The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: 2024 Unfiltered
Disrupt & Conquer #6
Hey, friends! 👋
2025 is in full swing and I’m looking forward to the year ahead.
This is the second part of my goal setting and reflections over the 2024/25 new year period. You can find my 2025 goals below.
Welcome to the sixth edition of my monthly newsletter, "Disrupt and Conquer"!
Benji
Why am I setting goals?
I feel like without setting goals, it’s difficult to reflect on your progress so you end up quickly feeling aimless and not very conscious in your decisions. The very act of writing and sharing my goals makes me think about my goals thoroughly.
They are hopefully balanced, not too concentrated in one particular area.
Why share my goals publicly?
There’s an element of selfishness associated with this. I’m going through a period of high confidence and want to use this opportunity to share that publicly and maintain my momentum.
Not as a way to gloat, but maybe as a way to expose myself to even more possibilities for people or environments that can help me achieve my goals.
It’s also a way to build trusting relationships, I can send my writings to new connections to help them understand my story better.
Big thanks to Matt Dicks who encouraged me through his public sharing of his goals here
Why might you be interested in my goals?
As you learn about my story, motivations and challenges maybe this provides you with a framework to think about how you tell your own story.
I hope these goals challenge your thinking or maybe you’ll write to me and challenge mine. What goals do you agree with? What’s too ambitious or not ambitious enough?
What goals do we share and could help one another with?
Right 2024… what did you have in store?
My 2024 goal completion rate was 62% much higher than expected considering how this year began.
I’m never going to expect to hit 100% and won’t blame myself for goals I don’t achieve.
You can never full plan out your entire life. I look how dramatically my goals changed early into 2024 when I was made redundant within the first week of the new year.
That helped me realise that goals must and will adapt over the year.
I’ve tried to make my goals specific and measurable, sometimes they are too ambitious to be completed in a year. Other times, I found myself achieving a goal quicker than expected.
Cumulative Goals: I document and tally up my progress every quarter.
Project Goals: I aim to complete as many tasks as possible within a project.
Recent Goal: I’m measuring my progress throughout the year, hoping to maintain a baseline or see incremental improvements.
FITNESS
Complete 100 spin sessions: 66%
I never found exercise exciting and never felt motivated to push myself beyond my predisposed limits.
Finally, I was introduced to spinning thanks to some friends at the end of 2023. My goal for 2024 was to full commit with 100 spin sessions.
I hit 66 but am still proud of my progress.
My greatest achievement was leading the pack of friends on a cycling trip. Previously, I would have been struggling in the back.
Hit an FTP 2.8 w/kg: 100%
At the mid point of this year, this goal felt unrealistic.
Despite consistently going to spin classes. My w/kg remained constant at 1.8 w/kg, on some occasions I pushed 2.1 w/kg.
For context, here’s the cycling categories for cyclists.
It happened quite suddenly.
I tapped into something that felt impossible. Pure focus. No distraction.
I hit a 2.6! The following session, another 2.6! Surely it’s a fluke or an issue with the bike.
Now, the goal felt within reach and with 4 weeks to spare till the end of the year, I hit a 2.9 w/kg.
Next year, a Cat 4 is within my sights.
A huge thanks to Natalie and Override Spin team who have created such a special environment.
VOLUNTEERING
Volunteer 1 hour a week (54 hours) for the year: 19%
With a lot more time on my hands between Jan-March I volunteered at a food bank in Holborn.
I only managed about 10 hours this year, I’m disappointed it wasn’t more.
I started to get busy again from April, and this quickly started getting pushed aside. Next year, I hope to commit to more volunteering without location or proximity being an excuse.
PROJECTS
Build Fantasy Politics - 100%
A combination of my redundancy and leaning into LLMs (particularly in love with Cursor) has accelerated my learning speed so much that I can now build what I imagine without having to rely on anyone by myself!
Just Debate, is a product no one really needs, but the amazing thing is, I didn’t spend a single dollar having to build it.
I haven’t really invested much time into sharing it. I’ve gone for a more ‘build it and they will come’ approach, which never works. It’s out there now, in the open.
LEARNING
100 Days of Code - 75%
I had been putting this goal off for years. I always wanted to be able to have the independence to build things for myself and kept putting off learning to code.
My journey began with Replit’s 100 Days of Code Python course. I blitzed through the first 50 lessons or so, but quickly my interest drained as I wasn’t working on projects I wanted to work on. That’s okay. I didn’t have to finish the 100 Days of Code course because I feel confident to build without it.
Harvard CS50 - 75%
This course set out a solid foundation for me when I joined Doshi and worked with my amazing mentor Jaco to grasp the fundamental concepts of architecture, the functionality of Firebase, and the mechanics of software engineering. I now feel confident in contributing to relatively technical conversations, which has earned me respect from my teammates.
50 Commits using AI tools - 100%
I ended up with 400+ commits for the year, you can check out my GitHub profile here.
Tools I used (quickly expanded beyond AI tools):
Polymet AI - Generates user interface designs & production-ready code based on text descriptions or images.
Cursor - An AI-enhanced code editor, technical people would know this to be an IDE.
Shadcn UI - An open-source collection of customisable React components that developers can copy and paste directly into their projects.
Vercel - simplifies the deployment and hosting of web applications on the cloud.
Firebase - Cloud-based platform by Google that provides developers with tools and services for building, managing, and scaling applications. I used Firestore in Doshi and my projects which is a flexible no-SQL database that enables real-time data synchronisation and offline support your applications.
Postman - I’ve even started building and testing my own APIs and creating documentation for them. I never imagined I’d reach this level in just a year.
Finish Mathematical Thinking Course - 20%
I’ve come to terms with the fact that I struggled with first principled thinking for many years. I denied it because deep down because I felt it was too late to climb that mountain but knew how vital this skillset was to keep myself relevant.
Re skilling is hard. Admitting you need re skilling is harder.
I was introduced to the OSSU Maths course, which is a complete introduction to mathematics, and eventually my decade-long goal is to become someone with more of an engineering mindset.
Completing that course is a subgoal within that, but it’s a heavy course, and the goal for this year is to just finish the first module, which is hard enough in itself.
A way to think mathematically will help me tremendously with problem-solving, breaking down problems and ideas, and expressing myself more clearly.
Read 9 books this year - 70%
I’m finally in a groove with reading. I was diagnosed with ADHD back in the summer, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. I had a list of all the things I wanted to try and achieve after my diagnosis with the support of my medication. Without a doubt, the best outcome from the diagnosis has been the ability to commit to my goals, in particular, my reading goals.
COMMUNITY
Get to 500 newsletter subscribers - 25%
I still struggle with writing, and I’m unsure of my target audience, community, and brand values. This goal was a bit too ambitious for me.
Host 50 events - 5%
Post on social media 500 times - 10%
Why is this even a goal? To me, a community is like an insurance policy, providing a sense of security and belonging. It’s also a group of like-minded individuals whom I can rely on and feel significant to. But, I still struggle with the fear of exposing myself so publicly online, knowing that it may lead to criticism and judgment.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Keep 10 Shabbats/Jewish Festivals - 30%
I want to take more time to reflect, pause, and not always be thinking about ‘where next’ and just appreciate being present. Jewish traditions offer a unique window to doing this; it’s been under my nose the whole time.
Write in my journal 150 days this year - 60%
I managed to write only 90 days. Initially, I wrote a lot to keep up my positivity during a challenging start to the year. I took a long break when things were going well in the summer. Since November, I’ve tried to resume regular writing, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to reach the 150-mark goal.
Meditate for 150 days this year - 10%
I hope that next year I can meditate much more because I feel healthier in my thought patterns, don’t ruminate on negative thoughts as much, and let things slide a lot easier. I find myself getting more frustrated these days at seemingly simple things, but to be honest, they shouldn’t mean much. Meditation will help with that.
Consistently go to therapy once a month - 100%
FINANCES
Save 30% of my post tax income - 15%
Losing my job didn’t help! But I still saved 15% of my income this year just 5% shy of the recommended 20% (50, 30, 20 rule).
CAREER
Start a new company instead of getting a job - 0%
Fail. However joining Doshi was the best decision I made. Who knows where the future holds? I gave it a go, freelanced a bit— but it wasn’t going to work out. I didn’t know what I wanted to build and didn’t have a niche.
Get a job instead of starting a new company - 100%
DOSHI
Speed up Doshi’s client onboarding time from 12 weeks to 4 weeks - 100%
Developers doing proper feature work, making their lives easier by making scripts and utilising my skills - 100%
Become a Notion & Linear power user - 100%
Create internship programme of 5 Interns - 100%
I thought this would help and it felt great to mentor some wonderful interns but I’m certainly not going to have so many interns at once again. It slowed me down instead of speeding me up which makes sense in retrospect.
Deliver all projects on time - 75%
Win 1 award - 0%
But we were nominated for 3!
Retain all Doshi contracts up for renewal this year - 75%
Learn how to build products properly with quantative data to back up decisions. Implement scientific rigour to product building - 80%
Became a user behavior & analytics tool super user: Segment, Mixpanel, and Customer.io.
ORGANISATION
Clear out my notes and notion, consolidate what’s important - 100%
Build my portfolio website - 90%
Completed! But not quite ready for launch!
Back up everything offline important photos, memories, journal - 100%
FRIENDS/FAMILY
Make sure to call or see my friends within 1-2 months of last speaking with them - 65%
Call my family once a week - 75%
Cook one new recipe for Hannah every week - 10%
Have a great week everyone.
I’ll be back in your inbox next month.
Thanks for reading
Benji