Bye-Bye 2012, Welcome 2013

Jan 2, 2013

Listing down the things which went well for me in 2012, and which didn’t, and the plans for upcoming year 2013. Beware: More technical stuff than emotional.

Things which went well in 2012

Python

Started learning Python at the start of year 2012, early January, and this same language landed me in the job which I absolutely love: working in one of the biggest ‘OpenSource’ project in the world, written in Python! Getting paid for working on an opensource project is as awesome as it can become for me.

The hunger to become different from the rest

Gathered a lot of info on how things work in computer industry. Kept myself in contact with various hot topics, opensource projects.

The job

Not faring too well on this front - the full time job. But still, I would consider I did good enough with regards to the work assigned to me. I, after six months into the job, still goes to office every morning with a thirst to make a difference.

Cleanliness

Scored much better in the second half. Spent dedicated amount of time each week to keep my room and flat clean and in order.

Maintaining a TODO list

Started late in the year, but seems a good progress on that front.

Things which didn’t go that well in 2012

Concentration

Still not able to concentrate on one thing for long. Get distracted too easily. Only rarely I sat at one place, focussed on one thing, for more than 50 minutes. Also, the last year’s resolution of opening FaceBook only once a day was put in trashcan on in the very first week of January!

Not focussed enough on the future direction

Poor goal setting. Peeked into a lot of opensource projects, dedicated proper time into none. Opensourced my projects too, but did not work on it much either. Made myself a perfect example of ‘naam bade aur darshan chhote’ (appearing like an eminent personality, acting like a jerk).

Programming contest

Only kept in touch. Not solved much problems. This year, need to focus a lot on this front.

Time management

Never was able to manage time. Was not working on the same thing for even a week. Somewhere in the middle of working on a project, I find out ‘hey, this looks cool! Time to try hands on it!’. What about the thingy you were currently working on? Into the TODO list! Such an idiot.

Work life balance

Went for a toss. Not able to regularise job timings. Started and stopped gym. Started and stopped working on many projects. Completed none. Wasted a heck of a lot of time.

Plans for upcoming year

Better planning

I need to plan things before acting on it. I would take everything into consideration before jumping into hacking something, and then set a deadline for it. And till that deadline, I would promise I would not digress getting enticed by something which makes my mouth watery.

Don’t just outright neglect daytime job

I agree my daytime job is awesome. But I end up considering the work I do at office as secondary. Need to value it much higher. I concentrate on other projects and aim to complete and polish them. What I did not thought was the work I am doing in my job itself is a project! If I am not faring well in the project on which I work 8 hours a day, how can I expect myself to do good in something I am spending only a fraction of time I spend on the daytime project! And expectedly, none of my projects are in good enough shape to talk about it confidently in public. I need to value OpenStack more. Really.

START coding for programming contests

Enough of promises, enough of ‘From next month I’m gonna do it’. I SHOULD spend a specific time every week for coding for programming contests. Looks like I need to start with solving old problems from CodeChef.com alongwith the editorials provided with them.

Facebook once in a day

Period.

Need to plan breaks too

Realised only the last month that opening facebook, checking out news, and reading articles on Hacker News does not count in a break. A break is not in front of a computer screen. A break is something which gives your strained eyes a rest, especially when you end up spending half of your year staring at a computer screen!

PS. The article is for the writer himself. It is okay if you are finding it a bad piece of English text.