2020 Year in Review 🐀
No need to repeat but I'll just say anyway, 2020 has been a crazy year, or at the very least unusual, for almost everyone (psst psst, COVID-19 🦠, looking at you). I'm thankful though that it has turned out to be a pretty good year for me nevertheless. This is my overview of what I managed to accomplish during the year and what I wish I have done better, as well as what I'm looking forward to next year.
Statistics
- 2,487,042 steps taken (~6800/day) 🐾
- 275.17km ran 🏃♂️ (follow me on Strava)
- 28h43m meditated 🧘♂️
- 12 books read 📚 (let's become friends on Goodreads)
- 1614h06m spent in front of PC at 67% productivity score (as per RescueTime) 👨💻
- 5 foreign countries visited 🇩🇪🇮🇹🇵🇱🇱🇻🇪🇪
- 1 side project shipped 🏗️
- 2 blog posts written ✍️
- 3 courses finished 📖
- 2x 36h fasts completed 🍽️
- 1 lifetime goal completed 🎉 (bought a motorcycle and got motorcycle license 🏍️)
What went well?
- I was pleasantly surprised about how much time I spent meditating and am also pleased for having reached my reading goal.
- I'm moderately happy with how many steps I've taken and how much I ran during the year. Next year though I certainly hope to increase both of these.
- I'm proud for taking the plunge to leave corporate world and enter freelance/indie-hacking, and even earning more in the process.
- Have become more efficient at coding by becoming more systemic in how I document my learnings and code snippets.
- I'm super pleased for having bought a motorcycle and taking a few road trips with it, it's been a life-long dream.
What went badly?
- I've not been intentional enough about how I spend my time in front of screens. 67% productivity score is not that great and it doesn't even take into account phone usage.
- I put too many things on my "read later" or "watch later" list which I then prune often anyway.
- Did not set up phone usage tracking but I suspect I used my phone way too much.
- Have not been able to launch side-projects fast enough. I need to learn how to identify better features that must be part of MVP and ship faster.
Goals for 2021 🐂
“What gets measured, gets improved.” - Robert Sharma
The main theme for the upcoming year is going to be all about deliberate focus and intentionality, as well as striving for more calmness in my life. I don't believe that there is anything noble in burning midnight oil, and doing busy-work is just stupid. I want to achieve more with less. This involves being more mindful about how I spend my time in front of screens and what I do when I start to get stressed.
The ultimate goal is to achieve a state where I'd be able to switch between intense work and complete relaxation in an instant. I don't suspect I'll be able to ever reach this but it's worth striving for.
My Bible for next year is going to be Deep Work by Cal Newport. It has inspired me to make positive changes in the past in regards to how I approach my work. Now I want to get principles outlined in the book stick even more. So based on all this, the key high-level goals for next year are:
- Be more intentional about computer and phone usage.
- Focus on consuming high-quality information deeply, minimize everything else.
- Run, walk, meditate more.
- Consume less caffeine.
- Ship more side projects.
I'm not going to delve more deeply in this post about how I'm going to achieve these goals. That will probably be talked about in another post a year latter called "2021 Year in Review 🐂".
Also, I know New Year's resolutions are kind of silly and you don't have to wait for a specific date to start doing changes in personal life. But I still like doing such resolutions, they inspire me and and make me feel more positive about what the future is going to bring. I hope you feel positive about the upcoming 2021 as well. After all, it's all on us, collectively and individually, on what it will be like, so let's strive for the best!