2013 Life Goals

Every year I publish my life goals for the year – a collection of goals I want to accomplish across a variety of different areas in my life.  You can see the list under the Goals main menu item on this page. My 2013 life goals extend and build on those from 2012 and my assessment of how I did against those goals.

Physical

  • Work out four days a week – Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday – In 2013 I had the goal of working out five days a week and was successful with that.  In 2013 I want to take one of those workout days – Saturday – and use it instead to have a physical activity with my daughter.
  • Take time Saturday or Sunday morning for a physical exercise activity with my daughter.  This could be a hike, bike ride, game outside, a trip to the swimming pool or some other daddy daughter outdoor or exercise activity.  This would give my wife a chance to have a few hours without a child around and would give daddy and daughter some bonding time.
  • Maintain weight around 175 lbs.  I lost a lot of weight about four years ago prior to getting married.  Since then I have continued to lose weight and for the last few years I have kept my weight to around 182 lbs.  This is still, however, slightly into the overweight territory for BMI and I have always wanted to slim down even a little further.    For 2013 I am planning to drop another seven pounds and have an average weight around 175 pounds – getting me lower into the average BMI target I should have.

Diet

  • Take a supplement mix of Omega Three, Vitamin D and Probiotics daily.
  • Be good to my bones – eat enough calcium from bioavailable sources
  • Drink the same amount more often – a few drinks several times a week – moderate daily drinking has a positive health benefit.  While I have drastically decreased the overall amount I drink over the last few years – welcome to your thirties – I still tend to drink nothing during the early part of the week and then most of what I drink in the latter part of the week.  Instead, I want to drink a regular, daily amount of wine or other alcoholic beverage.
  • You can keep drinking diet coke – just not too much. Last year I made a resolution to eat more natural, less processed foods.  Overall this resolution was successful and my diet in 2012 consisted of more whole grain foods, fruits and vegetables.  My one vice for processed food, however, remains Diet Coke and I still drink a 20oz diet coke a day most working days of the week.  To that end, if this is one of my limited vices I think I am okay – I just want to keep it to a 20oz diet coke and not drink a 40oz diet coke.
  • Drink a 8oz cup of coffee in the morning (and then not again.)  There seem to be mild health benefits associated with drinking several cups of coffee throughout the day.  However, since I have a slight caffeine sensitivity drinking a cup of coffee in the morning and then not again seems like a good strategy.

Personal

  • Develop a family hobby. My wife had a great idea on this front of getting some artist easels for everyone that we could use to paint.
  • Go on a date with my wife at least once a month.
  • Take a trip at least once a quarter with the family.
  • Publish book notes on books read
  • Learn some Hindi
  • Have a night a week where we work on side projects and not watch TV

Professional

  • Execute the plan for 2013.
  • Hit 7.5M in revenue run for the year.
  • Secure SSB’s position as lead software and services provider in accessibility market.
  • Grow laterally into development services market and prepare for movement into secondary compliance domains – SEO as a primary starting point.

My start of the year clean-out diet for 2013

Every year for the last few years I have used January and February as month to diet, take off a few extra pounds from the holidays and generally clean-out my system.   This year I wanted to drop my target weight a few extra pounds from 180 lbs to 175 lbs.   To that end here is my approach for January:

Eight(ish) Hour Diet – I just read about the Eight Hour diet in Men’s Health the other day.  The basic concept is that you have an eight hour window within which you can eat whatever you want.  For the other sixteen hours a day you don’t eat anything.  I haven’t read the book but they claim some benefits from the fasting for a sixteen hour period.  On this I remain skeptical.  I do, however, expect that the total calories consumed drop significantly simply by dropping the window in which you can eat.  I tried it this last week and it is, overall, doable although an eight hour window is a little difficult to make work on days that you aren’t in a more structured schedule or environment.  So I have adopted it for the five days a week that I am at the office with a little flexibility to a nine hour day as needed.   Generally that sets me up from a 10AM to 7PM window for eating which works for me.  On the weekend I am to keep the spirit of the diet and simply not eat after my evening meal.

No Alcohol – For the last few years I have taken time during January or even longer to abstain from drinking and generally detox my body.  In addition to getting better sleep I probably drink another 3/4 of a pound a week ~ 2600 calories – in wine or beer.  So eliminating this is an easy low hanging fruit and has the positive benefit of detoxing my body.

Calorie Counting – As I have done in years past I plan to track my calories using a Google Docs spreadsheet.   A few years back I lost a bit over forty pounds using this system and since then I have managed to keep it off.  So this is just the same system that I have used.

Posting Progress – When I did this last year to shed a few extra holiday pounds I also started to post progress to Facebook on a weekly basis.  This had the effect of both having me commit publicly to the goal and to gain encouragement throughout the process.   This year I plan to post notices to the blog, my Twitter account and to Facebook to spread the word and keep me motivated.

I started on January 2nd – January 1st is to cliche and there was football to be watch and beer to be drunk.  On that day I started at 183.3.  As of this morning I weighed 182.1 which is on track for what I expected to lose. My plan is to lose about a pound and a half a week and get down to about 175 lbs by the end of the month.  I will keep posting status updated as I go and let everyone know how things progress!

 

2012 Goals Accounting – How did I do in 2012?

This is an update on my 2012 Life Goals post  that defined the goals I had for the year.  This post is meant to review the goals, see where I did well and see where I have room for improvement.

Physical

  • Work out five days a week – Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday – Success.  I worked out five days a week for the entire year and kept the schedule above.  For 2013 I am thinking of removing one of the weekend days and keeping things spaced out a little more.
  • Maintain weight under 180 lbs.  Failure.   I kept my weight just over 180 lbs and probably averaged about 182 lbs over the course of the year.  For 2013 I am planning to drop another ten pounds and have an average weight around 170 pounds – getting me lower into the BMI target I should have.

Diet

  • Eat a diet of less refined items including, sadly, Diet Coke and focus on more natural items.  Success.  Overall I think I did a good job of this and keep removing refined things from my diet.   My one vice on this front, however, remains Diet Coke and I still drink a 20oz diet coke a day.
  • Take fewer drugs and over the counter medicines – focus on the few items that have real benefit. Success.  I removed all regular prescription drugs from my diet and cut back on the number of over the counter medicines I use on a regular basis.
  • Make sure I get enough healthy fats in the form of fish or supplements.  Failure.  While is definitely am taking Omega Three fats, probitoics and Vitamin D I don’t do so on a regular basis.   I would consider this one a success in 2013 if I can incorporate it into my daily diet and lifestyle.
  • Be good to my bones– Get enough calcium and vitamin D and drink less soda.  Failure.   As noted above I still drink a fair amount of soda and don’t get enough Vitamin D in my diet.
  • Drink the same amount more often – a few drinks several times a week – moderate daily drinking has a positive health benefit.  Failure.  I still tend to drink nothing during the early part of the week and then more in the latter part of the week / weekend.

Personal

  • Take a picture of baby girl everyday.  Success. While I don’t think we took a picture exactly, every day we did keep the camera around and, I am sure, generated far more then 365 photos of the baby over the course of the year.
  • Develop at least one family hobby.   Failure.  This is something we need to develop in 2013.  While my 18 month daughter doesn’t really care about hobbies – she just wants to play – it would be great to have some activities that are fun for everybody.
  • Go on a date with my wife at least once a month.  Failure.  While we did manage to go out a good bit our date night definitely was co-opted by work activities and various different double dates.   This is an area where I, personally, need  to be more active in 2013 in terms of planning and executing dates.
  • Take a trip at least once a quarter with the family.  Success.  We took a lot of family trips in 2012 including the Disney Cruise, Ohio, California, Canada, Princeton, California, Shenandoah Valley and Austin.

Professional

  • Execute the plan for 2012.  Success.  Overall we executed our core plan for 2012 and the company continued to grow on plan.  In addition, the last two quarters of the year showed huge sales increases and, if indicative of future events, foreshadow a strong 2013.
  • Hit 6M in revenue run rate before the fourth quarter of the year.  Failure.  Overall good progression against plan and growth throughout the year.  In fourth quarter we missed the 6M run rate by 20K.  However, we would have handily beaten that run rate in the fourth quarter except for a GAO protest of a core contract.  The protest we have no control over and it knocked off 260K of revenue from the quarter.  So while this one is a failure I am pleading extenuating circumstances and not incompetence.
  • Secure SSB’s position as lead software and services provider in accessibility market. Failure.  We have still not full positioned the company as “the” leader in the accessibility solutions space.  The overall strategy and activties for doing this, however, are certainly well in hand.
  • Grow laterally into development services market and prepare for movement into secondary compliance domains – SEO as a primary starting point.  Success.  For the first part, success for a different reason, however, which is that we decided that moving into the development services market is not what we want to do with the business.  Instead we really only want to focus on providing engineering services targeted at solving accessibility development problems.  As to the second with the completion of the underlying architecture and scale changes to AMP we are in a compelling position to move into other markets – an activity earmarked for marterial exploration in 2013. 
  • Define an M&A plan to complement the organic growth plan.  Failure.  Currently we have no well defined or structured M&A plan for the company.