These are my goals for the year. Historically, I saw new years resolutions as the perfect way to not achieve tasks.

However, by writing these down and sharing it to the world I might become more accountable of these – having a point of reference and, ideally, being able to check back on a monthly basis to track back on these.

Planning ahead in the current state of the world is proving to be difficult, admittedly. The last two years have been filled with so much uncertainty, so it’s hard to plan ahead. Hence, I will focus on what I can control if the circumstances remain the same — that is, if I remain healthy, employed, and able to work from home at least part of the time. I do not take these things for granted any more. It’s incredible to think how these concepts were taken as a ‘given’ in the past!

• Research goals:
  • Writing: Submit 1 journal paper by the end of the year
  • Writing: Submit 1 conference paper by the end of the year
  • Research: Finalise my research questions and hypotheses
  • Research: Confirmation!
  • Research: Get ethics approved
  • Teaching: Discuss teaching or marking opportunity with supervisors
• Personal:
  • Aim to wake up before 7 am every morning
  • Use my time in the evening for creative tasks
  • Spend at least 4 weekends outside of the city
  • Read at least 10 fiction books (not related to my PhD)
  • Do yoga at least 4 days a week
  • Learn natural language processing in Python
• Professional
  • Admin: maintain an inbox-zero
  • Maintain a weekly catch-up with my team
  • Create a mentoring project
  • Arrange a monthly ‘learning’ meeting with my team