What I started doing differently in 2017 and how I plan to continue it.

I need to write this down as I feel that 2017 has been a great year for me. It has been a year of awakening and a year of new beginning. I set some goals before 2017 started and I was able to complete most of them. And to top it all, the year is ending on a very positive note inspiring me to plan for next 10 years to become a better human being, to expand my knowledge by learning new things and to become financially free.

A year back I gained a lot of weight (from my standards, as generally I have been quite fit guy all through my life). It was first year of my marriage and I did not go to gym for the whole year. Although I took a gym membership for 6 months but I hardly went. I was desperately trying to get out of my current job for various reasons. Primary reasons being low salary and not enough growth and learning opportunity. I applied to several openings almost every day but nothing was working out. Although the salary issue got resolved as I got an out of turn increment. But the dissatisfaction from the job continued. I kept spending countless hours in looking for suitable openings and applying to them. But nothing materialized. I should have instead spent my time in enhancing my skills to be in better position to apply to jobs. But I could not concentrate on anything else as I was totally consumed by the idea of job change.

By end of 2016 I took some decisions for next year. I discussed with my wife and got her buy in as fulfillment of goals were dependent on both of us. I wrote the goals down and pasted on my cupboard door. Every day when I opened my cupboard to get ready I saw the goals for next the year. Here are the things I did differently this whole year.

1. Go to bed early, wake up early (by 5 AM to 5:30 AM)

The first thing I wanted to change about myself was to give up the habit of keeping awake till late night and drag myself out from bed somehow after 7 AM in the morning. I committed myself to waking up early. But do what after waking up? So I combined another goal of losing weight with waking up and decided to go for early morning run every day. I started keeping my alarm at 6 AM initially and then gradually shifted it to 5:45 AM and then 5:30 AM. I used to wake up, freshen up and go for a jog for 20 minutes, come back and do some mat exercises for another 20 minutes. I must admit this was among the best decisions I took in my entire life. It was so much refreshing to wake up early and within one hour of waking up be done with an engrossing session of run and fat burning workout. Gradually my body got so used to it that I started going to bed by 10:30 and started waking up by 5 AM without the need of alarm. I still kept the alarm for 5:30 in case my body clock ditched me any morning.

2. Regular workout

With the early morning routine in place I started going to gym in evening after my office. Having a free gym in the office helped a lot here. Gym is not a new place for me and I have been working out regularly but sometimes I take forced or voluntary break and this time the break extended to an entire year. But now I was back to my workout regime and continued it for entire year. This routine of morning run and workout in the evening showed its effect. I shed 6 KGs of fat while maintaining the muscle mass. I was looking and feeling much better, lighter and healthier. I switched job in Nov and now I am in a startup with no gym. So I am looking out to join a gym starting Jan. Below keeping a tab on my progress.

3. Change job, move towards a role more suited to my skillset.

Towards the end of 2016 I resolved to enhance my skill set further rather than keep spending on job search with same skill set. I enrolled in couple of online courses, one related to my current job field and one related to the kind of role I wanted to get. This was ensure that even if I take some time in getting the role I want, I am not left behind in terms of learning in my current field. I fell under data sciences team which is a hot property right now. But the role I was working in was not really of data scientist but of operation analyst and day to day account running for the clients. I had two choices, either to upskill myself to advance further in my current role or change the role and move towards product management role. I did not feel that I am data science material and always thought of myself more of a business oriented person with a good sense of judgement. I started the two courses and spent my weekends on getting interview ready for the product role. Also kept an eye on the current openings and kept applying selectively. By mid of the year things started looking better and I got couple of opportunities for interview. I was selected in one of the interviews and now I am working with a product startup in product management. Just the kind of role I wanted.

4. Save and invest, save and invest.

I got interested in equity market while I was doing my MBA. I read a lot about companies and stocks and bonds during MBA and thought that I will definitely start investing after completing my degree. Unfortunately it took me some time to find a suitable job after completion of my degree. By that time investing in stocks was put on backburner. Sometime later a close relative started sharing his experience about stock market. That got me hooked again. Towards the end of 2016 I started reading a lot about stock market and fundamentals of equity investing. It was a bit easier to understand the language as I had taken lot of courses in finance during my MBA. I activated my demat account which was unused for quite some time and started buying some stocks. I also started SIP in couple of equity mutual funds.

In the beginning of 2017 me and my wife took conscious decision to cut down on our costs. We identified eating out, weekend parties and fuel cost as some areas where we could restrict the money outflow. We kept our commitment. We rarely went to eat out, spaced out weekend parties to once in couple of months and cut down drastically on fuel cost by using less of car and more of two wheeler. These steps helped us immensely in managing our finances and also freed up some money to invest in stocks. I kept reading about stock market and read some books on stock investment. These books helped me immensely and I am convinced that holding quality stocks for long term (10 years or more) is the key to wealth creation. SIP set me on a disciplined path of regular investment. I made the decision once while selecting the funds and the investment happened automatically every month. Now till the end of 2017 I have got a good 30% return on my overall portfolio (stocks and mutual funds combined).

5. Spend more time on learning and development

I made this important decision to keep learning. Learning can be related to my career growth, wealth, new language or another completely unrelated skill or just enhancing my knowledge about a topic. But I have to keep learning. I completed couple of online courses during this year, read 4 books on stock market and read tons of blogs on it and also prepared myself for interview. I realized that we spent a lot of time in non-productive activities. My early wake up schedule was not limited to weekdays. I started to wake up early even on the weekends whereas earlier most of the weekends I used to wake up late and that too in a hangover. This waking up early on the weekends opened up a whole new world of opportunity and suddenly I realized I have a lot of time in hand to explore something new.

This is the end of the year and I am really satisfied on how I spent this year. I plan to continue working out, investing and keep learning things in coming years. Cheers to healthier and better years to come.

Related posts:

Affiliate marketers and influencers emphasize the importance of creating effective affiliate marketing strategies to promote products. Affiliate marketing can be challenging because it can be…

Walking into something isn’t that easy as we think it to be, there are judgments everywhere and we keep on hiding from them. Are we actually happy with what we are now? Or we are just living a life…

I used to wake up to a constant struggle between “I hate myself, and I cannot do IT anymore” and “I need to pay the rent, and everyone does IT, so can I.” “IT” was a full-time soulless…