I'm leaning towards having a mastery-oriented (as opposed to performance-oriented) goal orientation. As such, I'm always focused on working to improve myself in a wide variety of things. There are no big goals for me, only directions. That said, I'm satisfied with the delta of where I'm at now minus where I had been this time last year. And, the direction I'm headed looks promising.

Same here.

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” - Bruce Lee

I love yearly goal setting and tracking! I achieved 4 of my 6 goals for 2023. The biggest thing that helped me was my progress tracking spreadsheet [0].

I try to define very achievable monthly milestones. Over the past few years I have learned to love the feeling of focusing on just this month's set of milestones and accomplishing them in time.

For anyone that's interested, I'll share a link to a sample of my progress tracking spreadsheet [0] -- nothing complicated, but it can be helpful to have a predetermined structure in place. Feel free to make a copy for your own use!

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13G9L1t82BtIggxEqeFUV...

Congratulations on the weight loss.

Early career guy here. Thankfully, 2023 was a good year for me. And long overdue; the last few years have been rough. This year I:

1. Got married to my best friend

2. Met important KPIs at work, got a good raise

3. Published a few cover stories for a magazine--as a writer, writing the front-page story for a magazine has been a dream for a long time

4. Made good headway on personal creative projects

Counter-intuitively, what helped me most was narrowing my scope. Juggling wedding planning, hectic work schedules, assignment deadlines, etc. was stressful, so I just focused on what I could do each day, then every week or so I'd take a look at long-term objectives, recalibrate my objectives for the next week to align with those, and then not look at those long-term objectives again for a while. I learned a lot about breaking projects down into their constituent parts and making them manageable.

2023 wasn't the best for me, but I did manage to do the one thing I really said I would. I finally released publicly my first side project after years of just working on ideas or focusing on work-stuff.

Even better, the "launch" went great [1] and gave me the necessary boost to keep at it!

It took lots of late and endless nights, much experimenting and tinkering, but I kept reminding myself to keep it minimal and just have it work.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38155544

As 2023 ends, it's been a fulfilling year. We welcomed a new child, a personal highlight for my family. Career-wise, I explored new opportunities, launched a product, and am gearing up to start my business in early 2024. It's been a year of both joy and professional growth!