2013 Review; 2014 Goals

A quick blog post about things learned and accomplished in 2013 and areas of focus for 2014.

By writing them down I hope there’s more chance of me actually following through.

New software/apps/tools for 2013

Some of these apps I had used before, but in 2013 I found myself becoming more reliant on them and working them into my daily routine.

• Sublime for coding. Previously I was using TextMate.
• iTerm 2 for terminal.
• Inboard for design inspiration.
• Optimizely for A/B testing.
• A standing desk at work. Love it.

Things I shipped in 2013

• Helped launch Runnable.
• Launched Flask.
• Launched CodeShare.
• Launched a new Mailgun website and control panel.

Books read in 2013

• Insights by Elliot Jay Stocks and Keir Whitaker
• The Lean Entrepreneur by Patrick Vlaskovits and Brant Cooper
• Execute by Drew Wilson and Josh Long
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
• Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
• Pocket Guide series by Five Simple Steps and Co.
• Remote by Jason Fried and DHH

Goals for 2013

A look back at some areas of focus I set myself this time last year.

1. Shipping. Success. Shipped several projects at work and outside of work. It feels good to get stuff out there.

2. Contribute more to open source. Success. Open sourced my boilerplate (Motherplate), a simple html email template, and shared some snippets on CodePen.

3. Write less. Success. I tried to write shorter posts and only blog once a month. This included a couple of posts on Medium.

4. Read less. Success. I ditched my RSS reader and instead this is how I now catch up on news: <a href=https://news.ycombinator.com/”>Hacker News</a>, Designer News, Sidebar, Twitter. That’s it.

Bonus: Compete in a triathlon. Success. This was a 2012 goal that I failed but accomplished on 2013. 0.5 mile swim, 19 mile cycle, 4 mile run, 1hr 45min.

Areas of focus for 2014

1. Projects with (sustainable) business models I tend to launch side projects that don’t make money, or very little. This is mostly fine, as they’re usually for learning purposes, but it’s about time I started focusing more on monetization strategies, business models and customers.

2. Hardware Mobile devices. Wearable tech. Servers. Brewbots. I want to know more about how these things work. I bought myself a Kano to start experimenting with Pi. Will see where this leads.

3. Educating others More how-to tutorials, a more focused blog, talking at events, hosting work shops, writing a book, teaching in schools. Something along those lines.

4. Educating myself There are a tone of great online courses available now, and in person workshops, lots of which have been on my to-do list for too long. Time to set aside some time to do them.

Have a good 2014.