2022 goals retrospective

Evaluation

I set some of these goals at the beginning of the year. Some were opportunistic additions throughout the year when something came up that was important enough to prioritize for a prolonged period.

(Success – with caveat) Top priority goal: 4.1 GPA in my classes

Managed it (again, just barely), but with mixed feelings because I dropped the same class twice in the process, which slowed down my progress toward graduation.

“But AP, couldn’t you just take a B in the class and move on?” Unfortunately, no, the mid-range grades are random because the class is so dysfunctional that it’s impossible to predict the curve. A few students are throwing off the top end of the range because A) they’re 20-year embedded C developers getting a piece of paper because it’s required to move into management, and B) next-generation models of Asian who cheat like Liberace plays piano. These problems are known, and this class is particularly infamous in the software engineering program, but there’s no incentive to fix them and lots of incentives for everyone to continue hacking around them. My own hack was to stay in the class as long as possible and grab the homework assignments so I could do them before taking the class, because they’re exactly the same every time. To give you an idea, my grade for the homeworks in the first week was about 35% and I was already way behind on the material…so it’s anybody’s guess where I was on the bell curve, or whether I could catch up enough to pass.

To reiterate, I hit the goal and I’m proud of myself for the successes involved, but there’s a big mark on the accomplishment. Also more of it was luck than you’d guess, I almost got a zero on a final due to a misunderstanding (would have gotten a C instead of an A+), but luckily my paranoia pulled me out of bed at two in the morning to e-mail the professor for clarification.

(Success) Sort out impending personal finance crisis

I mentioned this at the beginning of the year:

These will change significantly if I get a job. Otherwise, I’m on pace to run out of money around May, so I’ll be asking family and friends for loans and possibly go live with someone if I don’t get enough to pay rent. That would also change things significantly.

https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2021/12/22/quick-2021-goals-retrospective-and-2022-goals/

This worked out very nicely, but it took some creativity, a lot of luck, and some focused effort. I moved in with some family friends and that cut my bills in half (adjusting for inflation), made a bunch of money in my internship, and got some student loans to make my budget nice and comfy. It was almost worth interrupting my routine. (Maybe I should start calling it “the emperor’s groove”.)

(Success) Secondary goal: Get a summer internship

Not only that, I got an internship at the company I want to work for after graduating. This was a big deal because it’s hard to break into the laptop class when you’re

• White
• Male
• Straight
• Christian
• Autistic
• Incel (not really, but perception matters)
• Nazi-adjacent
• Outside the Goldilocks IQ zone
• A nontraditional student
• I could go on

Basically I’m a perfect storm of intersectionality, but not the kind on the government form.

(Success) Followup goal: Get summer internship extended

At this particular company they invite the interns they like to stay on part-time for part or all of the year following the summer internship. When I learned that, I set myself the goal of getting the extension by endearing myself to the team. This was tougher than you might think due to an unexpectedly extreme form of negligence on their part…and my expectations of corporate life aren’t exactly naive. It’s normal to wait a month for your laptop, but six months is a bit much. (I’m oversimplifying but not exaggerating.)

(Success) Followup goal II: Get internship for next summer

Same basic thing as before, and I’ve already signed the offer letter. This puts me in a good place financially to finish out the degree, sets me up with a likely job post-graduation, and gives me a great resume line item for applying to other junior dev jobs.

(Success) Squat 315 for five reps

Boneflour can confirm the depth was solid. That’s a lifelong PR by the way, I’ve never done three plates on anything because I’ve never been consistent on big leg lifts before. Beginner gainz FTW.

(Fail) Bench 250 for five reps

Plateaued for some reason and only got up to 225, which is barely higher than the two 100-pound dumbbells I was pushing for reps five or six years ago. My best guess is it was a lingering issue from injuring my shoulder in a bike crash in 2020. A couple weeks ago my bench jumped 25 pounds over a weekend, also for no discernible reason, so it looks like I’ll be able to knock this out pretty early in 2023. No rush.

(Success) Run a mile in 6:25

See https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2022/02/12/example-visualization-script/

(Success) Run a 5k in 21:45

See https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/beat-my-5k-goal-by-35-seconds/

(Success) Drop weight to 200 pounds flat

This was a subgoal for the running goals. I prefer to stay between 200 and 203.

(Fail) The other strength and exercise goals

I ended up not working on any of these at all, so any progress toward them was incidental:

-Same strength goals as last year, except I put definite deadlines on them based on how long I expect each one to take. Plus:
-Jumping rope, do double-unders for 15 minutes straight. This is approximately 1,000 of them.
-Two triathlons (by myself, to save money). An Olympic-length one in March and a half-Ironman in August.

https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2021/12/22/quick-2021-goals-retrospective-and-2022-goals/

A big part of this is I started doing one of those heavy bag fitness classes with the girls and the yoga pants, which is a lot more fun, so that’s one of my two daily workouts and the other is usually from my running plan. There’s no pleasure in life higher than punching through a bag so hard it reverberates in your stomach muscles, it feels like you’re Dragon Ball Z in real life.

(Success) Nofap for 60 days between September and December

I set this goal to test out the fourfold way of effortless nofap. It became much more serious when Akuma challenged me to a $250 bet, which I’ll admit has saved my latest streak multiple times. (“Effortless” is overselling it a little bit, the Easy Peasy description of it as the “little monster” versus the big monster of porn is about right.) Before that I was still doing AB tests with various ideas and screwing up occasionally. Anyway, it’s pretty cool to finally be off the fapping, that’s been a crutch for two decades.

(Success) Read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

This was way too easy of a goal, in retrospect. I set it because I wanted something in the spiritual category and it’s hard to set good goals for spiritual development. This year’s will be focused on getting better at prayer, because the attention deficit becomes a serious problem.

Oh, see also https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2022/10/31/review-of-foxes-book-of-martyrs/

I also read the Bible cover-to-cover again.

(Failure) Generate $3k of income from X revenue stream at side job

I ended up quitting that job a few months after that failure, mostly because it was making me feel like a loser trying to run a business with losers. That’s not as harsh of a criticism as it appears, most people just aren’t cut out for business and there’s more to life than business. But it’s a depressing way to work and it had to go. See https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/inattention/

(Success) Learn hydro basics from Thames and Kosmos kit

Boneflour put me up to this one. It’s a children’s science kit with a series of experiments that you build from knockoff Legos:

It was pretty cool, but I ended up learning more about mechanics and how the structures are built than hydro or electricity generation. For example, in the picture above the gears are stacked like two overlapping stacks of pancakes to create a very compact transmission to turn slow but powerful rotation into fast rotation (to light up the LED coming out of the red generator in the top right). It’s difficult to learn that sort of thing without building real stuff, and building real stuff gets real expensive real quick. The genius of these kits is they use the same forty or so parts to build multiple structures.

I’ll let on a little secret here: despite how important I think it is to spread the gospel of micro hydro, I have almost zero intrinsic interest in it. My cognitive profile is tilted toward impractical things and it feels like an uphill battle to work within my areas of weakness during my limited free time. Most of you will take that as a sign that I don’t really believe micro hydro is the key to sustaining white Christian refugias during Holodomor 2.0, but really you should be reaching the opposite conclusion.

Or you could do like everyone else and just wait until all that venison in your garage freezer goes bad because, in 2026, the government is apportioning the scarce green energy by race. (Don’t worry, we’ll show those Demonrats what for in the midterms!) Then you’ll say golly gee whiz, I sure wish there were an electric black market in this rural paradise with a high capacity factor and a couple hundred kW to spare. If only some rando blog had solved this problem and given us five years’ advance warning! Mpai ngmi smdh roflmao

Eh, enough of that.

Overview

I got better at stuff again this year, but a lot of the success above was due to luck. (Well, I say luck to be nonconfrontational but I actually believe divine intervention in several cases.) I’d rate myself as about 25% improved with 50% better results, almost entirely due to heavy use of Balabolka recordings to reinforce the goals and visualizations. The easiest type of recording is to repeat each goal on the list a dozen times with some kind of trance-y, gentle music in the background, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkVwuWH-woA. This takes the place of the traditional flashcards:

This consists of writing out your goals in bold letters on a series of three-inch by five-inch index cards. You write the things you want as affirmations, in the present tense and in words that are clear and definite.

This method is best used twice per day, morning and evening. Find a place where you can be alone and quiet for a few minutes. Take several deep breaths to relax your body and prepare your mind. Exhale slowly. Sit comfortably with your cards in your lap. Then read the first of your goals. Close your eyes and repeat it to yourself five times. Visualize your goal as it would be if it were already achieved. Imagine how you would walk, talk and act if the goal were a reality right now. Emotionalize your picture of the goal and create the feeling of pleasure and happiness that would accompany successful accomplishment of your desire.

Then take another deep breath, exhale and release the goal confidently. Do this with each of your goals. Your subconscious mind can work effectively in this way on ten to fifteen goals at a time. (You’ll learn an advanced system for setting your goals in Chapter Five, The Master Skill.)

This entire exercise should not take more than thirty to sixty seconds for each goal, for a maximum of fifteen minutes for fifteen goals. By doing this in the morning before starting out, you send a strong set of signals to your subconscious mind. It then activates the Law of Attraction and heightens your awareness of anything going on around you during the day that could help you accomplish one or more of your goals. By reviewing your goals in this way again in the evening, immediately before sleeping, you set your subconscious mind to work on your goals during the night. Often, it will bring you ideas and solutions when you awake in the morning.

– Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement

I prefer the audio because it’s more convenient, requires almost no willpower to complete, and you can do it lying down with your eyes closed, which activates the imagination and can have the added benefit of turning into a nap if you need one. The music also intensifies the experience and provides a feeling of continuity with previous sessions. This is part of my “falling asleep” playlist but these days I’m almost always out before I reach that track (I think I’ve gotten to it twice in three months).

The other type of recording is the same kind of music but with the visualization for the current primary goal spelled out like so: https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2022/02/12/example-visualization-script/

My main self-criticism this year is not taking my own advice to be 30% less ambitious and playing it way too close to the edge with my bandwidth. That’s where a lot of the luck/divine intervention saved me–I bit off more than I could chew enough times to count as hubris. I also need to get more serious about setting aside regular, scheduled time for creative work so it doesn’t wind up like a spring and blindside me at a bad time.

All in all though, pretty good year.