2015 in the hindsight

2015 is my best year ever in almost all areas of my life.

I learned a few good ideas, built a great momen­tum for my goals, and con­tin­ued my habit streaks.

In Octo­ber I put every­thing I have been up to in my /now page. This is the one of the best things I did this year. Writ­ing this page has helped me think about what is impor­tant to me so I can say no to every­thing else. I have based my 2015 review on my /now page because it is essen­tial­ly what I have been up to this year.

Family

I have spent a rea­son­able time with my son through­out the year but I wish I could have spent a bit more time with my wife. Our romance is ever strength­en­ing although we get only a lit­tle time to spend togeth­er on a dai­ly basis after work­ing on our jobs, career aspi­ra­tions and tak­ing time to exer­cise. We try to make most of the lit­tle our-time we have but we always yearned for more. On the bright side, I like how much ambi­tious we both are.

This year we have also strength­ened friend­ships with few oth­er fam­i­lies. We have few but deep friend­ships with oth­ers.

There will always be chal­lenges, but most of my extend­ed fam­i­ly are large­ly doing great.

Work

My knowl­edge, skills and con­tri­bu­tions have increased inline with my expe­ri­ence. I con­tin­ue to enjoy my day job which gives me a chance to learn new things, solve prob­lems and help peo­ple every­day. It also gives me a chance to write more and advance my writ­ing skills. I have a rea­son­able free­dom and flex­i­bil­i­ty to choose what and when I work. I con­tin­ue to enjoy the lit­tle good­ies like free park­ing, free break­fast and fruit.

I also love the fit­ness cul­ture of my work­place. I am lucky to be among too many fit col­leagues, includ­ing my train­er who runs the exer­cise class­es for all of us at our work­place.

Chaitanya 3.0

This is my side project that takes up most of my free time. I am proud of what I have achieved this year.

Exercising

2015 is my fittest year ever.

I con­tin­ued to see myself as some­one who does­n’t miss work­outs.

As a result, I exer­cised for 127 hours this year. This is 17 hours more than the time I spent exer­cis­ing in 2014 . I ran ten 5ks. Start­ing with WWWP5k on a Sun­day in Octo­ber, I ran every Sun­day until the end of this year. I can now do 50 push ups straight. I start­ed from zero only six months ago and prac­ticed every sin­gle day. Three of my col­leagues and I did 200 push ups each to raise $200 for Movem­ber Foun­da­tion.

I squat 32 kg and swing 24 kg com­fort­ably. I pushed myself few times to squat 40 kg and 48 kg and swing 32 kg albeit for few­er reps.

I exer­cise to mas­ter my body and be healthy so I can give a best shot to my aspi­ra­tions. Exter­nal results like lean body, mus­cle and low body fat are nice side effects I can’t help but enjoy. I have a long way to go and I am far behind the body I admire. But I am hap­py with my inter­im results.

I could­n’t have moved more this year. I am grate­ful that I got to move this much.

Meditation

I start­ed med­i­tat­ing this Jan­u­ary and did a new­bie mis­take. I tried to sit still for 20 min­utes and failed bad­ly. So I ditched the Coach.me med­i­ta­tion plan and final­ly start­ed using the Calm app that was idling on my iPhone for all of last year. I start­ed with 7 Days of Calm pro­gram and set­tled for med­i­tat­ing just ten min­utes a day.

As I write this, I am rid­ing a 172 day streak, my longest ever. I med­i­tat­ed for a total of 37 hours and 18 min­utes over 226 ses­sions. I look for­ward to con­tin­ue enjoy­ing ten min­utes of calm every­day.

Elevate

This is anoth­er tiny habit on which I spend as lit­tle as ten min­utes every­day. I played this edu­ca­tion­al game every­day this year. I am proud of my 488 day streak.

Besides med­i­ta­tion, I use this great lit­tle app to train my brain and improve my cog­nizance lit­tle bit every­day.

Eating healthy

I got seri­ous about eat­ing right this year because I real­ized that my eat­ing habits are act­ing against my exer­cis­ing efforts. So I got bet­ter at eat­ing right this year to max­i­mize my exer­cis­ing gains.

My appetite has reduced and I could­n’t eat as much as I used to eat. I start­ed snack­ing on raw veg­gies and nuts. I have reduced my sug­ar and junk food intake. I am done with sug­ary cere­als. I have also reduced the size of my por­tions. I tried to quit cof­fee ear­li­er this year. But I learned that mod­er­ate caf­feine is good for health and resumed drink­ing a small cup mid-morn­ing, every work­day.

I feel lighter and ener­getic by eat­ing less. Although I improved, this is still an ongo­ing bat­tle. I am not pre­fect but I am pro­gress­ing.

Reading

I read few but good books this year. The two best books that taught me a lot are: The Slight Edge and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff .
I also read a book each on eat­ing well and exer­cis­ing to make sure I am on right track.

Learning to write well

I spent a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time this year learn­ing to write well. I believe that writ­ing well is an impor­tant skill regard­less of what we do. I also love writ­ing for jour­nal­ing and clar­i­fy­ing my think­ing and ideas. Writ­ing is one of my cre­ative pur­suits. Despite suck­ing at it, I like play­ing with words. I for­get time while putting words togeth­er and try­ing to per­fect the prose. My only chal­lenge is that I take a lot of time to write and spend even more time to edit what I wrote. But this is some­thing I enjoy. So I don’t com­plain.

I read and re-read three books: The basics of clar­i­ty and grace, The Ele­ments of Style, On Writ­ing Well. The first book is expen­sive to buy but I own there the two. Read­ing these books has helped me find the awk­ward mis­takes green writ­ers make and the com­mon writ­ing pit­falls to avoid.

But there is no way I can remem­ber every­thing I read in those books. So I prac­tice writ­ing as much as I can. Thank­ful­ly my day job and side projects involve a lot of writ­ing . This is besides blog­ging and few oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties I have to write. I am wide open for oth­ers to edit my words and I gen­uine­ly appre­ci­ate and learn from the feed­back.

I expect that if I con­tin­ue prac­tic­ing this process, I get bet­ter over time.

Blog

I enjoy writ­ing and styling for this blog. I am proud of every­thing I have writ­ten here. This is my place on the web where I share my ideas and thoughts. So I will con­tin­ue doing it.

Besides these big things, I used my short com­mute time to lis­ten to Hin­du epic Bha­ga­vatam and learned a great deal about myself. I also lis­tened to good pod­casts like few episodes of The Tim Fer­riss Show and oth­ers. I quit Toast­mas­ters as I could­n’t do jus­tice to the Toast­mas­ters Promise. I stopped prac­tic­ing touch typ­ing. I still can’t touch type num­bers row but I have mas­tered all main rows. I any­way type a lot every­day so I stopped spend­ing time to delib­er­ate­ly prac­tice.

My pater­nal grand­pa has left this world in July. My mater­nal grand­ma under­went a surgery in Sep­tem­ber and some­one who I felt like my sis­ter has left the coun­try in Decem­ber. These are the three low times of 2015 I felt immense­ly emo­tion­al.

Over­all, 2015 has been awe­some for me because I have lived well the three prin­ci­ples I have set for myself in 2014.

Thank you 2015 for being nice and giv­ing me way more than what you have tak­en away from me.