Looking Back at Q1 and Forward at Q2

At the beginning of the year, I decided to switch to quarterly goal setting and track my progress on a smaller time scale instead of setting up yearly resolutions. Now that the first 3 months of 2025 are over, I'm ready to reflect, revisit, and revise.

I'm wrapping up this post at the end of April, so some edits have been made to represent things that have since changed during writing.

Reflect and Revisit

My Q1 goals centered around my YouTube channel and the content that would belong within it.

At the time, I had 2 main threads for my YouTube content – one was a 3-part series of videos focused on the admissions process for my high school alma mater. The other was a long overdue reaction to a reaction of reaction (reaction^3) of a music video. While progress has been made on the 3-part planned series and the set of slides is soon to be completed, I've yet to solidify how I want to deliver the content. I have all the materials I need: a green screen, lav mics, and my phone to record the video. I want the end product to be an entertaining series of videos that delivers advice to these prospective high schoolers. It's an extension of how much I enjoy mentoring and handing out advice.

My react-ception video had been deprioritized as I realized that, realistically, I didn't have a solid follow-up set of content to release after I would have posted the reaction. Of course, I don't believe it's necessary to have follow-up content, but I'd like to make sure it's not a random one-off video of sorts that ends up on my YouTube channel.

My H1 goals were fitness goals. These were goals that were defined by a projection of how much progress I'd make by mid-year. I would say that my pistol squat progress is on track. My pull-ups are less so. My Hybrid Calisthenics book says I'm to focus on vertical pull strength with jack-knife pull-ups, and I'm finding that vertical pulling is a lot harder to pull off. Either that or I need to figure out a taller stool to use for good form.

Revise

To ground my Q2 goals, I want to address what my priorities are for the quarter. I've decided to spend a lot more time honing my musical abilities and spending time practicing my instruments, continuing my voice lessons, and noodling around in music production tools.

However, with this focused time towards music, I sometimes also worry about my corporate career. Due to this, I will explicitly dedicate some goals for this quarter towards my corporate life. I've been spending time learning about UI/UX Design, reading the design book, and taking courses on EDX about Human-Computer Interaction. After wrapping up my design foundation, I want to dive into marketing to learn about growth strategies (i.e, SEO, content analytics, etc.). The time I spent on this allows me to have a more holistic understanding of business and how products succeed.

I've been grappling in my head whether I want to invest more time to hone my development skills and be able to march towards a more technical product management role (i.e, learning system design, tech infrastructure) or invest time into a more design-oriented/growth-oriented product management role. While both appeal to me, I am most motivated by any learning opportunity I can get and by feeling challenged.

In addition to the above, I recently decided to commit to formal Swedish or Danish classes with the Scandinavian School in SF. The classes would be once a week online and start in Q3, but I figured it would be good to supplement my Duolingo with a real class and meet fellow learners. As such, I have goals for my Duolingo progress for the quarter.

Q2 Priorities:

• Musical
  • Continue voice lessons (2x/month)
  • Post vocal covers on Instagram
  • Every other week: work on ear training by transcribing songs (choruses or verses) I like onto clarinet, guitar, or keys.
  • Seek out jam sessions with new and old friends!
  • Use Logic Pro to create music and arrange songs for projects
• Corporate
  • Complete the GaTech EDX HCIxIII course.
  • Start the GaTech EDX HCIxIV course to wrap up the Human-Computer Interaction certificate
  • Finish the Design book
• Fitness
  • Pistol Squat - 1 rep, both legs by end of quarter
  • Pull-ups - continue to strengthen my vertical pulls (jack-knife pull-ups)
  • Pushups - successfully do reps of knee pushups by end of quarter
• Language
  • Danish - Complete Section 2 in Duolingo
  • Swedish - Complete Section 1 in Duolingo
  • Korean - Duolingo has since revamped the course in April, so there's no more for me to do there, so I'm spending time reading short stories.
  • French - Complete Section 4 in Duolingo, read news from Le Monde, and continue reading Le Petit Prince