Summer Bucket List 2022

I have months of free time, and I intend to make the most of it

A Gift of a Summer

Beyond a certain stage in life, one begins to take for granted that summers are a thing of the past. Summers become a treasured childhood memory. But every now and then, especially when I have switched from one phase of life to another, I have been lucky enough to have an empty couple of months. The summer of 2022 seems to be one such magical time.
I will be joining McKinsey & Co. a few months down the line. While I don't know for sure, my joining date is most likely to be sometime in the middle of August. My 2 year MBA at IIM-A came to an end early in April. And so I have a particulalry long summer vacation on my hands.

Why the Bucket List?

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about college was that it's a break from adult life. Time goes by a little bit slower, and one is only answerable to themself. Personally, I have always enjoyed planning and charting out a future. A summer bucket list therefore appealed to me as a nice way of organising eclectic self improvement activites for myself.
Let's also keep in mind that with this much time, I would get ridiculously bored if I didn't have a plan of action.

My Summer Bucket List for 2022

Even as college was ending, I knew that there would be a few things that I would want to do. So I had a rough list of a few things that would go on my summer bucket list, independent of the amount of time that I had. When I came to terms with the number of days I had available, I then added another 5 items which I would also like to take a swing at. The second half of the list is perhaps not as high a priority. More accurately, I'm not a 100% sure as to whether I will be able to complete all of them within this summer.
Without further ado:

1. Summarise my MBA
Even towards the end of my MBA, I was very aware of the fact that a lot had happened. While I usually felt like I was on top of my academics, the total volume of content covered is difficult to keep track of all at once. With this being a master's degree, I was a little more serious about making sure that I graduate with more than a degree. I wanted to make sure that I can clearly point to what I learnt. Because the human memory is ever so fleeting, I knew that I would have to documet all that I learnt somewhere.
To be honest, I am rather happy with most of the notes that I made during my MBA. It was the first time that I did as thorough a job. And they seemed to be of use to a larger audience than myself. I always believed that if you know something well enough, you can explain it in the simplest terms. And so it seems to me that it would be interesting for me to summarise and simplify all that I learnt during my MBA. To this end, I would like to reduce my notes down to a simple and friendly MBA textbook of sorts.
Timeline : For this goal, I believe that I should aim to complete the bulk of my writing within the month of May. Through the month of June, I believe I can get done with process of publishing and sharing the book.
As for why I aim to put this into the format of a book, the main reason is that it makes the goal feel more real to me. I could put it out on the internet for free. But the stakes are lower in that case. I don't expect the book to be a success by any stretch of imagination. But I like the idea of having written a book, and a textbook of all things. So I'm trying to formalise the goal a bit more.

2. An Attempt at Fitness
I assume that I need not really justify why there is a fitness goal on my bucket list. The aim is not just to try and get fitter now that I have some time on my hands. The larger aim at hand is to put in place a routine and system which is sustainable even when I have less time on my hands. To this end, I already have a fitness framework of sorts.
For one thing, I have been trying to stick to body weight exercises, over anything that would require weights or a gym. The fact that these exercises can be done more or less anywhere makes them easier and more sustainable. It gives me fewer excuses to work with. Because daily targets are often washed away in a one-off emergency or something that just comes up, I try to use weekly and monthly goals. Across each of the exercise groups I have a certain weekly target. I aim to monitor whether I am meeting that weekly target, and whether my 4 week average meets that weekly target as well. If both of these happen across all of the different exercises that I have put together, I should be rather consistently staying fit.
Timeline : The plan is to ensure that up till the end of June, I meet or exceed my weekly target on each and every exercise group, every week. I also hope to increase the target on a few exercise groups by that point in time.
I haven't documented here exactly what exercises I'm doing and what my targets are. But at a broad level it ranges across burpees, pushups, crunches, squats, swimming, running etc. I maintain a much more detailed list and tracker of the same on a google sheet.

3. Back to Driving
This isn't a brand new bucket list item. I learnt how to drive quite a while back, and used to drive often enough. But for the last 4 years or so I haven't really driven. And the one time that I did, didn't inspire much confidence. The plan here is to get back to driving, so that I'm comfortable and confident enough to drive routinely. As such, I do intend to be independent enough over the course of the summer and beyond. This in itself would require me to drive around a fair bit.
Timeline : Drive routnely through the month of May and beyond.

4. Set up a Home
This bucket list item is part necessity and part aspirational. On the one hand I do need to find an apartment. On the more fun side, I can make sure that I do a nice job of it. In my mind this pretty much means that I do up my room nicely. As for the details of what doing up my room nicely means, I intend to put up other posts and pages dedicated to the same. But it is likely to include having a great setup for sleeping, watching shows and movies, and a good setup for my work.
Timeline : The aim is to complete the setup by the end of May.

5. Find a Little Fashion
Anyone who has seen me knows that fashion and I just don't get along. That has never and probably will continue not to bother me. I'm perfectly happy looking like a trash bag, as long as I'm comfortable. That being said, work will begin soon enough. And at least at work, looking prim and proper is a reasonable expectation. A part of this bucket list item just includes shopping for formal clothes. This time I would like to do a proper job of it, ensuring that I have a wide enough wardrobe, of well fitting and classy looking clothes.
In addition to this, I figured that it couldn't hurt to spend a little time figuring out what is good and acceptable fashion. There are probably at least a few quick and easy fixes that I could apply to my own personal wardrobe. I don't expect to make any large strides on this within the summer. But non-zero progress is the aim.
Timeline : Before the end of June I aim to get have placed the required orders for my work wardrobe. This should also give me enough time to get to more or less the size and shape that I aim to be before picking out clothes.

6. Stabilise My Lifestyle
We are now in the second half of my list. This item and all that follow would either be completely done during the second half of my summer (July onwards) or be focused on at that stage.
This loaded statement in particular focuses on ensuring that at least parts of the summer lifestyle that I have can be maintained once work begins. It is all too easy to be consumed by work and lose track of fitness, family and friends. From July onwards I would therefore aim to start finding ways in which I am able to even in limited time slots ensure that I dedicate time and effort to these critical parts of my life. A couple of other things which I would particularly like to keep alive are all that I am doing on the fronts of learning in public and a diary that I maintain. This would likely begin to take a back seat. But the aim is to ensure that it doesn't disappear altogether. Non-zero progress remains the key.
To this end, I would aim to start putting my '2+1' rule to the test. According to this principle, I will only ever have time to properly prioritise 2 dimensions of my life. In good weeks, a thrid can be prioritised, and must, if I aim to keep it alive. The first 2 would be work and my personal life. Work is sort of a given, and will always take a big chunk out of life. By personal life I mean my own well being (health/fitness) as well as staying in touch with family, loved ones and friends. Outside of these 2 critical priorities, every now and then I hope to still have some free time, even if limited. I would like to channel that towards all of my hobbies. Because there are too many to fit into 1 bucket, I aim to use leanring in public as a channel of keeping them alive in some way or form, even when there are big gaps.
Timeline : Begin focusing on lean scheduling from the month of July onwards. This would carry on through out life. But the month of July is meant to be a mock stress test of sorts.

7. Dabble in Computer Science
The number of projects and aims that I have on the CS front are massive. Just as I now know that I need to document what I learnt during my MBA, I am realising too late that I ought to have done that while I was learning CS in IIT-M as well. Having never taken up a full time developer job, there's a lot that I haven't learnt in the space. And this website should be a clear indicator that there is a lot of scope for me to learn. I don't hope to learn anywhere near enough in the time I have remaining in the summer.
In the month of July, I would like to do one round of iteration on the following aspects: - Make my home page look clean and nice. In the process learn some front end development. - Learn how to monetise my website. I likely won't earn much from it. But it gives me more reason to keep my learning in public actively going. - Get started with a basic course (or learn from the internet in general) on full stack development.
Timeline : This item would begin for me in July. The goal of cleaning up my home page and monetising the site should be completed in the month of July itself. Whereas on the full stack development front, I can only hope to get started and at least break down the tasks ahead of me.

8. Cook
This bucket list is a pending item from the previous winter. I had already spent some time with my grandmother and mom learning a bunch of our traditional Tamil recipes. I will likely have time to cook a bit, since I must make time to eat. So, I figured that I can learn a few more recipes and round out my learning. I have already uploaded a good number of recipes to my website. Once again, in order to formalise my target here, I could aim to publish a cookbook with ~50 odd recipes.
Timeline : I hope to organise and publish a first cookbook before the month of July is over.

9. Read
With the amount of free time I have had through this year of college, I have started developing a reading habit for the very first time. It looks like I am on track to complete my goodreads target of 20 books for the first time in 5 years. So, I may as well accelerate this a tad bit.
Timeline : I aim to have completed reading 20 books by the end of July (from January 2022).

10. Look Back at The Marvel Comic Universe
Not everything on my catalogue of learning is super serious. I clearly enjoy watching shows and movies. Ever since I took a film theory course in IIT-M, I have also liked to pause and have a look at some of the more theoretical aspects of film and shows. I am nowhere close to any sort of expert. I can hardly hold an intelligible conversation on pop culture. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to take a deeper and more analytical look at film and shows now and then.
The marvel franchise is insanely successful, has captured imaginations like no other and provides a massive volume of content to look at. I am not a huge fan, but have often enjoyed their movies. I would therefore like to understand what order the movies and shows need to be watched in, and begin watching each of them one by one. I would also like to document my understanding of the timeline, each movie and the main characters while I'm at it. Building up my own Marvel encyclopedia of sorts.
Timeline : I hope to have at least come up with a game plan and an order of viewing for the universe of content. I am only sticking to shows and movies here, to limit the effort. I aim to get started on watching some of the movies and shows in July, but by no means come close to completing whatever has already been released.

Summing Up

I now have 10 big items on my bucket list for this summer. Some of them are very important to me and really ought to be completed in time. Others are good to have, where it would be super cool if I could get off to a nice start. But across the board, all of them are checklist items which I expect to be both fun to work on and things which will help me improve myself in some way or form. If that doesn't make for a memorable summer, I don't know what will.