My 2018 Resolutions

I recently wrote about how to achieve your new years resolutions – about why people normally fail to achieve success with their resolutions, myself included. So for my 2018 resolutions, I’m defining them as S.M.A.R.T. goals, with the hope that it will help increase the likeliness of achieving my resolutions.

2018 Resolutions

My new years 2018 resolutions are as follows:

• I want to lose 5 pounds per month in 2018
• I want to read at least 1 book per month in 2018
• I want to attend 3 PHP conferences
• I want to speak at least one PHP conference
• I want to be comfortable with conversational Spanish

Losing Weight

I wrote a tweet on Sunday asking who wanted to lose weight and get fit in 2018. Things like weight loss are difficult when trying to them on your own. Connecting with other people, and supporting one another, can make it easier to stay on track — especially when they have similar goals. Fortunately, a few interested people responded.

This got me thinking about progress –  how do we share our results with one another? The simplest way for me, but probably not the best, is to update this post with the number of pounds lost for each month. However, that misses some opportunities for sharing data e.g. weekly weigh-ins, progress photos, performance notes about the week. I’ll have to think

Reading A Book a Month

Here’s my list of books I planning to read in 2018. It’s one-third of the books on my to-read list, but the list below contain the ones I know I want to read first! The minimum success is that all 16 of these books will be read. The best ever success case, would be able to read all 55 books on my to-read list. All 55 is a pipe dream, given the speed that I read books.

• Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson [2018 Jan 01 – present]
• UnFu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop
• The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Circle by Dave Eggers
• Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind
• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
• The Catcher In the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare
• Lexicon by Max Barry
• The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy
• Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

PHP Conferences

I don’t normally get the opportunity to attend PHP conferences. This year my goal is to attend 3 conferences. I’d like to speak at one PHP conference, hopefully more. I’m not currently aware of the current schedule to 2018 conferences. So I’ll have to see which conferences are available.

Quiero Hablar Español Bien

My goal is become comfortably conversational in Spanish.  I’ve been studying Spanish via resources like books, music, TV shows, and the DuoLingo app for a while. My major challenge is hearing native spanish speakers. They speak so fast, that I can’t pick out the individual words. I think I just need more practice hearing native speakers.