2021: What Went Well, What Didn't and Goals

Another year has gone by, and it's time to do a year review.

2021 was a great year overall except for everything COVID and not traveling back to India and visiting my family.

TLDR;
Bought a house, crossed 10k YouTube subscribers, renewed as Microsoft MVP, became an AWS Community Builder, and continued blogging. Getting fitter took a back seat.
Looking forward to 2022.

What went well

Family

After numerous house inspections, offers we've finally got one through and are all excited to move into the new house early next year. Finding a home has been a roller-coaster ride, and it has reinforced any life lessons it is - 'Don't wait for the perfect, Settle with good enough'.

The best time to buy a house is now. Also, the worst time to buy a house is now. If you are buying to live in, buy anyways.

Even with most of our weekends filled inspections and COVID still around, we managed one overnight trip within Queensland and a handful of day trips.

Growing Audience & Creator

2021 saw me through to 10K YouTube subscribers 🎉🚀

A significant milestone in my journey as a content creator. Thank you all for the love and support. Here's a quick snapshot of the whole year. I published 27 videos across Azure, AWS, ASP NET, and DevOps and gained over 8200 subscribers.

As part of the May Ship30for30 community, I published 31 Atomic Essays, which helped me explore a different writing style and format.

The blog also saw an additional 19 posts, which included a few book reviews and some quarterly planning posts (similar to this post). I've not been actively publishing the Newsletter and added only two posts there.

Community

As much as the first time, I am excited to be renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP. It is mainly for my work as part of my blogs and YouTube channel. Thank you all for making this possible.

I am equally excited to be part of the AWS Community Builder Program which offers resources, mentorship, networking opportunities, and a lot of swag and AWS credits.

I've also been discussing with the AWS .NET team on improving the community experience, especially around .NET. Lots of interesting conversations and opportunities are opening as part of these conversations. Again, this is because of the various content I started producing around AWS.

I was lucky to be invited to kick-off the Telstra Purple Ambassador Program Guest Speaker Series and talked about some of my 'behind the scenes processes and habits that helped me build an online presence. It was my first non-technical talk, and extremely happy it was well-received.

What didn't go well

Getting Fit

Not a lot of exercise again this year, even though it was slightly better than last. I've found myself getting lazier on runs and slacking off in the middle. Here is a summary of the year from Strava, and the activities include both cycling and running.

Not so great Q3 & Q4

I slacked off a lot towards the second half of the year. Even though I set out with some goals for Q3, I slipped along the way and ended up not tracking at all. I also did not publish a Q3 review and Q4 goals.

I started making a course - AWS DynamoDB For The .NET Developer - and made it available in an Early Supporter mode. Surprisingly I also made 7 sales. But I found myself jumping between building the course Vs. adding content on YouTube and blog. With a lot of jumping around these two and the confusion, I did nothing and procrastinated on both.

I could find many more excuses, but I need to get better at identifying this and getting back on track sooner. I did publish a few videos and blog posts during this time but slacked off most of the time.

Goals for Q1, 2022

The high-level focus Areas worked well last year, and I plan to stick to the same this year as well. I am keeping the Ideas more aligned to the systems/habits that I want to build to achieve my SMART Goals.

Check out my December 2020 Newsletter if you want to learn more about Goal Setting!

I am looking to focus more on the 'Getting Fit' goal. The main idea is to build a 10-15 minute Core workout routine at least four times a week. I am thinking of using the Adidas Training app and pairing up with my wife, Parvathy (to be more accountable 🙂).

I've also decided to stop the course creation (DynamoDB For .NET Developer) and focus on YouTube and the blog. I am finding it hard to focus on all things simultaneously. I'll be refunding the seven sales that I have already made.

Some of the key goals for the first quarter are

• Settle into our new house.
• Publish 6 videos to YouTube.
• Getting back into running and complete a 10k under 53 minutes.

Wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year 🚀✨

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash