Preamble

Last year, I made a bingo card to gamify my goals for the year. I felt that worked reasonably well to keep myself on top of my goals for the year and I intend to do the same thing for 2026. I've broken my goals into three categories: Mind, Body, and Soul.

Mind goals should focus on intellectualisms or willpower goals. Things like writing more, doing more development, or spending goals fit into this category. I've, for a long time, wanted to be a writer. I could probably consider myself one right now, but I don't have anything published a meaningful capacity. By getting some practice and putting my work out into the world, I feel like I'll be developing myself in a way that fits the idealized form of myself. Book reading falls into that, as well. I didn't meet my books read goal last year, but I did hit an 80% target, which I think was reasonable! This year I want to try to match last year's target.

Last year I had a very good "2 Software Projects" goal, which I did manage to achieve. This year, I want to focus that into game dev. I made a tool for game dev already, GDLlama, and I want to use that tool to build something cool. I've decided to assign two work weeks to game dev for the year, which actually doesn't seem like a lot so I should be able to reasonably hit it! Aside from that, I want to use short form content less, so that means abandoning twitter, and in line with that I'd like to use long-form content more, whether that means reading or writing. I like Substack for that goal.

Body is for the body -- all of my fitness goals fit in this category, as well as body modification goals; laser eyes, LASIK or SMILE, is something I have wanted since I was a teenager. Now it is within my grasp to actually achieve and I think I can make it happen. If I can't for some physiological reason, well, I can say I tried.

Soul is the most nebulous category and it mostly should be things that make me feel good. Things like meditating, going camping, trying new hobbies. These should be my friendship goals, as well. Including things like "send everyone a letter this year" sounds like fun!

Okay, preamble over. Let's just put the goals forward.

Goals

FREE: Learn Something

Mind

0. Write 3 short stories and submit at least 1 for publication
1. 80 Hours of Game Dev
2. 12 Books Read
3. Abandon Twitter/X
4. Use Substack more
5. 2 Blog Posts a Month (excluding January, which should have 4!)
6. Save $20k
7. 1 Month of No Excess Spending

Body

8. 30 Days of Stretching
9. 2 Triathlons
10. 225lbs Bench
11. 350lbs Deadlift
12. 10 Park Runs (5K runs)
13. Run 5km in under 23:00
14. Consistent 20kph+ Bikes
15. Laser Eyes

Soul

16. 3 Camping Trips
17. Show my love in a less boyish manner
18. Spend time learning for joy rather than for productivity
19. Write handwritten letters to all of my friends
20. Consistently achieve the 2nd Jhana
21. Carve a soapstone statue (it can be bad!)
22. Establish a wind-down ritual
23. Cut wake-up times down to less than 5 minutes