My resolutions for 2014

In my last post, I mentioned how 2013 has been a phenomenal year for me. I can’t wait to continue the momentum in 2014. The year looks full of promises, a lot of learnings and value creation.

So what are my plans for 2014?

I plan to take a few resolutions and then track myself against them. I think that doing so guides and anchors my growth as a person. Last year, I completed 3 out of 4 resolutions I took. I am hoping to hit 100% achievement this year.

While the web is full of suggestions on how to and how not to make resolutions, I will just mention the guidelines I follow to create my resolutions:

• I usually keep only 3 – 4 resolutions in a year. Any more than that and there is a huge risk of not achieving majority of them (Yes, there have been years when I wanted to achieve more than 10 of them!).
• The intention is to have measurable and objective resolution. So each resolution can be handed to a third person who can judge me on them at the end of year and tell me my success rate.

So here are the resolutions I have kept for myself for 2014:

• More frequent usage of R and Python in my analytical endeavors. I rely heavily on SAS and excel for the work I do. While I have learnt R & Python and used R sparingly, I am still some steps away from executing entire project on both these languages. By end of year, I plan to deliver at least 1 project each on R and Python independently.
• Continue contributing actively in creating a community of analysts (in India): While the journey of Analytics Vidhya started last year, I plan to continue and increase the ways this platform becomes useful for development of a analyst community (specifically in India).

So, how would I measure this? The outputs I will measure are obviously readership and audience engagement on Analytics Vidhya. The inputs I will track myself against are number of posts, number of conferences attended / presented.

• Re-start reading: I used to religiously read for ~30 minutes before hitting bed every day. However, this changed after we were blessed with Jenika (my daughter). My mid-night baby sitting and blog engagement have left little room for reading at night. I’ll re-start reading for an hour at least 2 days in a week.
• 5 kg weight loss: This is the only un-ticked resolution from last year. I am hoping to reduce some belly fat I have accumulated over last few years. My family and friends will tell you that I write this every year and the strike rate has been low. I am hoping to change it this year.

So, here is my reminder sheet for rest of the year:

That’s it! I’ll keep you posted on how I track against these during the year and I am hoping to hit 100% achievement on each of these.

What are your resolutions for the year? How do you plan to grow as a professional? If you have set aside resolutions, please feel free to post them and we can track ourselves collectively. If not, would you want to join?

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