Evaluation of my 2024 goals

As always at the end of the year, I revisit my goals of the year and check how I did.

Here’s how I did on my 2024 goals:

Work goals

• Writing: Submit 6 journal papers (I outlined the topics for these): Yes, between submissions and resubmissions, we submitted 7 journal papers and 8 conference papers.
• Research: spend 5 weeks in Delft, analyze experiments, deliver phase 2 of fire project, progress on 3 work packages of EU project: I should have added there “write all the proposals”. Anyway, all the research activities on my list for the year are completed.
• Teaching: redesign MSc course around flipped classroom, supervise 2 BSc students, graduate 2 MSc students, graduate 2 PhD students: I ended up using flipped classroom and recordings for my MSc course, supervised a grand total of 0 BSc students (but had 1 HUC intern, 1 research student, 2 IAESTE students), and I graduated 1 PhD student.
• Service: get the journal ACI Avances into Scielo, work on committee documents, role as IABSE SEI vice-president, tasks with IABMAS, attend 6 conferences in person: Avances got rejected from Scielo, I moved a whole slew of committee documents forward, I am preparing for my turn as chair of the editorial board of SEI, I got more involved with IABMAS (including getting into the Executive Committee of the organization) and I went to TRB, LATAM-SEC, CBPE, IABMAS, IABSE, CNIS and CIMA.
• Admin: maintain inbox zero: Yes, although things sometimes clog up.
• Blog: increase podcast downloads, get speaking engagements: None of that happened.

Personal

• Average 8 hours of sleep per night: I’m averaging 7h13min this year, and I’ve been sleeping less in the past months – to the point that my Fitbit has assigned me a different sleep animal. Maybe I am getting older.
• Read 75 books: I’m sitting at 70 books at two weeks before the end of the year.
• Daily meditation: I did not manage to reinstall my meditation habit.
• Work out at least 4 times per week: Yes, I managed to fit in exercise in the morning, and I have been improving my lifts steadily. For the first time since 2016, I am improving my numbers.
• Find time for relaxation and rest: Not as much as I would have wanted.
• Organize our new house: The house is not new anymore, and neither is it organized.
• Take online courses: I took a lot of courses, and learned all kinds of interesting things.
• Go hiking once a month: Given the safety situation in the country, we had to be a bit more careful and did not go much out to hike.
• Spend 3 weekends outside the city: We did one, after all.
• Have a summer holiday as a family: Yes, we went to Denmark.

All in all, I think I did reasonably well on my goals – more so on the work front than in doing things for myself. Oh well, it is a busy season with building a career and a family, and I want to get all the juices out of it.

Did you set goals for yourself for 2024? How did you do?