Walking Self-help Book

The phrase "setting goals" conjures up many childhood memories for me.

When I was younger, my dad would sit me down and help me create goals for the the upcoming year. These goals were simple like getting good grades or learning a new song on the violin and often mirrored the goals I had set during the previous sessions.

There is only one word to describe how this process made me feel: irritated. Creating goals seemed to have little importance in my young life when compared with the TV shows I was watching or the different games I was playing.

I didn't realize it at the time as I thought it was my dad being "extra brown", but my dad was teaching us key skills that would allow us to succeed later in life.

My dad loves self-help and leadership books. This is best shown by the plethora of Amazon boxes that accumulate in our recycling due to the frequent influx of books.

My dad and I at my Grandfather's birthday

As much as my family may make fun of my dad for loving books like Thinking Fast and Slow (but come on, could the author not have picked a better name?), my dad is a genius. As a poor Indian kid who gained a full scholarship to go to school in the UK and ended up studying at Cambridge, my dad has always been the largest role model in my life for his ability to navigate his way all on his own. Teaching my sister and I how to create goals was his way of teaching us the skills to succeed that he had to learn himself through these books.

As I have grown older, creating goals has become synonymous with my daily life.

I always have goals in the back of my head no matter what I'm doing. These can be short term goals like finishing my homework, intermediate goals like gaining an internship this summer, or long term goals like getting my Phd from Oxford. Many people associate goals with their education or career, but setting goals is useful in all facets of your life because it gives you a way to measure progress.

So what are my goals for the coming year and the years ahead?

Read 100 Books This Year.

Every year, I set a new goal for the amount of books that I want to read. My favorite way to track my progress, the books I have read, and the ones I want to read is through the app Goodreads. It has a feature called the reading challenge which allows you to enter how many books you want to read that year, and this tracks it for you. I also like it because it makes it easy to find new book. Think of it like Spotify for books, great for discovering new reads. I find it very helpful for completing a reading goal because not only do you have to be dedicated to reading all these books, but you also need to find books that interest you in order to keep yourself going through the process. Pre-quarantine, my goal was usually around 50 books a year. As quarantine has given me so much time this year, I realized I needed to revise my usual number as, for example, last week I read five books already! This is the beauty of goals, they can be changed and altered depending on the circumstances. Now this may seem to be a crazy goal to non-readers, but this is one of my passions and I'm a fast reader. The only problem is finding the time and the motivation to read when I'm tired after a long day.

Rome, Italy from my previous trip

Go on and Pay for a Solo Backpacking Trip

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the only hard part of this goal was gaining enough money to go on another backpacking trip. Now, with the pandemic, it is also unknown when we will be able to travel freely again without fear. Even though I have already backpacked across Europe, I have only seen a small amount of the vast cultures that litter the continent. I really want for my next backpacking trip to be a solo trip because I believe that traveling alone will be a real adventure since I will have no one to cling to for company. Ideally this trip will happen during my gap year between graduate school and graduating from UCLA because it will give me lots of time to save money towards it and for the pandemic to be dealt with.

This goal is really important to me because I am a big believer in experiences over material items. My favorite way to spend money is on travel because those memories last a lifetime. Going backpacking across Europe after senior year only increased my appetite for more of it. I have dreams of backpacking through Australia and New Zealand, Scandinavia, the rest of Europe, and South America. Working hard and saving up money is all worth it when you are working towards an amazing reward like traveling.

Balliol College, Oxford

Get my Phd (from Oxford?)

Maybe it is the influence of my dad or my desire to gain the most knowledge that I can, but one of my goals that has stuck with me my whole life has been to receive a Phd. Since I have no idea what I want my career or even my major to be, I don't know what this Phd will be in or if it will even be necessary. Yet this goal is less about the importance of the Phd in my career or its abilities rather than proving to myself that I am smart enough and hard working enough to make this happen. Education has always had a very important place in my life due to the importance my parents gave it and how much I love to learn. Becoming a "Dr." encapsulates this.

The second part of this goal is to get my Phd from Oxford or Cambridge. My dad went to Cambridge and growing up, I was always visiting and standing in awe of the architecture and symbolism these institutions stood for. As a lover of history, I have always wanted to be a part of the traditions and amazing research that made these universities so important on the world stage. I never thought that I would even be smart enough to apply to these places and now that I have that agency, I want to use it and become the scholars that I have always admired.

In addition, I want to move to Europe after graduating from college. Studying in England would give me job opportunities in England as well as the rest of Europe. Mostly likely, I will end up in England because all of my mom's family still lives in Northwestern England and I have spent most of my summers growing up there.

Obviously the steps to achieving this goal is quite simple: do well in undergrad. This means working hard in all my classes and striving to get the best grades possible. In addition, seeking out research and other opportunities that will prepare me for the rigorous course work.

Become a Morning Person/Create a Decent Sleep Schedule

I am not a morning person. I love sleeping and the night more than anything. This has created a cycle where I love staying up late at night and then sleeping in during the morning. In quarantine, this structure of life is not as consequential as it was at school because all my classes are later due to the time difference and my days are not structured rigidly. Yet my bad sleeping habits and inability to wake up has caused me many missed classes and lost hours over the course of my life. As long as I can remember, sleeping and getting to sleep has been a problem. Despite wanting to blame this on insomnia, I realize that this an important fix to make now.

My hope is by the time quarantine ends, I will have corrected this. Each day, I have been making an effort to get up earlier and go to to sleep earlier. Also, I have been making sure that I am getting eight to nine hours sleep so that I avoid taking long naps that make me stay awake at night. Setting up a routine in the morning has really helped me not fall back asleep because I use to just go on my phone when I woke up. Now, I actually get up and start getting ready which gets rid of this problem.

Enid Blyton, the writer who started my love of books

Write and Publish a Book

This goal is the most ambiguous and unknown of all my goals but the most important to me. Do I know what this book will be about? no. Do I know when I will write and publish this book? No clue. Do I constantly think of story lines and book ideas? Definitely.

This goal really doesn't fit into the SMART method because it has many unanswered questions but when I think of long term goals, this is my first thought.

This goal is really a culmination of a lot of my passions and hobbies. I love to read and have always wanted to have people connect with the words I have written. I also love to write, and though I mostly write short stories and poems right now, I'm biding my time for when I have a story to write that means something to me. Like J. D. Salinger in his younger years, my goal is to write the next great American novel.

Image reference:https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2019/04/enid-bylton-to-read-or-not-to-read/