Category Archives: Goals

April 10, 2026 · 11:58 AM

2026 Personal Goals: Better Late than Never

I normally try to set personal goals for the year in January, but the start oft his year has been the perfect storm of minor health issues in the family and family/work travel, so I wasn’t able to set goals formally at my usual time. Things were starting to quiet down by the end of March, so I decided that there’s no reason you can’t formalize your yearly goals at the start of Q2, so here we are. As with previous years, I’ve structured my goals in the four categories my church uses for encouraging youth to set personal goals: spiritual, social, physical, and intellectual.

This year I’m trying a new thing with several of my goals: I’m going to set explicit Good/Meh/Ugly thresholds for many of these goals. This allows me to have a broader top level goal, combined with an explicit up-front scoring criteria. I have more goals this year than I can realistically simultaneously achieve, but I’m ok with several goals that would’ve been ugly at least getting up into the Meh range.

Without further ado,

Spiritual Goals:

  1. Get into the habit of regular journal writing: I’ve written in journals off-and-on for the past 30 years, but had lately gotten into the habit where other than church conference notes, I was only writing a few times per year. I tried to get up to weekly writing last year, but only did so-so, hence I wanted to try again this year. Scoring Criteria: Good if >100 entries, Meh if 50-100 entries, and Ugly if <50 entries.
  2. Help Jamie get prepared and out the door on his mission: Jamie received his mission call earlier this year, and has been assigned to serve for two years in the Baton Rouge Louisiana Mission, starting on May 6th. Before he goes, we need to help him prepare a ton of things, including buying sufficient clothes, luggage, and equipment, but also helping him get ready for two years without computer games and most social media, hopefully getting to bed and getting up in sync with his future missionary schedule, and helping him get used to exercise routines he can do without having regular access to a gym.
  3. Read the book Jesus the Christ from cover to cover: This is a good one on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, written by latter-day saint apostle James Talmage about a century ago. I read it on my mission, but thought it would be a good one to reread.
  4. Attend the temple regularly: This one is almost always on my goals list, both because it is important to me, but also because with the temple almost an hour away, it’s something that’s easy to let slip if it’s not a focus. Scoring Criteria: Good if >10x this year, Meh if 6-10x, and Ugly if <6x.
  5. Work on at least one goal from General Conference each week: I really enjoy my church’s semi-annual General Conferences. The talks are often inspiring, the spirit is wonderful, and most of the time six months later, I have little tangible progress to show for it. There are often too many areas of improvement for me to juggle all of them at once1, but picking one item to work on for each given week is something where I can make some tangible incremental progress. Scoring Criteria: starting after the April General Conference in Q2, measured by if I set and successfully kept at least one goal stemming from General Conference (or Stake Conference) in a given week. Good if successful >30x, Meh if 15-30x, Ugly if <15x.

Social Goals:

  1. Renew Passports and take the family on at least one international trip: With Jamie heading out on the mission, we’ll be down to four of us, so international travel is a little more feasibly financially. Most likely this will be a trip up to Banff National Park up in Canada, since our last attempt to make it up there was during COVID, and the border was still closed by the time we made it up to Montana.
  2. Go on regular dates with Tiff: We haven’t been very consistent on this, especially as the boys have grown up and gotten busier, so I wanted to set a goal to try and do this more often. Scoring Criteria: Start counting in Q2, group dates count, going shopping together at Walmart doesn’t. Good if >27x, Meh if 15-27x, Ugly if <15x.
  3. [Update 7/1: New Goal Added] Spanish speaking practice at least 10 min/day and secondary language learning at least 5min/day: I was realizing that I’m in a rut on my Spanish, having gotten most of what I can from Duolingo and Pimsleur. I’m going to try using a AI-based language conversation app (likely Langua) to try and get to a point where I’m more comfortable communicating in Spanish. Additionally, I have a work conference in Turkey that I’ll be speaking at in October, and I decided I want to spend a little time every day between now and the conference on Duolingo and/or Pimsleur learning basic Turkish. My guess is this may be my only visit to Turkey, so I’ll probably switch to another language after the trip. Scoring Criteria: Start counting in Q3. Good if >120x, Meh if 60-150x, Ugly if <60x.

Physical Goals:

  1. Get back into a cadence of daily exercise: I had actually been doing pretty well with this last year, but things fell apart in Q1 with how many times we were sick or traveling. I want to get back into the swing of things. This year, I’m trying to mix things up with some distance running, some strength training, and some Tai-chi2. Scoring Criteria: Starting in Q2, it counts if it’s at least 10min of intense exercise. So regular walking wouldn’t count, but most other things would. Good if >150x, Meh if 75-150x, Ugly if <75x.
  2. Get pull-up bar setup, and get to the point where I can do multiple proper pull-ups sequentially: My family got me a wall-anchored pull-up bar station for Christmas that I want to setup and use. Back in 2020 I got to the point where I could do 1-2 chin-ups, but I want to get to the point where I can do a proper pull-up, starting from a hanging position, without cheating. Scoring Criteria: by the end of the year, how many proper pull-ups can I do in a row. Good if >5x, Meh if 1-5x, Ugly if none3.

Intellectual Goals:

  1. Get back into a cadence of regular substantive blog posts: Between this blog (focused on personal stuff, politics, religion, and recipes), Selenian Boondocks (my blog where I post along with a few friends about general space, technology, policy, family updates, etc.), and my Starbright Engineering blog (where I post professional think-pieces about satellite servicing technology, policy, and business), I have a lot of blogs, but have been very inconsistent about writing. Running a bootstrapped space startup for a decade, where so much of my time was tied up in creative technical writing, it didn’t leave much time or juice for blogging. Now that my boys are starting to grow up and head out on their own, and now that I’m currently not running a startup, I have a bit more time to think. So I wanted to see if I could get back into creating long-form, thoughtful content, rather than just shooting my mouth off on Twitter4, which is more content consumption than content creation. Scoring Criteria: What counts as a substantive blog post is somewhat subjective, but examples of things would count include: explaining new concepts, writing persuasive arguments, posting recipes, etc. If it’s just a blog post with links to stuff I’ve written recently on my other blogs, or something more administrative, or two quick of a quick take, I probably won’t count it. Good if >18x posts this year, Meh if 9-18x, Ugly if < 9 blog posts5.
  2. Read books on a regular basis: I did reasonably well with this last year, and wanted to double down on this, especially as I try to be better with preparing for sleep most nights. This includes both fiction and non-fiction. Scoring Criteria: number of books completed this year. Good if >36x, Meh if 18-36x, Ugly if < 18 books6.
  3. Finish setting-up and learning how to use my maker and cooking tools: I like to buy gizmos, especially 3d printers and cooking tools. But a lot of the time I buy them then never learn how to use them. Or at least take a long, long time. So I’m setting a goal to setup and use the ones I haven’t figured out yet (currently including my belt-fed 3d printer, my resin printer, my Snapmaker’s CNC router fourth axis, the reinforcement kit for my Snapmaker, the bamboo bun/dumpling steamer, and the ice cream maker that was my first time getting scammed on Kickstarter7). Scoring Criteria: how many I setup and learn how to use well enough to make something with. Good if >3 tools, Meh if 1-2 tools, and Ugly if none.
  4. Learn how to use AI Tools (Claud, ChatGPT, etc.) to do useful work-related tasks: I’ve been fairly slow at adapting AI to help with work and creative tasks. I still prefer doing the creative writing, but there are plenty of things that I could use AI for such as: skimming an RFP to create a draft compliance matrix, reviewing a proposal against requirements and selection criteria, creating orbital dynamics simulation and visualization tools (vs doing stuff in Excel), creating useful illustrations, filling in drafts of boilerplate sections in proposals, etc. Scoring Criteria: number of useful work-related tasks that I successfully learn how to do using AI. Good if >3 tasks, Meh if 1-3 tasks, Ugly if no tasks.

Anyhow, that’s a long list. It’s almost certain that I won’t be able to accomplish all of my goals at the “Good” level, but I decided that this year, I’d rather have a few Goods, many Mehs, and hopefully not too many Uglies, than having a smaller list of goals. We’ll see in January how that turned out for me.

  1. And when it comes to areas for self-improvement, I’m what military folks might like to call a “target rich environment”… ↩︎
  2. I hear that Tai-Chi can be good for flexibility, and strengthening your joints, while also having some benefits similar to strength training. I’m not hippy enough to truly enjoy all of the eastern philosophy that comes along with the Tai-Chi youtube videos I’ve been using, but the exercises do seem to help, especially in the evening for wind-down before bed. ↩︎
  3. In this case, getting to even one proper pull-up is enough for me to count it as a Meh-level win. ↩︎
  4. Yes, I still refuse to call it X. You knew exactly what I meant. ↩︎
  5. It’s worth noting that at this point (10 Apr 2026), I think I’ve written at least four posts this year that count — A SB post about canceling Starliner and recompeting it for commercial crew, two SE posts about Fleet Maintenance satellite servicing, and my post here about ideas for new constitutional amendments. So I’m already halfway to Meh status, and have a fighting shot at getting to Good. ↩︎
  6. At the time of this writing (10 Apr 2026), I’m already at 11 books completed. Some of which were thick non-fiction books. I’ll probably do a writeup soon. But I’m well on the way to Meh, and Good is feasible. ↩︎
  7. Long story short, right after closing a large kickstarter for a compressor-style ice cream maker, they changed the design and some of the specs. Then they charged a suspiciously high shipping cost, that I initially thought was due to tariffs, but basically drove the cost of the machine up higher than what it would’ve cost to get an equivalent one on Amazon. Yes, I was dumb enough not to search to see if stuff like this already existed with others — I had never seen a home version compressor ice cream maker, so was dumb enough to think this was novel. When the hardware arrived, if you google searched for the part number on the user’s manual, it pulls up a design you could buy already from someone else on Alibaba. All of their pictures of their “factory” showed stuff like a bunch of the machines fully assembled on rows of workbenches with no tools, no parts, no sign of any real assembly. Just 100% fake. The machine does seem to work, just about half the speed that they advertised, and they didn’t send me the four additional mixing containers I ordered. I’ve backed a lot of things on Kickstarter, and this is the first time I’ve been scammed, and I at least got something out of it, so I count myself somewhat lucky. ↩︎

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January 8, 2026 · 7:44 PM

2025 Goals Accountability: The Return of the Good, the Meh, and the Ugly

As I did last year, I wanted to give an update on how I did on my various goals for the year. I’ve found that knowing I’m going to be giving a public accounting of my progress provides a little extra incentive to “lock in”.

As with last year, my thirteen goals were focused on four areas: spiritual, social, physical, and intellectual. This is based on my church’s Children and Youth goal-setting program, modeled after the New Testament scripture Luke 2:52:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

As with last year, I’m dividing the results of my thirteen goals into three categories:

  • The Good: Goals that I either completely achieved or came very close.
  • The Meh: Goals that I made some useful progress on but did not achieve.
  • The Ugly: Goals that I made little or not progress on.

The Good…

First off, starting with the goals I did well on:

  • Help Jonny head out on his mission successfully (2/13): At the time I was setting my goals for 2025, Jonny had already received his calling to serve as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, assigned to the California Los Angeles Mission. Jonny is our first one to head out on a mission, and some things have changed in the quarter century since Tiff and I served, so there was a little bit of a learning curve involved. Probably the biggest misadventure was that we didn’t realize Jonny needed his wisdom teeth removed until about a month before his February mission start date. The earliest we were able to schedule him for the wisdom tooth removal was a few days into his one week of “Home MTC” (some initial missionary training and orientation they now do from home via Zoom before they fly out to one of the actual Missionary Training Centers). By the time he was supposed to fly out, he was still recovering, so they gave us an extra few days to get there, but in the end I ended up renting a car and driving him out to Provo, UT. We got to drive through a blizzard between Park City and Provo, and Jonny misunderstood the eating instructions so ended up getting very green about the gills, but we were able to get him there by the deadline. He’s now been out in L.A. for almost a year, and has served in the San Fernando Valley, as well as down near LAX. Going into 2026, Jamie has submitted his mission papers, and we’re expecting him to receive his call sometime later this month, so I’ll likely have a similar goal for Jamie this year.
Jonny with his missionary name tags
Wisdom tooth removal complete — good riddance to “Sebastian the Sideways1“
My last time seeing Elder Goff in person until Feb 2027
I just had to also include this picture from a few months into Elder Goff’s mission
  • Help Jamie get his mission papers submitted (12/21): Speaking of which, Tiff and I were able to help Jamie complete submitting his mission papers. Because they went in the Sunday before Christmas, we’re not expecting a call until sometime this month. But this time around, Jamie got his wisdom teeth removed before submitting his papers.2
  • Have a meal with church members, neighbors, or other friends at least 2x per month: I set this goal to force myself to be more consciously social, since I’m a bit of an introvert, and did really well. Overall I recorded at least 41 different meals with church members, neighbors, relatives, or other friends, and I’m sure there were plenty I didn’t count. Some highlights included an Altius Alumni BBQ I held in October for former colleagues, dinners with at least half a dozen families in our new ward that we didn’t previously know very well, cooking Filipino food with the Stokes, and making Colada Morada3 for the Christmas Music Night the Greys held.
Eli Kopp-Devol’s band gave us a live performance at the Altius Alumni BBQ in October. We don’t usually have live music at our meals, but these guys were pretty amazing.
  • Finish Pimsleur’s Latin American Spanish Levels 4 and 5 (2/8 and 12/344): I’ve already been to a Spanish speaking country in 2024, but I hadn’t yet finished the last two levels of Pimsleur Spanish. I got the first level done early in the year, but the later one took until right at the end of the year. I technically finished it a few days into the new year, but it was close enough I’m going to count it as a success. I found out that my company is going to have me represent them at a conference in Spain in February, so hopefully I’m a little more confident in my Spanish than I was when I went to Panama and Ecuador last year. That said, the version of Spanish they speak in Spain is slightly different from the Latin American version, so I may try to do some of the Castilian Spanish lessons that Pimsleur also has before that.
  • Read at least 2 books per quarter: I finished reading 10 books last year: A City on Mars5, Saints Volume 4, and Books 1-8 of Prelude to Glory (an excellent American Revolutionary War historical fiction series)6. I read a few of those (Saints Vol 4, and Books 1-3 of Prelude to Glory) out loud to my family. We started the Prelude to Glory series right after someone mentioned that we were at the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. I remembered we had this historical fiction series about the Revolutionary War, so decided to try it out. We were hooked, and about 4000pgs later, I’m just about to start the final book. It was particularly fun finishing reading the story of the Battle of Princeton to my family literally on the 249th anniversary of that battle.
  • Do at least 15min of medium intensity exercise (jogging, body-weight exercises, dumbells, or weights) at leas 2/3 of the days in the year: By my records I had at least 206 days of exercise I had notes for, though some weeks when we had campouts or trips, so my notes kind of fell apart, so I probably missed recording a few days. When I set the goal, I should’ve specified 2/3 of the non-Sunday days in the year, because as a rule I almost never exercise on Sundays. If you take 206 days as a percentage of the whole year including Sundays, it’s only 56%, but if you take it as a percentage of the year excluding Sundays it’s 66%. I’m going to count this one as Good though because I’m at the line by one count, and while I’m short of the goal by another count, I made a solid effort throughout the year, and came reasonably close to the goal.
  • Attend the temple at least one time per month: I actually came fairly close to completing this one, with eleven temple trips over the year, though we ended up not going in December due to schedule challenges, and at least some months I missed and then did a visit early the next month. Still a work in progress, and something I want to improve on, but I think I did a lot better than most years.

…The Meh…

Ok, some goals I made serious progress on, but didn’t get very close to completing:

  • Get into the habit of nightly prayers with Tiff: I did start doing better at this later in the year, but being a night owl, there were many nights where I didn’t even make it up to bed until after Tiff was asleep. I also wasn’t very reliable at doing this while traveling, etc. In December I think we started getting to over 75% of the time though, but overall I’d guess we were probably less than 25%. So some progress, but not close enough to count under “the Good”.
  • Write in my journal at least 1x per week: I only managed 19 entries this year, and eight of those were either Stake Conference or General Conference notes, and one was notes from a work meeting. If you subtract that out, it was only about one entry per month on average. Not great, and definitely well short of 1x per week. That said, by having the goal, it definitely drove me to write more often. Most of my entries ended up being on plane trips for work or family. Since I can’t have my laptop out during takeoffs and landings, but I can have my journal out, it’s a convenient time to write, and many of those times, I’d write 2-3 pages. I think one thing that may help this year is the shift in when our ward meets for church. Last year, we met at noon, which encourage sleeping in in the mornings, and then our afternoons and evenings were usually pretty full with church meetings, family time, calling home, so that I almost never had time to write in my journal. This year our ward meets at 10:30am, so I think it may be easier to bake in a consistent time that usually works for a journal update.
  • Setup and learn how to use the resin printer, belt fed printer, Snapmaker rotary 4th axis, and Snapmaker Dual Print head (12/8): I count this one as partially successful. I did get the dual print head working this year, in time to design and print two sets of ornaments — a temple ornament for a friend from my old ward, and a faux-stained-glass nativity ornament for Christmas. If I want to do such faux stained-glass ornaments next year, I think I can get it setup and running fairly quickly. There’s still some work if I want to print things with water soluble supports, etc. But I have the general modeling, slicing, printing, and calibration steps all sorted out. As for the Anycubic Photon Mono 4K resin printer, I did manage to get it and the cleaning station setup, including building out a printer box area with fume hood setup, and ventilation ducting routed to the outside so I wouldn’t be breathing in too many toxic fumes, but was never able to successfully make it through calibration steps. I’ve done some slicing work, and did print one predesigned/presliced model, but I definitely don’t have it ready for general use yet. For the IdeaFormer IR3V2 belt fed printer, I was able to get it partially assembled, but never finished putting it inside its tent, or setting up the roller conveyor supports, and never even tried running it. And I didn’t even bother touching the Snapmaker rotary 4th axis this year… So I definitely still have some work to go before Tiff will allow me to buy another 3d printer. Even if a Snapmaker U1’s four print heads would allow me to do a faux-stained-glass ornament using all three primary colors and the frame material… A guy can dream, can’t he?
My resin printer setup with the Anycubic Photon Mono 4K printer on the left, the Wash and Cure station in the middle, and an ultrasonic cleaner on the right. Mounted inside a hydroponic grow tent as an enclosure, with a laser cut acrylic two piece top and front fume hood closeout. The vent fan in the top center ducts out the back, ties in with the outlet of the vent duct from the Snapmaker, and then routes out the side of the house. All told a pretty decent setup, but as I said, I’m still struggling with the calibration steps — both getting the build plate sufficiently level, and dialing in the base and transition layers to adequately support the prints and provide the right balance of precision and strength.
The temple ornament I made for a friend from my old ward. Printed with a transparent blue PLA filament and a marble-like PLA filament
I’m really happy with how my faux-stained-glass nativity ornaments turned out. I based it on a laser-cut ornament design I bought off of Etsy, and controlled the blue hue by varying the number of blue layers printed. My mom is a real stained-glass artist, and really loved it.

…and the Ugly

There are a few goals that I think I did particularly poorly with this year. I figure if you don’t miss on at least some goals, you’re likely either not pushing yourself hard enough, or not picking enough goals… but that’s probably at least a little bit of “cope” on my part. Without further ado, here were the goals I didn’t make much if any progress on:

  • Get back and stay below 180lb through the end of 2025: I at least tried somewhat on this. I think at my best, in late September I was getting down to just over 180lb. Then I got really sick for several weeks, then holidays, and in the end, I ended up almost exactly where I started at the end of the year last year — 187lb. Not gaining weight is a good thing, but I never locked-in consistently enough to actually make it happen. I’m still ~30lb down from where I was before I started trying to lose weight in 2020, but have regained about 15lb from my low point of 172lb… I guess middling efforts produce middling results.
  • Start Pimsleur German and finish at least Level 1 and Level 2 including exercises: I didn’t even start this one. Partially because I hadn’t finished Spanish till right at the end of the year, partially because I was having second thoughts on what I should do next language-wise. At this point, I’m not sure whether I want to do Castilian Spanish first, go on to German, or join my youngest two boys in studying Japanese.
  • Develop a family budget that closes and stick to it: This one is probably the most embarrassing, because it’s literally been on my weekly todo-list all year long, and we got nowhere with it. Selling Altius allowed me to pay off my debts (mostly from subsidizing Altius), and allowed us to put a downpayment on a house, and provide some savings, but we’ve slowly been burning through those savings. With us being a single-income family with four kids, this is definitely something we’ll need to work on more seriously this year.

That completes my 2025 goals accountability. Overall I’m pretty happy with how things turned out. Some of the items were ones that likely would’ve happened anyway without setting the goal (like getting Jonny out on the mission, or helping Jamie get his mission papers in), but in many cases the goals helped encourage me to try harder in several areas I cared about. I still need to think through my goals for 2026, but overall I’m pretty happy with a lot of things I achieved this past year.

  1. In true Goff fashion, he and his brothers came up with silly names for all four of his wisdom teeth that needed to be removed. Sebastian the Sideways was the one that was coming in rotated 90 degrees into the tooth in front of it… ↩︎
  2. His bishop ended up being the dentist he used for the missionary dental exam, so he insisted that we take care of that before submitting. It’s almost like he knows us or something… ↩︎
  3. I super yummy Ecuadorian hot spiced berry drink. Think like a mix of spiced apple cider but with a berry/pineapple base. I’m still iterating on the recipe a bit, but will definitely write it up on here once I have it dialed in further. The drink is usually used for El Día de los Muertos, but warm spiced fruit drinks kind of say “Christmas” to me. ↩︎
  4. 12/34/2025 = 1/3/2026. There’s an old story about a pair of companies that were trying to close a sale in a certain calendar reason for various purposes. The paperwork took a little longer than hoped for, and the sale slipped into New Year’s. So the dated the transaction as signed December 32nd. If it works for them, it works for me. ↩︎
  5. I don’t think I did a review of the book — the short version is that I like the Weinersmiths, am glad they put in the effort to write an interesting and entertaining book on space settlement, and agree with some of their points (like the importance of getting data on human health in hypogravity), but respectfully disagree with some of their worldview and conclusions. ↩︎
  6. Technically I finished book 8 on “12/37” or 1/6/2026, but I finished most of it before the end of the year. ↩︎

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January 7, 2025 · 8:31 PM

2024 Goals Accountability: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly

Now that we’re into January, I wanted to do a write-up of how I did on my goals from last year, as an exercise in personal accountability. As you’ll see, I did well in some areas and poorly in others. To me, a good goal is one that gets you to change for the better, even if you don’t knock it out of the park.

The Good…

Of the ten goals I set for the year (nine that I set initially, and one I added part way through), I was able to achieve four of them all or most of the way. I’ll once again start with those…

  • Return to the Philippines to Participate in the Philppines Urdanetta Temple dedication (4/28): The first goal we achieved was actually the first one on my list for the year. After serving a mission in the Philippines in 2000-2002, I had never been in a financial position to make a return visit until very recently. About 14yrs ago, my church announced that they were building a temple in Urdaneta, a town just two town only a few miles from two of the areas where I spent almost half of my mission (Calasiao and Binmaley). I decided that I wanted to try and be in a position to return to the Philippines to be there for the dedication. When they finally announced the dedication date last year, I set the goal to go there with Tiffany. I’m really glad we went. It was a beautiful experience seeing so many old friends, and seeing places I hadn’t seen in decades. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you can find more pictures and stories from that week near the end of April. We also got the chance to visit Taipei on our way home from the Philippines. Hopefully I can make it back to the Philippines again in the coming years, and maybe bring some of my boys along for the adventure.
The Urdaneta Temple, the evening after its dedication (April 28th)
  • Help Jonny get his mission papers submitted (5/21): My second goal that I completed was helping Jonny get his application submitted to serve a mission for our church. It took a while to finalize things, but he received his “mission call” from the church in the fall, and has been assigned to serve for two years in the Los Angeles California mission, starting in early February.
  • Help Peter and Jamie prepare for a 10K and run it with both of them (5/27 and 10/28): I had to adjust this goal a little bit. The original goal was to help them both prepare to run the Bolder Boulder 10K in May, but Jamie sprained his ankle in late March, and while he was out of a cast and walking before the race, we didn’t think it was wise to have him start training again right away. So Peter and I ran in May, with Peter beating his old time by nearly 15min (1:15:47), and I beat my old time by almost 10min (1:20:04). In the fall, we found a local Turkey Trot 10K, so we started training, and Jamie ran that 10K with me. That was Jamie’s first 10K, but he set the best time for the family (1:07:27), and I beat my old time by around 12min (1:07:48). Jonny and Peter also ran with us in the Turkey Trot, but they did the 5K loop. It took a lot of work, but I’m proud of my boys for persevering until they could accomplish something challenging.
Peter and me at the Bolder Boulder in May (left two), Jamie, Jonny, me, and Peter at the Broomfield Turkey Trot 5K/10K in November
  • Reread the Book of Mormon cover to cover, marking all scriptures referencing Christ in red (12/20): This one I ended up modifying a bit fairly early on. I was originally planning on also marking some other types of scriptures in blue, but decided to focus on just the references to Christ.

In addition to those official goals, I had two unofficial goals I accomplished worth mentioning:

  • Visit a Spanish-speaking country in Central or South America for a few days (11/1-11/7): This one was actually one of my goals from a previous year that I didn’t achieve then, but did successfully achieve this November. I’ve been teaching myself Spanish using Duolingo for almost a decade, and Pimsleur for a little over a year, but I wanted to go some place that would force me to actually use my Spanish language skills. I had a friend from Colorado who had take a job in Quito for two years, who had invited us to come down and visit him. After surviving the proposal silly season in October, we decided to take him up on the offer, and spent time in Panama on our way to and from Ecuador, and spent several days in Quito and the surrounding area. It was a wonderful adventure, and once again, I’m glad we did it. Between this and the Philippines trip in April, these were the only trips beyond the US and Canada that I had done since my mission in 2000-2002.
  • Climb a 15er (11/5): Jamie told me in September or October that he wanted to hike a 14er (a mountain with a summit over 14,000ft) that year. The problem is that that was way too late in the season to do that safely, so I figured we’d have to punt until next year. But when my friend we were visiting in Quito sent us a list of things to do in the area, one of them was a hike of Ruku Pichincha, a volcano that was on the edge of Quito, and whose summit was 15,400ft — higher than any mountain in the continental US. Reading the reviews, it actually sounded like it was probably one of the easiest 15ers in the world, with a cable car going up to the 13,000ft level, most of the hike just a steep trail hike, and only some scrambling in the last quarter mile. We decided to go, and ended up hiking the mountain on one of the clearest days in Quito that our friends remembered. We safely made it up and down, thanks to our friend’s help, and a Boost Oxygen cylinder. I couldn’t think of a better place to be on Election Day than on a 15000ft volcano in the Andes.
It was probably the hardest and scariest hike I’ve ever done, but we made it safely to the top and back, thanks to our friends, the Burnses.

…the Meh…

Ok, so not everything went according to plan. Three of my ten goals for the year were only partial successes:

  • Complete Levels 1-5 in Pimsleur Spanish Lessons: I started the year with Level 1 lessons completed, but not the exercises, and by the end of the year I had made it a little more than half way through Level 4 with both the lessons and exercises. The lessons are ~30min each, and consist of a pre-recorded conversation that you participate in, and the exercises are about 10-15min worth of different tasks like saying phrases, cue cards, matching exercises, and reading. Because the lessons themselves were purely verbal, it made it convenient to do them while driving or going on a walk or a jog, but the exercises require eyes and thumbs, so a lot of time I’d get ahead on the lessons and then have to take time catching up on the exercises. It helped that I’ve done enough Duolingo to understand a lot of the grammar and vocabulary, but these lessons helped me start getting more used to conversational Spanish. I didn’t finish in 2024, but hope to finish this up in 2025.
  • Invite neighbors, church friends, or friends over for dinner at least three times per quarter: I did ok with this, but didn’t hit it 100%, especially early in the year. If you don’t count feeding the missionaries, we only had one dinner with friends over in Q1 and one in Q2, but then ramped up to three in Q3, and four in Q4. One thing that helped was that half way through the year, the stake rearranged the boundaries of our ward (congregation), so half of the people were now people we didn’t know well, so we’ve been making a concerted effort to invite people over for dinners or desserts every few weeks. Even though we didn’t make it 100% on this one, I still think this was a successful goal, since it got me, even though I’m a total introvert, to reach out and invite people over on a regular basis.
  • Complete Level 1 and 2 of Pimsleur Tagalog before the Philippines Trip: This wasn’t on my original goal list, but I realized in January or February that I really needed to brush up on my Tagalog before my trip, because I hadn’t used it regularly in two decades. Pimsleur only had two Levels for Tagalog, rather than five like they did for Spanish, but it was better than Duolingo, which basically has nothing for Tagalog. I didn’t do the exercises, just the lessons, and only made it through one Level worth of lessons before the trip, but getting through one still helped a lot. Coincidentally, doing this is probably part of why I wasn’t able to finish the Spanish Pimsleur levels, since I paused working on the Spanish while I was doing Tagalog. But still definitely worthwhile, even if not fully successful.

…and the Ugly

As with last year, I also had three goals that I did not complete, and only made modest progress on:

  • Get my weight under 175lb before my birthday: This was my first time setting a weight-loss specific goal, and I only made it about halfway from 185 down to 175 by my birthday. I tried extending the deadline to the end of the year, but never managed to get back down below 177lb at my lightest. By the end of the year I was back around where I started (~185lb). That said, while I didn’t succeed in losing a lot of weight, I think trying to lose weight likely helped me avoid gaining more weight.
  • Learn how to use my Snapmaker 2.0’s rotary 4th axis, 40W laser, and dual print head, and design and make at least two items using each process: I bought the Snapmaker, and a lot of upgrades in late 2023, and used a bunch of them for some consulting work in November/December 2023, but hadn’t had a chance to really learn how to use a lot of the tools. I had a chance to dabble with the 40W laser and dual print head, but not really figure them out. In the end, I only really managed to make time for the 40W laser in late November and December, and only for wood, not also for metal color engraving like I wanted to learn how to do. But I was able to make some two-layer maple/walnut temple ornaments for my Filipino friends (using a design my sister Julia helped me with), and we also made a rather cool Guinea Pig warrior pencil holder for Jamie. I still want to learn how to use the laser for colored laser engraving on stainless, and I haven’t even tried unboxing my 4th axis, so I think I may re-up this one for next year.
I didn’t achieve most of what I wanted with this goal, but did manage to make some cooler wood projects this year using the 40W laser
  • Help teach each one of my boys one or two skills they want to learn: One of the things I did this year was arrange my work schedule so I could take extra time during the day on some weekdays to do homeschool activities with the boys. My original plan was to help each of them learn some sort of skill they wanted to learn, but the only one who was consistent at it was Peter, who I setup with some tutorials to learn how to use the Fusion 360 CAD program. He did make it all the way through the lessons, and even used it to design a medallion to 3d print for his choir director. So I’d count that as a success, but the others it was off and on if we even did anything formally on skills each week. I did cook some stuff with Jamie, and read some stories with Pip, but not as much as I had originally intended. I think next time, if I set a goal like this, it’ll be for a specific skill that they specifically asked me for help on.

Anyhow, that’s the reckoning for 2024 goals. Even for the goals that I wasn’t very successful on, I still think they were useful goals to have. I’m going to have to put a bit more thought into what I want to do for 2025. But remember, even if you don’t get 100% in a goal, if it gets you to be intentional about improving something you wanted to improve, it’s still worthwhile.

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Filed under Goal: Learning Spanish, Goals, Goff Family, Personal History

January 13, 2024 · 1:36 PM

My 2024 Goals

Continuing another tradition, I’d like to post my 2024 goals, as a way to force some level of accountability. This year I didn’t set as many goals, and many of my goals are actually tied with helping others achieve their goals.

Spiritual Goals

I’ve had some success with spiritual goals that were very routine-based, like reading the scriptures cover to cover or going to the temple on a regular basis. They’ve been helpful, but I wanted to make things more meaningful this year.

  1. Return to the Philippines to participate in the Urdaneta Philippines Temple dedication: 14 years ago, the prophet announced they’d be building a temple within ~25 miles of three of the towns where I served in for half of my mission (Bayambang, Calasiao, and Binmaley). They finished construction late last year, and after a three week open-house period, they’ll be dedicating the temple on April 28th. I haven’t been able to make it back to the Philippines yet since returning home in 2002, and I’d love to go back and visit friends I haven’t seen in person for two decades. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to coordinate getting permission to participate in the dedication, but I think it’s an achievable and very worthwhile goal.
  2. Participate in gospel study daily, using the church’s Come Follow Me curriculum, marking all BofM passages that point to or testify of Christ, and all that discuss gospel principles or doctrines: This one is fairly specific, but is driven from something I noticed from the past two years. My goals of reading the books of scripture cover to cover ensured I was reading regularly, but I was almost never synced up with reading what my family was studying at home, my boys studying in seminary, and our ward studying at church. So this year, I want to stick to the church’s Come Follow Me curriculum, which is focused on the Book of Mormon this year, rather than just trying to read through at a steady pace. Also the marking of scriptures based on specific topics seemed like a way I’ve heard other people have gotten more out of study, so I wanted to try it.
  3. Help Jonny get his mission papers submitted: Getting his mission papers submitted this year was one of Jonny’s personal goals, and I wanted to assist him in doing so. He’s now about the age I was when I served, and he’s pretty excited about the opportunity.

Social Goals

I haven’t been as successful with my social goals, but I’m going to try again. Once again with things that are easily trackable, require consistent effort, and should be meaningful.

  1. Complete levels 1-5 in Pimsleur Spanish lessons: I was thinking about retrying my 2023 goal of visiting somewhere Spanish speaking for a weekend, but I thought this goal would also help ensure I get more comfortable speaking the language. The Pimsleur curriculum is primarily focused on guided conversation practice, and completing levels 1-5 (with ~30x 30min lessons per level) works out to ~75 hours of Spanish conversation, and will require me to complete at least ~3 lessons per week, so I’ll be doing the study pretty consistently. This goal seems both achievable, something somewhat challenging because it’ll take consistent effort over months, but also likely to make a difference in my confidence with the language. I’ll probably keep doing Duolingo study too, because that app is as addictive as crack, but may cut back a little on trying to stay at the top of the leaderboards.
  2. Invite neighbors, church friends, or other friends over for dinner at least 3x per quarter: This is similar to a goal I’ve had in the past, but with a little more increased frequency, and a slightly broader casting of the net. I’m also going to take better notes so I don’t lose track. To be clear, while I say dinner, it could be other meals, a party or other get-together, but something that we’re hosting at our place. I think this is a good way to get me out of my introverted little shell more often.

Physical Goals

Physical goals are ironically some of the ones I’ve had the most success with so far. This year’s goals are ones that will take consistent effort, but which I’m highly confident I can achieve. Since I may be done with both of these earlier in the year, I might decide to add a follow-on goal later.

  1. Help James and Peter prepare for the Bolder Boulder 10K and run it with both of them: Both Peter and Jamie set goals to run the Bolder Boulder 10K this year. Peter ran with me last year, and after the 9.5km point when I told him he could go ahead at his own pace, he left me in the dust. In spite of only joining me for one practice run. So I’m pretty confident he’ll do fine, but this year, I’m trying to help him train enough, and have things like a way of carrying his phone, so I can let him just run at his own pace, and really show us what he can do. Jamie just wants to be able to run the whole thing without stopping to walk, so I’m going to run with him at a nice steady pace. I’m not trying to set any new speed records, unless Jamie is up for it. Just maintaining the capability for myself, and helping them prove to themselves that they can do hard things too.
  2. Get back under 175lb by my birthday: I’ve never set an explicit weight loss goal before. In 2020, I just set the goal to use the Noom app for six months, and see where it got me. In the end, I got down to just under 170lb. Over the past three years, I’ve inched up a little, with my worst weigh-in after Christmas being up around 186lb. I know I can get back to 175lb without trying that hard, so long as I’m consistent, and it would help a lot of other things. Basically, I just have to try a little. And if I’m steadily exercising and prepping the boys for the Bolder Boulder, I have a feeling I’ll likely surpass this one by a decent margin. So while this is an easy one, it’s still worthwhile and meaningful.

Intellectual Goals

I decided to stop trying to set a blogging goal. I’ll either have time to rejuvenate that skill, or I won’t. I decided to focus my efforts a little differently this time.

  1. Learn how to use my Snapmaker 2.0’s rotary 4th axis, 40W laser, and dual-print head, and design and make at least two items using each process: as I mentioned elsewhere, I upgraded my Snapmaker Original to a 2.0 this last fall, right before I got laid off. During the two months I was freelance, I had a chance to start using the module, and made some parts using each of the three basic capabilities — single-nozzle FDM 3d printing, 10W laser cutting, and CNC routing. But I have a lot of other upgrades that I’ve either not tried at all, not figured out all the way, or barely started scratching the surface with them. I’m especially interested in seeing if I can figure out how to do color metal marking of Stainless with my 40W laser, and dual printing of a graphite or glass reinforced nylon with dissolveable support structures using the dual print head.
  2. Help teach each of my boys one or two skills that they want to learn: With my youngest three still in home school, and Jonny preparing for his mission, I wanted to work with each of them on one or two skills that they wanted to learn — either one I’m already good at, or one I’m learning with them.

Anyhow those are my goals for 2024. Do you have anything you want to try to achieve this year?

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Filed under Goal: Learning Spanish, Goals, Philippines, Uncategorized

January 12, 2024 · 11:01 PM

2023 Goals Accountability: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly

Following my tradition from last year, I wanted to share how I did with the 14 goals I set for myself. I had some success, some of which were very fun, some partial successes, and some goals I completely failed at.

The Good…

I had five goals that I succeeded at all the way:

  1. Physical Goal #1: Get to the point where I can jog a 10K: This was the first goal I completed, when Peter and I ran the Bolder Boulder on Memorial Day (5/29) last year. About a month earlier, I was starting to warm up, planning on doing the 10K at the end of the summer, when a friend who knew about my goal had asked me if I had ever run the Bolder Boulder. That race was only barely over a month later, and I wasn’t certain if I could get ready in time. But one of our investors at Gravitics had gone from being in shape for a 5K to running a marathon in only a month, so I figured getting ready for a 10K might be possible. I got a heart rate monitor watch so I could do the aerobic threshold running that a friend had told me would help me build my endurance the best, and then started running almost every day. In the end we did it, running the race non-stop. My time wasn’t amazing, right around 1hr 30min, but that was me running non-stop for 1hr and 30min! Anyhow, given that three years ago, I couldn’t make it a quarter way around a track without wheezing, I’m pretty proud of this one.
  2. Spiritual Goal #3: Attend the temple with Tiff at least once per quarter and with the boys at least once per quarter: I finished this one in late October on 10/26/2023, shortly after getting laid off by Gravitics. We had managed to go somewhat consistently, but once I was laid off, I started going more frequently. All told, it was also a great experience.
  3. Intellectual Goal #1: Cook at least one new recipe per month, with at least on recipe this year from each of the six inhabited continents: This was probably the funnest goal. Some of the non-international recipes weren’t particularly memorable, but it was fun trying out cuisine from all over the world. I’ve posted some of the recipes here like the Indian Butter Chicken and Naan, the Peruvian Pollo a la Brasa and Aji Verde Sauce, but we also did Ratatouille and Honey Garlic pork chops from Europe, Tourtière (a French Canadian meat pie), a spicy Kenyan Chicken Jollof Rice dish, and finished up by doing an Aussie Burger, complete with roasted beet root, and a New Zealand Jelly Slice for dessert on 12/15/2023. This was one of my more unusual goals from last year, but I’m glad that I chose it.
  4. Intellectual Goal #3: Finish at least two significant crafts projects (making things that involve multiple components that weren’t a premade set from someone else): I actually didn’t think I was going to make it, having not really done anything for this goal at all through the first ten months of the year, but I actually had three cool craft projects that I wrapped up in November/December. The first one I can’t show many pictures of because it was for work. But right before I got laid off by Gravitics, I had completed a major proposal effort, so I rewarded myself by buying a Snapmaker 2.0 3-in-1 3D printer, with a lot of upgrade modules. When I got laid off, I thought at first that maybe I should return the printer, but when I realized I had paid for it on my credit card, and if I returned it, I’d only get back about 2/3rd the price, and then have to keep paying for the other 1/3 without ever having used the machine, I decided to keep it. A few weeks later, a friend of mine whose startup was moving asked me if I still had the printer. Apparently their printer was already packed up, and they had a short-fuse project for a client that needed parts designed and 3d printed. In the end, I ended up making almost as much off of that project as I would have from two months at Gravitics, and ended up designing, and printing 9 parts (3 from PLA, but most of them from Nylon), and machining about another four pieces from G10 fiberglass boards. It wasn’t perfect, especially since I hadn’t had a chance to really dial in my printing parameters before jumping into it. But the client was able to assemble the system, and run the tests they needed, and I got to learn a lot about my printer. The other two projects were Christmas presents, one a drawing board for Jamie (that included a riveted on clipboard clip), and one a water color palette for Tiff (that we bonded in about two dozen metal water color pans). We finished this one on 12/23/2023.
  5. Spiritual Goal #1: Read the New Testament and Book of Mormon cover to cover: I finished this goal on 12/26/2023. This was probably my fourth time all the way through the New Testament, and probably my 34th or 35th time through the Book of Mormon in English.

Those were all the goals that I completed all the way. Many were fun adventures, others just the result of trying to be consistent. Now on to my partial successes…

…The Meh…

I had another six goals that I at least made headway on.

  1. Physical Goal #2: Finish getting my 5K race time down under 30min: Of my partial successes, this one was the one I came closest to achieving. In the fall, after we got back from summer vacation, I started training again for doing a 5K over Thanksgiving, using a training routine from my Polar Pacer heart-rate monitor watch. I figured that two months would give me enough time to get ready, and we decided to sign up for a race out in Springfield, OR again (the same place I ran my first real 5K race two or three years ago). In the end, I set a personal record, but missed my target with a time of 30min 26s. Given that any further 5Ks I ran would be at much higher altitude, and that the weather was rapidly shifting to winter, I realized I likely wouldn’t be able to get this goal completed this year. But I at least came pretty darned close. And a personal record is still a personal record.
  2. Social Goal #3: Invite neighbors or church friends over for dinner at least 2x per quarter: I didn’t keep good track of how often I had done this, so I don’t know for sure how well I did, but I think we only had people over maybe 5 or 6 times this year. Still likely better than if I hadn’t set the goal, so worth celebrating as a partial.
  3. Social Goal #1: Take Tiff on meaningful dates at least 1x/month: We had some good dates/activities this year, including a 20th anniversary trip to Hawaii in August. But once again, I didn’t keep close track of this goal, and am pretty sure I probably only had about 8-9 of the months where we went on at least one date, and I’m not sure if all of them were particularly meaningful.
  4. Family/Home Goal #1: Do at least two home or yard improvement mini-projects per month: I did do a lot of mini projects over the year, but probably nowhere close to 24 of them. And I didn’t keep close track of it. But some of the things we got done included setting up new shelves in the garage and basement, getting a food storage area setup downstairs, fixing two of our sofa chairs whose legs had broken, cutting down the brush around our back patio, weedwacking the 6ft tall weeds in our back yard, repairing my broken desk, and building out my home office. Not perfect, but there were definitely some wins in there.
  5. Physical Goal #3: Finish getting to the point where I can do all five Home Fitness bodyweight exercise sets at full reps, without having to take extra breaks in the middle: In 2022, I got a bodyweight exercise app that I started in on. By the start of 2023 I was just transitioning into doing the hardest of the three levels — Advanced, for all five types of exercise (Abs, Chest, Arms, Legs, and Shoulder/Back), but at around 1/2 of the reps they suggested per exercise. By the time I switched my focus in April to 10K training, I had gotten the Legs and Chest exercises to full reps, but with lots of breaks. I never really got back into this consistently enough to pick this up, and after the 5K, one of my shoulders was hurting in a way that I wasn’t sure doing a bunch of pushups was safe. So while I made some progress on this at the start of the year, I never finished this one all the way.
  6. Spiritual Goal #2: Do something meaningful for each ministering family at least 1x per quarter: I started off ok with this, but it tapered towards the end of the year, especially with how busy stuff got over the summer, lots of trips, then getting laid off. I don’t have great excuses on this one. I did some ministering, but only felt like I did much for one of the families.

At least in this case I made some effort towards achieving the goals, even if I didn’t succeed all the way. Without further ado, on to the last category, where I couldn’t even say that.

…The Ugly

I had three goals in this category, where I really feel like I didn’t make any real headway on them.

  1. Social Goal #1: Visit somewhere in Central or South America for at least a weekend, where I will have to speak Spanish: I’ve been teaching myself Spanish for about 8yrs now using Duolingo, and in 2022 I finished reading El Libro de Mormon in Spanish, cover to cover. But I still didn’t speak Spanish very well, so I wanted a goal to force me to learn how to speak Spanish. While I did do some work on Spanish speaking with a new app that was better optimized for teaching you to speak (Pimsleur), I never got far enough that I felt I could make the trip. I had been intending to visit a friend down in Equator for a weekend, but between my lack of preparation, and Tiff getting congestive heart failure, I decided to punt on this goal for this year.
  2. Family/Home Goal #2: Finish reading at least one book each on parenting for autistic and NLD kids: I did read like 2 or 3 chapters of NLD Super Stars, but that was about it.
  3. Intellectual Goal #2: Wrote at least two substantive (technology, policy, etc) blog posts series of at least three posts long each: I’m kind of embarrassed by this one. I used to be pretty prolific with Selenian Boondocks. But while I did write a few recipe blogs, and I think one opinion blog post, I don’t think I wrote a single substantive blog post last year. This is two years in a row that I’ve completely failed to resuscitate my blogging mojo.

Anyhow, that’s my report for 2023. Next up, tomorrow I hope to do a writeup on my 2024 goals, what I changed, and what I want to try that’s new. All told I’m still pretty happy at all of the full and partial successes, though some of the complete misses sting a little.

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Filed under Administrivia, Goal: International Recipes, Goal: Learning Spanish, Goals

January 9, 2023 · 11:31 PM

2023 Goals

Ok, after my previous post looking back at how I did on goals in 2022, I’ve created some updated goals for 2023, including rolling over a few from last year that were worth keeping. I added an extra category for house and family related goals.

Physical

  1. Get to the point where I can jog a 10K: I can jog a 5K, but getting to the point where I can do a 10K should help build endurance, and will require me pushing on improving my aerobic threshold, which frankly should help a lot of other health goals.
  2. Finish getting my 5k race time down under 30min: I made progress on this last year, but still have a bit to go. This one is synergistic with my first goal, since improving my aerobic threshold (which is almost certainly a must if I want to jog a 10K) should also help me speed up my 5K time.
  3. Finish getting to the point where I can do all five Home Fitness body weight exercise sets, on the Advanced level, at full reps, and without having to take extra breaks in the middle: I made good progress on the goal of getting to full reps last year (I was at 2/3s of full reps on all but one of the five categories), but still have to take a lot of extra or extended breaks. I think this is achievable, but also meaningful.

Intellectual

  1. Cook at least one new recipe per month, with at least one recipe this year from each of the six inhabited continents: I like cooking, and I like trying out new recipes. So, this should be a fun goal, that will hopefully force me to explore recipe areas I haven’t really thought of before. For the recipes I like, I may even post them here on Taong Boondocks.
  2. Write at least two substantiative (technology, policy, etc) blog post series of at least three posts long each: I’ve been struggling with my blogging goals for the past several years. I think that by putting it in the case of finishing two blog series, it will help improve my odds of getting things done. The first series I’m hoping to finish is my one on space environmental management policy, technology, and economics that I started on my Starbright Engineering blog.
  3. Finish at least two significant crafts projects (making things that involve multiple components, that weren’t a premade set from someone else): I have a fun Snapmaker Original 3-in-1 3d printer/laser cutter/CNC router setup, and it would be fun to actually use it to make something useful. Whether that’s something that can become a Christmas present, something cool to decorate my office, or something useful for the house, or even something work related, I’d like to get more experience working through hands-on projects.

Spiritual

  1. Read the New Testament (including Joseph Smith – Matthew) cover to cover: My church is studying the New Testament this year, and while I’ve read it cover to cover more than the Old Testament (at least two or three times), I figured this would be a good scripture study goal for the year. This will be less of a slog than finishing the Old Testament. It looks like 1pg per weekday plus 2 pages per weekend day should get me there. I’ll probably also try to do the Book of Mormon cover to cover again in parallel, like I did last year while I was reading the Old Testament.
  2. Do something meaningful for each ministering family at least once per quarter: I’m keeping this goal from last year. I did decently with it, but it’s also a good goal to work on improving over time.
  3. Attend the temple with Tiff at least once per quarter, and with the boys at least once per quarter: This one ties in with goals that Tiff and the boys set, so hopefully will be more self-reinforcing.

Social

  1. Visit somewhere in Central or South America for at least a weekend, where I will have to speak Spanish: I swapped this out last year for giving a talk in Spanish, but I wanted to put it back on my goal list for this year. I have two really promising opportunities — one I have a friend whose job is moving him to Quito, Ecuador for two years, starting this summer. Visiting him would be a lot of fun, and frankly Quito has always been a place I wanted to visit. The other option is the homeschool co-op my boys went to for several years would do service trips to a village in Guatemala every few years, I think there’s a chance 2023 was supposed to be their next trip. In both cases, by leveraging friends, it may make the logistics easier, and make it more likely I can do this, have fun, and stay safe in the process.
  2. Take Tiff on meaningful dates at least once per month: Renewing this goal from last year. It’s not super ambitious, but it’s a good thing to maintain or try to exceed.
  3. Invite neighbors or church friends over to dinner at least twice per quarter: My parents used to be really good at inviting friends over for dinner on a regular basis. With the pandemic and the move, we got out of the habit, but I’d like to get back into the habit. And would particularly like to use this as a way to build friendships with some of our neighbors and church friends.

Family/Home

  1. Do at least two home or yard improvement mini-projects per month: I’m defining mini-projects very loosely. This could be as simple as mounting some wall lamps or shelves, cutting down and tossing out the branches from one of the dead bushes in the back yard, mounting the whiteboard in my office, etc. Keep it simple, but try to make steady progress on making the house nicer./
  2. Finish reading at least one book each on parenting for two of my boys’ specific learning disorders: A few of my boys have some mild learning disorders. I got a few books last year to get advice on how to do a better job supporting them as a parent, and though I made a few chapters headway into one of them, I’d like to finish at least two of them this year. Doesn’t seem impossible, and should hopefully help us better navigate those challenges.

Anyhow, those are the goals. I try to review them semi-regularly, and may update some of them over time based on changing life situations. But I wanted to put those out there for accountability sake.

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December 31, 2022 · 4:00 PM

2022 Personal Goals Progress

Up until about two years ago, if you had asked me about how good I was at making and keeping goals, I would’ve said I was pretty lousy. Other than keeping my goal to practice Spanish on Duolingo daily, almost every other goal I set only lasted for a few weeks. Journal writing? One-again-off-again. Daily scripture study? A bit better, but only because I was ok with counting it if I only read a verse or two. Almost nothing else stuck.

Then, right before the pandemic hit, my church rolled out a goal setting program for the children and youth. It was based in part on a scripture from the New Testament about how Jesus improved as he grew to adulthood:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

Luke 2:52

The basic idea for the goal setting was to focus on four areas of personal progress: Intellectual, Physical, Spiritual, and Social. They’d encourage the youth to find things they wanted to work on in each of the categories, set goals, and then work on them, on their own, with their family, and with their youth groups. The pandemic hit right after the goal setting program was launched, but in 2021, they tried renewing interest in the program, and it gave me the idea that I ought to try it out.

So, just like we were encouraging the youth to do, I decided to set some goals in each of those four areas. I also decided to set goals that were longer term ones, like setting the goal to try Noom out for six months, or to see if I could get to the point where I could jog a mile by the end of the year. I realized that setting goals over a wider period of time allowed for some chance to catch up if life threw a curveball (like SBIR proposal silly season at work, or deciding to quit my day job and strike out as a consultant, or the whole family getting sick for several weeks, or deciding to move houses, etc.)

And for the first time in my life, I actually had some real success with my goals in 2021. I could look up the notes, but long-story short, I got into decent physical shape for the first time in my adult life, finished reading an almost 800pg book in Spanish, and also made progress in most of the other areas. I didn’t accomplish all of my goals, but I made enough progress that I decided to try it again in 2022. Without further ado, here were my 2022 goals in each of the four categories, and how I did with them.

2022 Physical Goals

  1. Be able to do each of the five advanced-level Home Workout app bodyweight exercise sets with full reps and proper form: At the start of the year, I had been using this bodyweight exercise app that works on abs, chest, arms, legs, and shoulder/back for about half a year, and was getting to the point where I could kind of do things at the basic level. By the end of the year, I hadn’t quite made it all the way to my goal, but was up to ~2/3 the reps for each exercise set at the advanced level. Though my form is sometimes crappy on some of the newer exercises. All told, I did 94 bodyweight exercise sessions this year. I didn’t meet my goal 100%, but I made pretty solid progress towards it, and frankly for exercise new year’s resolutions, I think I did pretty good.
  2. Run at least one 5K per month, and get down to <30min time: I also didn’t nail this one 100%, but also made really good progress. I think I did 5ks at least 9 out of the 12 months, and got my best time down to 32:10 at this year’s Thanksgiving race in Louisville. More importantly, I got the boys to do the same None-to-Run program I did in 2021, and all three of my teenagers were able to get to the point where they could jog a complete 5K. It took all summer and most of the fall, but getting to that point with all of my teenagers was really fulfilling. All told, I did 53 jogs this year, including 5Ks and none-to-run jogs with the boys, which worked up to 5Ks over several months. While I didn’t get my time down under 30min, like I wanted to, I did get some solid advice on how to do so, by working on increasing my aerobic threshold — which entails running for long distances while keeping my heart rate in the 130-140bpm range. I bought myself an Oura ring this year to help with heart rate monitoring (though I wish it would give you real-time feedback during the run instead of just a post-run heart-rate chart), though I ran out of time to start doing the aerobic threshold runs, and decided to refocus my efforts on my first body-weight exercises goal.
  3. Get to the point where I could do 5 chin-ups in a row: This one ended up being a lot easier than I had expected, and I think I achieved this in late January or early February. I think the max number I got to before I called it good was like 8 chin-ups in a row. For someone who had never been able to do a chin-up or pull-up as an adult before 2021, I felt that was pretty good.
Me and the boys after running the Louisville CO Turkey Trot 5K

To summarize, I only got one of my three physical goals all the way completed, but did really well on the other two, and made significant progress. I ended up doing jogging or a body weight exercise over 40% of the days this year. More importantly, I was able to help my boys also do better at getting regular exercise, and building their strength and endurance. I’m pretty happy with how I did in this category in 2022.

Spiritual Goals

  1. Read the full Old Testament plus the Book of Moses and Abraham from the Pearl of Great Price: My church for Sunday School and family gospel study rotates each year between the Old Testament/Pearl of Great Price, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants. In 2022, we were doing the Old Testament/Pearl of Great Price again, and I had only ever read the Old Testament all the way through once before, so I decided to try to read it through all the way this year. This isn’t the kind of goal you can just binge makeup at the end, but I’d check myself every few months to see how I was doing and if I needed to increase or decrease my reading rate. In the end, I finished the last page of the Old Testament this morning. All told that was 1226 pages. In parallel, a few days or weeks into the year, I decided I also wanted to read the Book of Mormon all the way through this year too, and finished that this morning as well. That’s another ~540pgs (including introductory pages).
  2. Always have a temple appointment scheduled, no more than 1 month out: Temple attendance is a big part of what we do as latter-day saints, and I had done only a so-so job of attending regularly in the past, so I set this goal. In the end, I did okish. I think we ended up going a total of 5 or 6 times this year. We sometimes had to reschedule when illness or other things got in the way, and I often had the “schedule next temple session” on my weekly to-do list for several weeks in a row before I actually got it done. I didn’t really come close to achieving this one, though I do think having the goal did probably make a significant increase in the number of times I was able to attend with Tiff and/or the boys.
  3. Do something meaningful for each ministering family at least once per quarter: My church assigns every family a pair of “ministering brothers” who are there to be their friends, to be someone they can count on to be there for them when life gets difficult, to encourage them, etc. Me and one of my sons, James, are assigned as a ministering companionship, and I’ve often been less than satisfied at how well I’ve done serving others. Hence this goal. I’m not sure I found meaningful things for every one of them every quarter, but having this goal definitely reminded me to try and be more involved. One of the brothers I had been ministering to had a horrific motorcycle accident this spring that he’s been slowly recovering from. He’s a fellow engineer, so we had the idea of tricking out his wheelchair with omnicasters, as a way to enable him to get around easier in cramped quarters in his house. In the end they didn’t work as well as we had hoped since a lot of his house was carpet, but we really enjoyed trying it out, even if that particular experiment wasn’t successful. I’d say that while I didn’t hit this 100%, I also felt like I did decently well, and it was a significant improvement over what I had managed in the past.
Pip and James helping install omnicasters on our friend’s wheelchair. They didn’t work on carpet, so we had to take them off, but he still appreciated the attempt.
James machining aluminum bushings on the Altius lathe to go inside the ominicasters. Calvin from Altius taught James how to do so safely. It was James’s first time using machine tools.

So, as with Physical Goals, there was only one that I completed 100%, but we had a good time working on the other goals.

Intellectual Goals

Ironically, this category was the one I probably did the poorest at.

  1. Read at least 3 books per quarter, with at least one parenting-related: I didn’t do very well at this. I started a lot of books, but didn’t actually finish many, other than some books on tape we listened to as a family during our summer road trips. We did listen to/read most of two parenting-related books though. One on a learning disorder one of our boys have, and another on different personality types.
  2. Write at least 2 substantive blog posts per quarter: I think I may have written 3 or 4 substantive blog posts this year between Selenian Boondocks, my new Starbright Engineering blog, and this one. I had a lot going on this year, with leaving Voyager, starting Starbright, and then joining Gravitics, but this is definitely an area I’m still doing poorly in relative to where I’d like to be.
  3. Develop and present a business plan/investment request: I also didn’t get this one done. At the time I set the goal, I was the VP of On-Orbit Servicing at Voyager, and I thought this would be me putting together a business plan/investment request to go after a satellite servicing product and/or service offering at the Voyager level. But I ended up leaving Voyager in May, and spent the summer chasing a promising startup idea. I figured that would be what I’d build the business plan on. But that idea required convincing a friend’s company to license some technology to apply it in a field that is outside of their main focus area, and I was unable to convince him. My old Altius cofounder Colin Doughan then recruited me for Gravitics, as a product strategy lead, and while I’ve been doing customer discovery and trying to build a story for some potential product/service offerings, what I’ve been working on is still a long way from a full business plan.

Anyhow, as I mentioned above, I don’t feel like I did really well at the goals I set in this category this year.

Social Goals

  1. Invite at least one friend, neighbor, or coworker per week to do something meaningful together: This one was inspired by a talk from one of my friends who is currently serving in the presidency for the Denver Colorado North Mission. He pointed out that a lot of us live more and more isolated lives, and that we need to be more active in inviting friends to do things. Whether it’s a catchup call or text conversation, doing lunch together, going on a walk, doing a double date, or whatever, just getting in the habit of inviting people to do things together can help us introverts get out of our comfort zone. On this one, I think I did okay. I don’t think I did something meaningful every week, but I did end up spend a lot more time deliberately making time to spend with others this year because of this goal.
  2. Original Goal: Spend at least 2 day sin a place where I have to speak Spanish. Updated Goal: give a talk in Spanish: I’ve been studying Spanish on Duolingo for about 8yrs now, and last year I finished reading El Libro de Mormon in Spanish. But I still really feel inadequate when it comes to speaking Spanish. So I wanted to set a goal to force myself to get good enough at speaking Spanish that I would get over that hump. In the fall though, an opportunity opened up where I could give a talk in Spanish to a Spanish Speaking congregation in our stake. It ended up being a really great experience. I had to write the talk out in English first, and then work through the translation, but when the other speaker that Sunday reviewed the talk for me (he was a native Spanish speaker whose parents were from Mexico), he said I did a really good job, and only had one or two tweaks to suggest. It was a neat feeling to realize that I’ve now had the chance to share the message of the gospel in four languages (English, Tagalog, Pangaletok, and now Spanish). I didn’t do my original goal, but I feel like the alternate I came up with was successful.
  3. Take Tiff out on meaningful dates at least 2x per month: Once again, this is one that I don’t think I hit every single month, but having the goal definitely did increase my efforts to find fun things to do. Sometimes they ended up turning into family activities (like going to see I Heard the Bells in the movie theater), but we also had a fun weekend getaway down to Albuquerque, and went to see My Fair Lady at the Beull theater down in Denver. Not to mention breakfast or dinner dates at some fun restaurants.

All told, I think I did ok in this category. I didn’t knock all of these out of the park, but was able to find a good substitute for my second goal, and having my other two goals definitely improved my social life versus not having them.

Parting Thoughts

I’m still learning how to be a goal setter/achiever, but I’ve really enjoyed this framework. Even if you’re not religious, I think you could adapt the “spiritual” goals in a way that was meaningful. And while only a few of the goals were ones that I completed 100%, I feel like this year was pretty successful overall on a goals front. With tomorrow starting 2023, I need to give some thoughts to new goals that build on what I’ve accomplished this year. But I wanted to give some accountability for how I did in 2022 first.

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