2019 Resolutions Review

Previously, I have came up with a strategy to deal with my New Year resolutions. I applied this strategy and came up with the following resolutions for 2019:

2019 New Year Resolutions

Resolution #1: Japanese Language

Theme: a skill that I personally want to have

Measurable goals to achieve:

• Grammar: Finish 1 course of Japanese class
• Kanji & Vocab: Reach Wanikani level 25
• Kanji & Vocab: Read 2 Japanese books
• Speaking: Attend 10 conversation meetups

How I’m going to achieve those goals:

• Enroll in a Japanese class (Ikoma Pre-advanced class)
• Build a habit of doing Wanikani every morning (10 items every morning)
• Join Japanese meetups every Wednesday

Resolution #2: Healthier lifestyle habits

Theme: a habit/skill that I think will be good for me

Measurable goals to achieve:

• Eat vegetables everyday for lunch/dinner
• Avoid sugar
• Lose 5 kg

How I’m going to achieve those goals:

• Limit sugar intake: max 1 sugary drink per week
• Subscribe to a healthy meal plan
• Exercise 3 times a week
• Count calories: max 1200 cal/day

Resolution #3: Mastering JavaScript

Theme: a skill related to my professional career

Measurable goals to achieve:

• Sometimes we focus on learning the newest tech. I want to make sure I really understand the fundamentals properly. Read 3 books on the fundamentals of the web.
• Build 3 personal projects

How I’m going to achieve those goals:

• Set aside a specific time: every Sunday 2 hours

2019 Resolutions Review

Resolution #1: Japanese Language

I registered for a Pre-Advanced class in Ikoma (one of Japanese schools in Singapore). The class is once a week, every Saturday from 10:00-12:45 AM. From January to December I have covered level Pre-Advanced 1 and Pre-Advanced 2.

Wanikani is a web app where you can learn kanji and vocab, and it will quiz you in a spaced-repetition manner. It takes all the hardwork of jotting down new kanji and creating your own spaced-repetition system. Instead, you just need to login, learn, do the quiz, and wait until there’s new quiz coming. In the process, you will also “level up”, thus gamifying the whole process of learning Japanese.

I used Wanikani together with a Chrome plugin called Heatmap to track my progress. When you’re building a habit, tracking your progress is important. You can see below at my peak period I was obsessed to fill up all the squares and level up every week. It’s a huge motivation. The bolded box is an indication that I leveled up. At some point I tried to make sure I leveled up every week (1 level = ~20 kanji + ~100 vocab).

I also use this with Wanikani analytics site which will give you the analysis of your data. My favourite section is the Projection section. It gives me motivation that if I persevere now, I’m going to eventually reach 95% of N2 level (a level in Japanese exam).

My New Year resolution was to reach level 25, but in the process, I managed to go beyond that and reached the stretch goal: level 40! 🎉

For reading practice, I joined Wanikani book club and we have a live reading session on Discord every Saturday. This year I read Kiki’s Delivery Service and Zenitendou The Mystery Sweet Shop.

For speaking practice, I joined a local Japanese meetups where Japanese learners would gather for 1.5 hours to chat about anything, in Japanese. It helps to give you a chance to speak in Japanese and apply what you have learned.

Resolution #2: Healthier lifestyle habits

I started by trying to drink less sugary drinks. Part of the inspiration of this is from Desi Anwar’s recount when she was giving up on sugar in her book, Five Stories. I trained myself to see sugar as an enemy and think to myself “Ew, sugar” whenever I see sugary drinks in convenience stores. What I realized after reducing my sugar intake is that, I started to dislike sugar. I don’t like the aftertaste that lingers on my tongue.

I also analyzed the reason why I like sugar. When I bought a bubble tea, I had a conversation with myself. It went somewhat like this:

👩(Me 1): “Why do you want to buy this bubble tea?”

👩🏼(Me 2): “Because I feel like drinking one.”

👩: “That’s not a valid reason. Remember, you’re trying to cut on sugar.”

👩🏼: “Ok. Because I’m feeling sad and I need bubble tea to cheer me up.”

👩: “Are you sure that bubble tea will cheer you up?”

👩🏼: “It has always been succeeding in making me feel better.”

👩: “Maybe it used to cheer you up in the past. Are you sure it can still cheer you up now?”

👩🏼: “Hmm…”

👩: “Maybe you’re buying it because it used to cheer you up, and you thought it still has the same effect.”

👩🏼: “Then I’m going to buy this one and evaluate how I feel after I finish it.”

When I finished drinking, I would ask, “How do I feel right now? If it doesn’t make me happy as much as I thought it would, maybe I shouldn’t have bought it in the first place? Because now I’m feeling guilty of consuming such high amount of sugar and calories.”

I also used a healthy meal subscription plan service (MealPal and Nomnomby) because they have good discounts for newcomers. The service introduced me to delicious salads. As a result, now I’m quite fond of lettuce.

Losing weight is difficult. I’ve reduced my sugar intake and started eating more veggies, but it doesn’t help me losing weight. Finally in the middle of the year, I realized one important thing: I have not been tracking my progress. So I decided to buy a weighing scale and monitor my weight changes. I tried to run some experiments, e.g. how much weight will I lose if I don’t eat dinner?

The target was to lose 5 kg, but I only managed to lose 3 kg instead :( On hindsight, I should’ve tracked my progress from the start to make sure I’m still in line with the goal.

Resolution #3: Mastering JavaScript

When I first started, I wish there was someone who told me about these resources:

📚Books: Books by A Book Apart, Smashing Magazine, You Don’t Know JS

🎓Tutorials: Video tutorials by Brad Traversy

📝News & Articles: Dev.to, Smashing Magazine, A List Apart

🎧Podcasts: Front End Happy Hour, JS Party, ShopTalk

I’m glad that my company has an extensive list of books on web design and tech. They also have a subscription to O’Reilly and I can get all kinds of tutorials that I need.

After devouring the stuff above, outside of work, I created some personal projects. Some of them can be found in the Playground.

Closing

Overall I’m pretty satisfied with my 2019. Looking back, I’ve grown and improved a lot this year. I’m glad that it was a productive year.

Onwards to 2020.