Resolutions 2014!

Resolutions. Hard to make, harder to keep. How are your resolutions holding up? Here is a quick update on mine.

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Leisure:
Last year I made a resolution of reading at least 25 books and thanks to Isaac Asimov, I was able to reach this target.
With the amount of tech blogs I read, increasing this number seems difficult right now. So the plan of reading 25 stays! I still intend to buy a lot more to add to my collection.
Technology:
Thanks to last year's resolution, I've got into a habit of going through HackerNews everyday. So I'm decently updated with technology. Intend to continue doing this.

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And this doesn’t including coding! I did a lot of writing while preparing my SoP for the MS applications and I enjoyed it a lot. And I could see a noticeable difference when I had to fill appraisal forms. In Flipkart, we have a very comprehensive appraisal process. A major part of this process is writing self and peer reviews. My earlier self reviews were generally very terse. Luckily my work spoke for me and I had no issues whatsoever. However, after working on the SoP for 2-3 months, writing the self review was piece of cake this time. Sat down late night and finished the entire review process in 4 hours! That was when I decided I’m going to write more regularly. It really brings a clarity in thought. While I would love to follow the 1000 words per day formula, I want to keep a realistic target for this. I am keeping a target of 1000 words per week for the initial three months and then will evaluate how to continue going forward.

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Videos. I absolutely love the Online Courses (MOOC). From statistics, gamification, entrepreneurship to psychology, I follow a lot of these courses. I don't have a target for this because sometimes I end up doing 3-4 of these together but planning to concentrate more on Data Analysis, Big Data and Machine Learning courses this year.

Exercise
7-min exercise to the rescue! I've gained a lot from these and would like to continue follow this routine. It has helped me when playing soccer as well. For those of you who are not aware of this routine, here is a brief description:

Most of us don't have time (the will rather) for regular workout. Here is a 7 minute workout that requires only a wall and a chair. Hopefully, giving only 7 minutes in a day will be an incentive to try this out.
Here is a site which will help you do the exercises in order:
Seven Minute Workout Timer

Here is a post from LifeHacker for checking the correct form of doing these exercises:
These 12 Videos Show the Proper Form for a 7-Minute Full Workout

Miscellaneous:

Learn a new language: I started out with Spanish last year, followed it up for a week and then got busy with work. I hope to gain mastery of at least basic Spanish that will help me to communicate easily.

Open Source: My contributions to open source have been limited to submitting issues in MariaDB. Time to take this to the next level and actually contributing to the community. Whether it will be MariaDB or some Apache project, I still have to still finalize on this.

Travel: Last year, I managed trips to all parts of India. Starting with Leh (north) in Jan, Goa (west) in March, Pondicherry (south) in August and ending with Sikkim (East) in December!
I intended to take a sabbatical for a month this year and go backpacking. The plan is to cover as many states in India as possible. Hopefully, I'll cancel most of the places from this list!

That's it for now. Fingers crossed! Will update this post when I add anymore to the list. Let me know what are your resolutions for 2014.

Oh, and wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year! May all of you spend the year doing what you love to do the most! :)