I did not set any goals for 2021. I am a person who is obsessed with systems and lives his life through daily habits and yearly OKRs. So this was new for me.

I wanted to see if I change how I live my day if I don’t set any goals.

  • Would I read less?
  • Would I try out more new things?
  • What were the things I would cut out from my life that I was doing out of sheer habit?
  • What would be the new additions to my life?

Instead of OKRs with timelines, I created a list of things I wanted to do for 2021 if I got time. I did not obsess over this list. I did not even check it out every week. If I was bored and wanted ideas I would look at the list for inspiration.

Instead of updating my personal OKRs list monthly like the years before, I just created a note where I captured what I did during the year. Anything that was important to me went into it.

Oh yeah, somewhere during the middle of the year, I did write down my priorities for the year because I kept doing too many things and wanted to see if what I was doing mapped to the things that I had identified as a priority.

I identified these as my 3 biggest priorities for 2021

  • Health (physical and mental)
  • Career
  • Understand crypto

Let’s see how it went.

2021 recap:

  • Writing: 185 posts (original blogposts as well as book summaries.)
  • Reading: ~110 books, average page size of 275.
  • Worked on a lot of high impact projects at work.
  • 100+ people attended private sessions on career and product management.
  • Games completed (most of them played by my wife, with me jumping in from time to time when I felt like): Fifa 21, Spiderman, Unchartered 4, Days gone, Last of us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mafia, Ghost of Tsushima.
  • Favourite board game: Splendor.
  • 3 TV series I liked: People Just Do Nothing, Succession, It’s always sunny in Philadelphia.
  • 3 Movies I liked: Blade Runner 2049, Minnal Murali, Matrix.

10 Non Fiction I loved reading this year

10 Fiction I loved reading this year

January

February

  • Got a new M1 Mac for myself. First personal laptop since college.
  • Visited my hometown after 2 years.
  • Helped my wife and another close friend start their investing journey.
  • Reached Fifa ‘21 division 1.

March

  • Completed Reforge Organisation leadership module.
  • Got a new tattoo.
  • Started playing football weekly.
  • Started an online poker group that grew to ~30 members. We played non stop for like 2 months before we got tired.
  • Gifted new new Airpods Pro to my wife.
  • Started board games nights with my wife.

April

  • Gifted a new phone to my brother.
  • First board games day with friends.
  • Read more Poker theory. Was playing in a group that had past WSOP players. So had to up my game.

May

  • Played a lot of heads-up Poker with people far superior to me.
  • Started German lessons. A long term goal is to live in Europe at some point of my life. Gave up on this endeavor after a month’s effort though.
  • Shipped La luna poker tournament and won 1.5L over a night.
  • Wrapped up adda52 tournament journey after getting burned out.
  • Got vaccinated.
  • Won division 1 championship in Fifa 21 twice.
  • Finished succession 1 and 2. One of the best things I watched in 2021.
  • Stopped daily poker. Post this the frequency went down to once a month session with friends in person.

June

  • Completed Fiction masterclass by Neil Gaiman.
  • Started using Vocab builder apps. Gave up after a week.
  • Started a podcast on Mahabharata by Sudipta Bhawmik. Highly recommend this.
  • My wife got into puzzles and just did puzzles for a month.
  • Started intermittent fasting. Did not work out for me.

July

  • Completed Waking up Sam harris’ 1 month course. Bought Waking up subscription post that.
  • Finished Unchartered 4 and Spiderman. My wife played mostly though.
  • Set up new workflows on my iPad. Started taking handwritten notes.
  • Gifted a new M1 Mac to wife.
  • Completed Shaan Puri’s Power writing course. [Got the material from a friend.]
  • Invested in sovereign gold. A long term goal was to invest in alaternate assets. Check my past personal OKRs. Managed to complete it this year.
  • Completed a Procreate course on Udemy.
  • Bought more board games and also got gifted a few.

August

  • Signed up to Angellist Venture.
  • Started reading books on drawing comics.
  • Joined the nearby gym again, this time with a personal trainer. The trainer was an idiot, so did not continue after the first month.
  • Created Indmoney account to invest in foreign markets.
  • Created Metamask, Opensea and other accounts to understand crypto more.
  • Invested in Cred Mint.
  • Got a 5/5 rating in my performance review. I had always got 4/5 (Exceeds Expectations). This was the first time I got Outstanding. :Feels good man meme:
  • Bought my first tokens: Bitcoin, Etherium, and Matic. My crypto portfolio allocation is less than my one month’s rent. I bought these to understand the ecosystem. So please don’t take anything I write on crypto as investment advice.

September

  • Wrote my first blogpost on crypto, now renamed as web3. Most of my blogposts in H2 would be focused on web3.
  • Bought my own poker set.
  • Completed the Learn Cryptocurrency course by Preethi Kasireddy. Got bored midway and mostly skimmed though.
  • Completed David Parrel’s free course on Writing.
  • Bought first US stocks. I am increasing my US exposure massively. Most of my holdings (passive or active is US equities, either through ETFs or direct stock purchase through Indmoney.)

October

  • Got promoted to Group Product Manager.
  • Visited my wife’s family in Coimbatore.
  • Started football training with a proper coach. Could not do more than 2 sessions with him as I broke my elbow playing football with the bois.
  • Got into graphic novels. Spent the entire month reading just that.
  • Gifted an iPad to my father in law.
  • Visited a temple. I identified as an atheist for most of my life, but lately have started following the traditions of my religion in an attempt to get more spiritual.

November

  • We learned how to make good curd. The idea is to use full fat milk instead. I was so happy that I ate curd rice for weeks.
  • Gifted sunglasses to my wife. She never had ones that fit, so we were super happy when she found something that did.
  • Invested a small check in my friend’s startup. A lot of inbound came this year, but I am not willing to double down on it till I think I have an edge. Spending most of my networth just to update my bio as angel investor is negative ROI.
  • Helped a bunch of startups (mostly started by friends.)
  • Gifted Galaxy S20 FE to my dad.
  • Got a big stock grant. Now most of my network is tied to illiquid private market stocks.

December

  • Updated my wife’s website. I had created the site way back in January, but never got the chance to make it “look pretty.”
  • I also updated own website, especially the Uses this page.
  • First proper vacation in 3 years since I joined my current company. First vacation with my wife since I met her 4 years back. I tried to stay off Slack, but failed. I attended calls only one day during the week I was in Goa, so I would count it as a positive.
  • Bought an iPhone Pro and Airpods Pro for myself.
  • Got Skillshare yearly subscription.
  • Completed 2 photography courses on Skillshare.
  • Gifted ETFs and MFs to my brother.

Random Reflections:

  • I kept doing the same things that I have always done. Just because I did not set a Goodreads goal did not mean I read less. Just because I did not set up analytics on my blog (to get dopamine hits), I did not write fewer posts.
  • Should have SIPed instead of trying to time the market by investing during dips. Lost out on a lot of the upside. I have set up SIPs from Jan’22.
  • I am planning to create my own money rules.
  • I could have travelled more. A lot of my frinds utilised the WFH period by spending months working out of Goa/ Himachal.
  • Should have doubled down on buying individual stocks I really believe in. I knew FANG stocks were undervalued. I kept buying N100 instead. Chose the safer option.
  • Could have bought more crypto, but getting my HDFC UPI blocked due to P2P transactions scared me and I did not bother post that. Mostly lazyness on my part.
  • Met a lot of interesting people.
  • Got deep into the crypto rabbithole. Wrote 10+ posts on web3.
  • A lot of my money habits are tied to loss aversion. Something I will be working on in the future.
  • Started tracking my daily habits far more aggressively this year. I am not getting any younger. Health has the biggest correlation to happiness and I need to take it seriously.
  • Plan to travel more in 2022 if possible.
  • I will continue taking personal training for the things I want to get better at.
  • Seeing so many friends move abroad, Europe and US, did make me think a lot about my career and life choices; about whether I am making the right decision to stay back here. I spent a lot of mental energy on figuring out what I really want out of my life, whether I can get it while living in India. I don’t want to make decisions based on FOMO.
  • I love learning new things. I get excited whenever I do a new course and learn some new skill. I am planning to do a lot more courses in 2022.
  • I spent way more time shitposting on Twitter than I intended. Failure to cut down my Twitter has been one of the biggest failures of 2021.
  • I loved tracking my monthly highlights this year. It is the best way of me remembering what happened during 2021. The highlights I put also implicitly shows what I care about the most.
  • With covid not going anywhere, time will continue to fly by and every day will feel the same. Even more so if you are in your late 20s/early 30s. Ask yourself what you did this March? Do you remember anything at all?
  • This reflection is mostly for me and hence I won’t share this on Twitter. Hope this inspires you to write your own.

Want to do your own year end reflections? Try one of the templates mentioned here.