Although I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, I like the idea of a new year = new habits, so here are mine:
- Start blogging again
- Quit social media and YouTube
- Start lifelogging
…and here is why:
Make a Personal Blog
I used to write more in my previous jobs as a developer and solution architect but stopped about six years ago when I started working in my current position at LEGO. Now it is certainly not because I am not allowed to do it, it was just no longer a requirement as part of my job title, so I directed focus elsewhere. However, I miss having a voice outside of what I do every day, and when given the change/permission, I would also love to share the things I work on there.
It requires a lot of dedication, time, and self-management to write and maintain a blog regularly, but it also takes guts to have a public voice and to put yourself out there. Not that I expect to have extraordinarily outrageous and opinioned blog posts, they will none the less take a specific viewpoint that might differ from the norm. Being a perfectionist, I will probably spend way too long scrutinizing over the smallest detail, which in turn will take more time and likely delay an already scheduled blog post. Since this is a personal blog, I’ll need to find the time to do all of that, in the little spare time I have left at the end of the day.
Quit Social Media and YouTube
Quitting social media stands in a weird juxtaposition to my first resolution, since blogging often require doing marketing on social media. However, I believe I spend far too much time on social media (primarily Instagram and Twitter) and YouTube, and I would rather spend that on quality time with the family, reading a book, or a personal project (like this blog).
So from today, I’ve deleted my Facebook – and Instagram account entirely, and I’ll keep my Twitter – and Linkedin accounts for primarily work-related activities, and of course, as a means to advertise new blog posts. I’ll quit, cold turkey, YouTube for the entire year.
Lifelogging
Now this one is a bit particular, but my last resolution is to start lifelogging for me to be in more control of my bad habits (such as overeating sugar and drinking way too much coffee), and to see what data I can collect on myself during a year of lifelogging.
I’m a big fan of Nicholas Felton and his annual reports, and I’m hoping at the end of the year, I might be able to do something similar, although on a much smaller scale.
This subject will probably also be an excellent topic for another blog post, so stay tuned for that.
In Conclusion
So there you have it, my 2020 New Year’s resolutions. I sincerely hope I can keep them, but history, unfortunately, hasn’t been kind to previous year’s resolutions, so let’s see how 2020 will end up; a least all of these resolutions are doable, but only time will tell.