December 31, 2019

🧘 Year in Review 2019

This is the first time I’m making my annual review public!

What went well?

• I started journaling. Wrote 247 entries last year. Reading them again for this review cemented its importance. It really helps you to preserve your raw feelings, which you might remember very differently just a few weeks after the event.
• I peer-reviewed a lot of talks this year, ranging from JSFoo to VueDay. I like doing it because you get access to a concise and structured summary of someone’s thoughts on a new topic or improvements to existing systems or just something that you always wanted to learn but always kept putting it off!
• Completed a 10k run.
• I had 10+ meetings with folks who booked a calendar slot from my website. Had good discussions; one from someone building a community in Africa. So putting a calendly link paid off.
• Facilitated a Vue.js workshop.
• Started using a password manager.
• Co-organized an awesome conference! 🎉
• Visited 2 countries.
• Gave the keynote for VueDay. 🥳
• Tried calligraphy, baking, dungeons & dragons.
• Read 25+ books.
• Switched professionally from a software developer to a product role.
• Did an in-person UX course on weekends. Learnt Sketch.
• Got decent at sales.
• Got over my fear of dogs (unplanned).

What didn’t go well?

• I pitched to CodeChef for integrating devSwag in their rewards but it didn’t materialize.
• I missed Comic Con after going for 3 years in a row.
• I grew long hair. It took a lot of time investment but ultimately, it didn’t look good so I’m back to normal now.
• We wanted to double-down and do an India tour of Vue.js workshops but backed out due to the marketing effort involved.
• I missed Amazon’s “Pen To Publish” deadline!
• I wanted to give an international talk this year but couldn’t.
• I had planned to learn SEO but didn’t get the time.
• I wanted to speak at a design meetup; still preparing.
• I didn’t focus on health as much as I’d like to. And this is a recurring theme I noticed from my previous reviews as well, so this will be one of my primary goals this year.
• I would have liked to dedicate more time to creative outlets like music / writing.

Learnings

• My biggest learning is that setting yearly goals does not work for me. I do much better by setting monthly goals! And so I have added many items to my bucket list but it doesn’t need to be completed by the end of 2020. It’s like a guide, a north star. And I keep a few of them on my working list, updating it (adding / completing / postponing items) monthly.
• Scale matters. I got 50+ people into open-source in the last 3 years. And two of my friends were able to help a larger audience in 1 day! I learnt a lot from them, how to work smart instead of hard. Same goes for the Vue conference - it brought people together on a much larger scale than we do in our monthly meetups.
• Another learning is that you can live a different life over the course of time. And that’s okay!

Until We Meet Again…
🖖 swap