Review of 2025 Goals

Time for my review of 2025 Goals.

Hang on…I made how many goals? 46? And I need to write something about each of them? Jeez.

Get Fit, Feel Fab

Lose 11kg. Well I started well on this, lost around 8kg by the end of my detox. Then I put quite a few kg back on when I did my 3 holidays in 5/6 weeks thing. Then December I just gave up. Overall, I gained 1.5kg, which is pretty fucking depressing. Score of 0%.
Do 3 forms of exercise that are not walking. Possibly this is cheating, but I decided that doing one of my dumbass Closer To Customer days at work (ie shelf-stacking) counted as exercise. Score of 33%.
Go dancing. Nope. 0%.
Get some data on my health. So I did get a bit more serious about doing health stuff this year. Not going to write about it, but my score is 80%.
11-week detox, except for my birthday. Well I did this. Of course I did this. 100%.
No drinking in the UK, bar special occasions, until 85kg. My intention was to do like a semi-detox until I lost all of the weight that I wanted to, but the weather was far too nice to only drink on “special occasions”. 0% complete.
18 weekend days off drinking outside detox. I went through a phase in autumn where I couldn’t be arsed to drink beer on a Friday – I seem to have almost stopped drinking at home, bar the odd one or two. 61% complete.
Only eat cake/chocolate on 50 days. I completely fucked this. Probably had cake/chocolate on 150 days. 0% complete.
3 separate 30 day periods with no cake/chocolate. I did two such periods, once in February and once in November. 67% complete.
Reduce blood pressure. Lol. No. I did reduce it as I lost weight, then, yeah let’s just pretend everything is fine here. 0% complete.

Learning and Coding

Build something in Svelte. I rebuilt my Reading Weather website with Svelte so this is 100% complete. I didn’t enjoy working with it as much as Astro, so this will probably be the only time I use it, but being able to use different frameworks is a good skill to have.
Re-build rdldn. This is complete, and it’s now built in Astro, which I love, and it is so much easier for me to expand/improve than the old PHP site. 100% complete.
Rdldn mailing list. Done this too – I have a Substack for it, and even a paid subscriber, which kind of surprises me! 100% complete.
Build an Azure project with authentication and a database. Didn’t bother doing this – I don’t really need a personal project on Azure, so I didn’t bother with this. Would be a good skill to learn, and possibly might have to do something like this at work next year. 0%.
10 new features JS/CSS/React. I have a long list of new CSS/JS/React features to look into, and 10 shouldn’t really be a push – but it was. 80% complete.
Read 4 more books than I buy. I read 3 more than I bought. 75% complete.
Duolingo – Section 5 – Unit 250. Damn Duolingo changing their course structure again, but I think I managed 58% of this goal by my calculations. Not that any of these scores matter.
Read book on investing, staff engineer, Spanish, and big politics. I read the staff engineer book, and also the Ken Clarke autobiography which has been on my shelf for about 6 years. 50% complete.

Stay Organised

Have nothing on my to-do list one day, in 3 separate months. Yep. Done by April (and never achieved since). 100% complete.
Have 0 unread e-mails in my inbox one day, in 3 separate months. Yep, this is pretty easy nowadays. 100% complete.

Feed the Foodie

Oldest 10 roasts – up to The Audley Public House. You’d have thought getting 100% would be easy here, but no, 60%. Some of the older ones I’ve saved for a certain occasion, hence they don’t always get done.
2 roast dinners in other countries. 0%. Yep, I went to 10 different countries in 2025 and didn’t have a roast dinner in any of them. The annoying one was Stockholm which did actually have a British pub doing roast dinners, but our flight back was that morning. Doh.
15 excellent (or think will be) restaurants. I managed 10 in the end, which isn’t bad – but added about 25 to my to-do list. Notably The Barbary, The Cinnamon Club and Goodman. 58% complete.
12 restaurants in Croydon. Trying to eat out more in Croydon and support local business – ate out 7 times, though only two meals were any good lol. 67% complete.
6 of the oldest 12 restaurants on my list. I did 4 of them, so 67% complete.
Less than £100 food waste. Successfully kept my food waste total to under £100. I reckon most people do that just at Christmas. 100% complete.
155 recipes. Surprisingly fell short of my target, did 20 less than 2024 for some reason. 86% complete.

Be Social

Celebrate More Special Days. Nice idea to celebrate things like Bastille Day but I couldn’t be arsed with this. 0% complete.
Do London stuff once a week on average. This target is probably too ambitious as I don’t have the money and/or energy to do this every week. 69% complete though.
Do things in Croydon. Again this was me trying to support local stuff like the museum, theatre, etc. 83% complete.
Visit two friends that don’t live in Reading/London. Only visited one friend and that was Josephine down in Salisbury. 50% complete. Going to Portugal doesn’t count as I went the year before.
Socialise in Croydon 12 times. Yeah, I went out in Croydon quite a bit, both with the meet-up group and existing friends. 100% complete.
Attend some meet-ups. Well I only did the Croydon meet-up. I do like this goal – there is a craft beer meet-up but every single time they organised something was in my detox months (they seem to do 75% of their events January to March lol) or they were when I had existing plans. 25% complete.

Wander the World

4 different new countries. I never quite achieve this. Went to 10 countries in 2025, but only Estonia, Finland and Slovenia were new to me. 75% complete.
Closest unvisited country – Norway. I planned a trip, but because I put so much weight on during my 3 holidays in 5/6 weeks spell, I sacked it off. The trip is planned, Bergen to Norway, two nights in each, train over the mountains in between – I think it will be dreamy. 2026, for sure…for almost sure. 0%.
A New European City of Culture. My target was one but I actually went to three. Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn. 100% complete.
Leave Europe once. Nope! Next year…honest. 0% complete
Warm sunshine in a winter month. I didn’t do this either…why? 0% complete.

Upgrade My Life

Upgrade tech. Well I upgraded my PC (game-changer), my phone (because Google told me it would become a fire risk after another 100 charges) and my earphones. Nothing earphones – they really are very good. 60% complete.
Main furniture bought. I bought a Christmas tree! Plus a toaster and a kettle. Completely failed to find a bar table and stools that would work, then anyway spent that money on holidays. 38% complete. Maybe in 2026 my flat will feel more complete./
Be On Track With My 2032 “Retirement” Plan. 100% on track. I have a savings plan where by 2032 I wouldn’t need to work to pay my mortgage…it’s on track. Not that I have any plans on retiring then, just to be free to do what I want to do.
Finish 3 cookbooks. Yep, 3 completed. And I only bought 1 new cookbook. 100%.
Paint main room. The grey has gone! 100% complete.
Investment framework. I started making an investment framework to help me decide which stocks to buy, and I’ve done most of the categories – just need to work out how to do the weighting. 80% complete.
Sort out flat problems. I have an ongoing list of things to sort out/buy in the flat. And did a grand total of 5 of them. Which is just 19% complete.
Spent £100 on dating. I went on dates! I even spent money on Bumble/Hinge boosts…total waste of money of course. 40% complete.

So overall I achieved 56.67% of my goals.

Not sure this number really means much, but I’m going to try to attach it to something next year…ie some rewards depending on how much I score.