Published January 6, 2024 · 4 min read

During the COVID lockdowns, I ended up spending more time alone than I was used to. The routines had collapsed, and a lot of the social structure I had taken for granted just disappeared.

That changed something for me. With less noise and less movement, I started paying closer attention to how I was actually living, what I was neglecting, and what I kept postponing. That was the period when I began thinking more seriously about direction, not in an abstract sense, but in the practical sense of how I wanted the next few years to look.

I started writing in a way I had not allowed myself to before, with actual hours and actual focus. That period produced my second book. Designing Big Data Platforms. The book mattered not because it proved something to anyone else, but because finishing it during the worst stretch I had lived through showed me I was more capable of enduring than I had assumed.

I noticed during that time that when I face problems outside my control, I either start spinning through worst cases or I go completely flat. Neither is useful. Recognising that pattern was the first thing that actually helped.

Confronting Covid 19

Reflecting on My Personal Goals

After that, I sat down and wrote a five-year plan. Not because I felt inspired, but because I was tired. The previous five years had knocked me around in ways I kept failing to anticipate, and I was done making decisions in the middle of pressure with no orientation. I wanted a structure I had chosen while calm, so that when the next hard season arrived, I would not be improvising my life from scratch.

The plan forced a few blunt questions. I had barely travelled because I kept prioritising other things, so was that still a trade-off I wanted? Some of the things I say matter to me need long, uninterrupted blocks of time, so what was I actually giving those hours to? Same with my health, which I had neglected more than I wanted to admit. High cholesterol and all the rest of it do a good job of making things feel less theoretical. The plan is not comforting to look at. It is useful.

A few of what I set out:

• Professional - Grow a technical audience through writing and speaking
• Personal - Travel through a part of the world I have never seen
• Well-being - Maintain a more consistent way of eating and do more hikes

A Framework for Goals

The structure itself was not complicated, which is probably why I still use it. At this point, I do some version of it almost every year.

First, I set specific goals across different parts of life: career, health, personal. Vague goals do not survive a difficult week. They sound fine when you are rested and optimistic. They become useless the moment life gets noisy.

Second, I try to be honest about priority. What is actually important? What is optional? That is much easier to answer in advance than in the middle of stress, when everything suddenly starts pretending to be urgent.

Third, I put dates on things. A goal without a timeline has a way of turning into a nice opinion you hold about yourself. Then I review the plan regularly, not to reinvent it every month, but to adjust the method while keeping the direction.

What changed for me was simple. I spend far less time in the middle of a difficult stretch trying to decide what I care about, because I already did that work earlier. That shift has been worth more than any single goal on the list.