Did you know that the first New Year’s resolutions date back over 4,000 years ago to ancient Babylon? The Babylonians are said to have started the tradition during Akitu, a 12-day New Year celebration.
During the Akitu festival, the ancient Babylonians would plant crops, crown a new king (or pledge their loyalty to the reigning king), and make promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any borrowed items. They believed that if they kept their word, the gods would look favourably on them for the year ahead. If the Babylonians broke their promises, they would fall on the bad side of their gods...
New Year has come and it’s time to make resolutions. I like to keep this list short and feasible, as otherwise you’re set up for failure. After some time thinking about what goals I’d like to accomplish this year, I have ended with this two things:
- 💵 Get financial education
- The Simple Path to Wealth
- The Richest Man in Babylon
- The Millionaire Next Door
- Your Money or Your Life
- The 4-hour Work Week
I was recently reading some articles about investing and money management when I sadly realise how poor my financial education is and how terrible this is: 101 financial concepts should be mandatory for everybody to learn. so I’ve decided to improve on this since I’ve never put some time to learn about this topic.
Some books recommendations
- 📱 Improve my online presence
I’ve never really been a very good social media user, but this year, when I read “Show your work” I learnt how important is to work on my social media relationships in order to get orders to know me and my work, so I have some room for improvement here.
My main focus efforts will be put into this website (I’m planning some improvements and a few more sections), Instagram for the personal stuff, and Twitter and Github for the professional content.
- 💻 Improve my developer skills
Well, this is not a specific goal for this year, as it’s been a constant since I started. Being a developer is an awesome thing (and a tiring one too 😄) if you’re a curious person, as there’s always something new to learn or a project to do. Therefore, I’d like this year to keep exploring this beautiful path and improving my skills as developer along the way.
Staying at home during Christmas has gave me free time to think about how to materialise action plans for each of these goals. Remember: regardless resolutions accomplishment it is much better to plan ahead instead of relying on pure desire or willpower each day. Plot out a weekly or daily schedule, so you don’t have to think about it when the time comes, and just follow your plan. I’ve being doing so for the last couple days and I must admit I am pretty happy with the result. Now, I am only missing the most important part: the execution.