the focus on ‘Cashflow’ that sometimes results in bigger losses. Maybe next year, I might experiment with not focusing on ‘Cashflow’ at all for at least one quarter.

Reading

The goal was to read on 280 days. The current count is 284. So this goal was met. I re-read a lot of books. Of the new books I read, these are my favorites: The Pathless path, Tools of titan, The 12 week year, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Thinking fast and slow, Algorithms to live by (not finished), and Never split the difference.

Blog

The goal was to write 20, I wrote only 8 (counting this). This is clearly a hobby now. Maybe I should stop creating goals around it. Many people find my blogs useful and it makes me feel good that I am creating good content. But, I still want to treat this as a hobby with no explicit commitment.

Health

As planned, I tracked my exercise and unhealthy food consumptions. I exercised on 346 days, and ate healthy food on 269 days so far. I am happy with those numbers.

Takeaways

On most axis, I was able to meet my goals. But I think I can do a lot more. The problem is that a year is a long time. There are a lot of uncertainties. Because of that I am aiming too low and there is no focus on key actions in most cases. Next year, I want to switch to quarterly goals as suggested in the book 12-week year. That’s a much shorter period and I can aim for specific actions for each of the 12 weeks in the quarter. Therefore, the uncertainty will no longer be an excuse for lower goals.

Another thing is that I am focusing on too many things at the same time. Although all of them are important to me, I want to focus on fewer of them at a time. Quarterly goals can allow that. I can choose to ignore some areas in one quarter and pick them up in the next one.

My Favorites

Video: Evidence based tips for achieving goals (Ali)

Quote: “Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.” ― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek