2024: The Year of Insha Allah

You are not gonna catch me making any new year resolutions or new year goal. You and who? At all o. I am a grown ass man looking at 40 on the horizon, I have enough life experience to know that nothing, nothing goes according to plan.

I am a project manager and, in the industry, there are two main methods of delivering a project. Waterfall and Agile. A waterfall project is where you have set deadlines to provide set deliverables, things are usually set in stone from the beginning of the projects. Agile on the other hand is just vibes and insha allah, they will see what they can do for you at the end of a "sprint".

Unsurprisingly, all my projects are waterfall. That is how my brain is wired and that is why I am good at my job. Just let us agree on set goals by a set time and leave the rest to me. Ironically this has been recognised as something to improve on at work. To be calming down and give people the grace of a few days and not hound them regardless of whatever.

 Why should I calm down when we agreed that it will be done on this day, I did my part! I removed all the roadblocks!

You get the point.

I have the same approach to new year resolutions and goal setting. When I say it or write it down, it is written in stone and when I don't meet them, I am really hard on myself. I still remember the goals I set at the beginning of 2023. Lol. I didn’t ask for much. A new vehicle and an investment property. That was not asking for too much. I crutched all the numbers, we can definitely buy an apartment in Hyde, the only issue was convincing Tiwa to sign off on the vehicle but I was gonna cross the bridge when I get there.

I never made it to the bridge for two reasons. One was my fault. I overtook an unfortunate vehicle and that action cost me 6 points, thousands in fine, and thousands in insurance premium. I was (still am) so pissed off at the driver of the car because if you don't have the bravery to drive on a back road what are you doing on the road!

The second reason is the Tory government. If you are part of the voting demographics and you are not voting because "all politicians are the same"…Look, I am alright, the effect of the fuckery is that I can't change a vehicle and buy an investment property. Those are NOT problems. I have a good job, a master's degree and I am married to a woman with a good job and a PhD degree, we are alright.

Anyways, the second reason is the clownery that is the Tory government. Long story short, I had to remortgage in the of our lord 2023. Enough said.

It was in 2023 that I found stoicism as well which was not in the plan but that was the best thing that happened to me in 2023. It was profound. It also helped me handle the disappointment of being summoned to court (I handled that too well because I was convinced I was gonna lose my licence and would have to get around on an electric bike and I was ok with that outcome much to Tiwa's irritation), and the remortgaging process. I can't understate the paradigm shift brought about by stoicism, it felt like the missing jigsaw to make sense of all my life experiences. I found it and I was like ah, okay. I know what I am doing now. You know.

Let me be clear, setting goal is important, even the stoics agree that much, you have to aim for something in life otherwise what is the point. In fact, I had the opposite experience a couple of years ago in that I met all the goals I set at the beginning of the year and it nearly broke me! (Because I didn’t use sense to set the goals and I refused to accept I bit off more than I could chew because " waterfall" and "we agreed").

This is also important, goals are relative. I can have a goal to run a marathon by the end of the year and to Mo Farah, that is just a Monday morning. Someone can say I want to start going to the gym and get in shape which is like me saying I want to start…having baths regularly. It is just a part of my life. Sure, like bathing some days you cannot be arsed, and, in some period, day turns into days (don't look at me weird, yall went through covid lockdown!), sort of like working out. Sometimes like Xmas, I can afford to let myself go a bit and get back to regular schedule in the new year. I have an instagram picture with my brother-in laws name on it by the way, he saw me during one of such downtimes and he pointed at my stomach and started laughing

I have an extra year of life experience now. I also have stoicism, I can look at 2024 and set realistic high level goals that won't be affected because of the incompetency of people that we think know what they are doing and that is independent of other people's inability to use sense. I am also borrowing techniques from agile and use sprints to work towards my goals. If it doesn’t get done one month, it will get moved into the backlog and it will get done the next month, if it doesn't get done in one quarter it will get moved into the backlog and it will get done the next quarter. If it doesn’t get done this year, it will be moved into the backlog and it will get done insha allah. That is what Epictetus would want.