It’s been about a year since I started maintaining this website. I initially aimed to post progress updates quarterly, but that didn’t quite happen. Maybe I’ll do better this year—or maybe not. This past year taught me how often I take on tasks without considering if they truly add value to my life.
Still, I believe regular goal check-ins are important. They help track progress, stay focused, and avoid distractions. Here’s a breakdown of my experience with goals in 2024:
Overall, I completed 16 of my 59 goals for a completion percentage of 27%. That’s only a little worse than my first college engineering exam, so we are right on track.
1. New Goal Framework: Outcome, Performance, and Process Goals
- I experimented with categorizing my goals to bring more structure and clarity. I narrowed my focus to what I felt were the most important categories:
- Priority Goal: Finishing my PhD.
- Identity Goals: Reinforcing who I am and what I want to become.
- Physical Fitness and Well-being Goals: Maintaining health and energy.
- Personal Goals: A mix of side projects and self-improvement.
- Overall, I think it was a helpful exercise, but I need to structure the clarity of goals a bit better to give myself a better chance at success. I’m happy with the results since I completed Priority 1.
- I believe in setting BHAGs, so in the future I am aiming for a 50% completion percentage.
The following are my results from 2024 (Success/Fail/#Comments)
Format:
- Outcome
- Performance
- Process
- Performance
Priority 1:
Graduate. Finish PhDComplete Dissertation- Budget 1 day per week dedicated to writing only. No experiments! No wet lab work! # This approach didn’t work for me. I found I was most productive when I let my interest guide my writing rather than sticking to a fixed schedule. Some days, it felt natural to write for 15 minutes after an experiment; other days, I’d dive into 15 hours of writing on a random Tuesday. Creativity and focus seem to strike unpredictably, making it hard to confine “the muse” to a specific day.
- Publish manuscript 1
- Publish manuscript 2
- Publish manuscript 3
- # This was another failed process goal… In part because it was rather unrealistic. Given that I generated ~75% of my dissertation data in the last 6 months of my PhD, this goal was doomed to fail.
- # Additionally, my refusal to contribute to the ever-growing pile of mediocre publications generated solely to pad my CV or meet arbitrary academic metrics likely means I’ll need to push this goal into 2025. Instead, I’ll aim to condense my work into one or two impactful papers.
Maker Goals:
Learn software/hardware engineering- Aero Calculator (Python, Computer Vision) # Have a super rough prototype that really only works on still images… Got stuck when I tried to overcomplicate it by adding Machine Learning
- Stepper Motor Midi (Python/Arduino/Ableton) # Got the motors to play “Mary had a little lamb” but got stuck trying to midi map them into Ableton Live.
- Pen Plotter – Generative Artwork (Python) # Didn’t really make any progress here. Kinda lost interest when I realized you can purchase these off the shelf or just convert a 3D printer.
- Digital Pen – (ML/AI) # Zero progress made… still want to develop an OCR-based handwriting recognition system tailored for Gregg shorthand using machine learning and custom training data.
- # These goals were poorly described and structured, leading to mixed success. My ultimate aim was to learn programming and become more comfortable building software and hardware applications. The specific projects were meant to be vehicles for this broader goal, and while they helped narrow my focus, tying progress to finished projects often felt demotivating.
- That said, this year I wrote more code than in all previous years combined. Highlights include:
- Developing a script to locate ITP plugs spatiotemporally and visualize their intensity in 3D plots.
- Learning LaTeX by writing a 200-page dissertation.
- Generating most graphs and figures for my dissertation using Python.
- Overall, I learned a great deal and made substantial progress toward my broader goal of becoming proficient in programming.
- Produce a five-song EP (Outcome) and publish it to devonmccornack.com
Learn the basics of Ableton Live# I guess I will give myself this one… I did learn the super basics, and posted guitar cover of “Danny Boy” to IG. Would love to take a course one of these days.- Re-learn to sightread sheet music
- 2x piano pieces # Failed… got halfway through a “Sleeping Lotus” by Joep Beving
- 2x guitar pieces # Failed – Learned Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2
Perform 1x music piece live# Success! Snuck this buzzer beater in on 12/16. Performed “Ocean” by John Butler Rico’s in Pullman.- Join a jazz band (bass) # Failed – No attempt made. The spirit of this goal was to have a reason to learn to love playing the bass since I always get asked to play it. I still find it boring, but that’s likely because I am not good enough at it for it to be fun.
- Learn how to write well
- Persuasively (copywriting)
- Complete 1x course
- # My writing definitely improved this year—I at least wrote well enough to convince my committee to let me graduate. But I didn’t really make progress on professional or sales writing. I almost bought a copywriting course (Sam Parr’s Copy That), but backed out last minute because of the price.
- Storytelling
- Publish 6 deliberately crafted stories to web log (“Storyworthy” method) # This goal was paced such that I only needed to write one post every 2 months. I wrote 1 story post.
- Build a habit of writing and publishing consistently
- 1 blog post per week, all year
- Including Homework for life/5″ moments, poetry, song lyrics, insights, project updates, stories, essays, etc.
- 31 day challenge: post to the blog once a day for a month
- # I failed at all of these… Maybe 2025 will be the year I finally get this right after resetting the bar a bit. This feels like one of those goals that will keep living on unstructured for now.
- # My new plan is to break these goals into smaller time intervals and commit to a schedule to see which practices stick. I’ve noticed that if I can get past the 3-week mark of consistency, it’s easier to assess whether the reward outweighs the cost and decide if the habit is worth continuing.
- 1 blog post per week, all year
- Persuasively (copywriting)
Learn how to build an audience# I’m giving myself this one, although TBH whether I can repeat it remains to be seen.Gregg shorthand (GSH) educational IG page# Success – While I’m not crossing this off yet, as I want to continue growing the audience, I did achieve a major milestone: growing the page to over 40,000 followers! Some posts now regularly hit several million views per video. The next step is figuring out how to capitalize on this audience and turn this growth into meaningful opportunities or outcomes.- GSH YouTube Course
- GSH manual/e-book
- GSH Newsletter
- # Little to no progress on these guys… although I did start a TikTok since apparently that’s where you make money.
- Learn how to draw better, in less time (establish a routine of consistent practice) # I took an art class and was initially excited about incorporating this into my life. However, I’ve decided to de-prioritize this goal for now to focus on sharpening my music craft. It’s not gone forever—just on pause. I may return to it someday.
- Produce 2024 self-portrait (charcoal)
- Work through the figure manual
- Loomis method
- Learn color theory
- Work through manual
- Produce 2024 self-portrait (charcoal)
Fitness Goals:
- Olympic lift, cumulative 500lb (Snatch + C&J)
Correct body imbalance and immobilities- Ankle mobility (daily)
- Deep squat (daily)
- Joint Lubrication (daily)
- # I’m lumping all of these together under my lifetime Olympic lifting goal. While I didn’t hit the 500lb cumulative lift total this year, I made significant progress in addressing some immobilities and imbalances that will set me up to achieve this goal in the future. The groundwork is being laid.
Complete USAW specific program- Front splits
Improve posture# Core and flexibility work helped achieve this more than any deliberate practice.
- Climb 1 mountain (preferably in WA state) # Failed – Logistics and timing continue to hinder me in achieving this goal.
Run a marathon distance# Success! – Woke up on a random Saturday morning and decided that I didn’t need an official event to cross this one off the list. No training, no earbuds, completely fasted, nothing but dew and universe juice.- 200-mile bike ride # Lots of bike issues this year, which, combined with limited time, led to low motivation and a low total cycling mileage this year.
Personal:
- Surprise Sara 6x # I’m sure I achieved this, but wasn’t super intentional so counts as a Fail
Read Bible in 1 year# Failed successfully – I didn’t read it cover to cover this year, but I spent much more deliberate (albeit unstructured) time in the Word. My cumulative time spent this year was at an all-time high.Re-read 5 star books# Instead of a total number of books read/year, I wanted to focus on retention and re-reading this year.Accumulate 5 hours/week of meditation/prayer/boredom# Biggest change was doing Z2 and strength workouts without listening to audio content.- Setup coffee/meeting with 12 entrepreneurs/founders # Failed – However, I met with a Pullman biotech entrepreneur that made up for all 12. Super inspiring guy and bootstrapped is cancer vaccine biotech. I also met with an indeterminable number of current and future founders at conferences this year
Create a personal stat dashboardand inventory- Publish to devonmccornack.com
- # Created a successful system, however it needs a lot of simplifying/reducing. Maybe that’s just an excuse and a pitfall of perfectionism
- 7 day fast # Did several 1 and 2 day fasts
- Write 60 letters (5/month) # Did maybe 5? Huge ROI on those 5 though. Need to continue this practice
capture 1 second every day for 2024. # Close enough
16/59 = 27% success rate
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