2022 review
I strive for continuous improvement—getting a little bit better every day.
“If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the time you’re done.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits
Moving forward, at the end of every year, I want to spend some time to reflect on the past year and set my focus for the year ahead.
Learning
Score: 8/10
Highlights
Learned a ton in my job at EVBox by expanding my scope and tackling projects and tasks that required a lot of critical thinking and a combination of many skills.
Graduated from the University of Amsterdam with a MSc Business Administration while working full-time and holding a part-time position as vice chairman of training & development at the Marketing Association Amsterdam.
Took many valuable courses in the fields of marketing, analytics, product management, and web development.
Learned some fundamentals of web development to be able to code this simple website. I started taking an online bootcamp but stopped early on and decided to learn the skills I needed along the way. I think that was a very wise decision.
Invested in a Reforge membership.
Finally developed my own personal website from scratch.
Areas of improvement
The last phase of writing my Master’s thesis next to exams and work was the closest I have ever been to burnout. I’m very proud of having been able to pull that off successfully but I don’t want to live through a period like that again if I can avoid it.
For the past years, despite trying not to, I have let the idea of showcasing certificates and signalling to be a major motivator to take certain courses. Some skills and courses are of course important for advancing my career. However, moving forward I want to simply follow my curiosity.
I did not read nearly as much a I would have liked to.
I did not make much use of the different networking opportunities available to me through the university, Reforge and other communities that I’m part of. I want to be more proactive in this area.
I have not documented my journey at all. This is something I wanted to do last year but in hindsight this was overambitious given the intensity of my schedule.
Work
Score: 6/10
Highlights
Got promoted to a Product Owner role on a freelance contract at EVBox in January while doing my Master’s.
Got a full-time offer at EVBox after graduating in July.
Gradually increased my scope to fully manage websites, web analytics, SEO and marketing CRM.
Led the redesign of some core webpages which had been neglected for a long time due to the perceived difficulty.
Set up improved processes, a more structured way of working, and made significant progress on fixing neglected fundamental issues bottlenecking all other work in the website team.
Started to shift the mindset towards always thinking about how to improve the underlying processes and solve the root causes when issues arise rather than fixing things on the surface-level.
Communicated effectively with stakeholders across various teams.
Prepared well for 2023 by building out my team and securing the needed resources for the other areas under my scope.
Areas of improvement
I did not take into account the variability in time needed for certain tasks while expanding my scope. As a result, I reached a point where I had way too much on my plate.
I didn’t have clear work-life boundaries which resulted in work and university taking over my life a lot of the time. During the first half of the year, I was doing 12-16 hour work/study days (7/7) in order to manage university and work. I feel like I didn’t get over this mindset in the second half of the year. Maintaining this intensity worked for a year but it’s definitely not sustainable so I need to overcome it.
I still spend a lot of time on overhead tasks. I need to delegate more and say no to more things.
Similarly, I multitask too much which significantly reduces my productivity. I have not managed to successfully implement deep work sessions in my work days. I keep allowing myself to get distracted by incoming messages and requests. My deep work sessions need to be completely distraction-free and focused on one top goal.
I need to more ruthlessly categorize tasks using the LNO framework in order to limit my perfectionism to a small set of tasks and areas.
Not having a clear daily agenda with a top goal has sometimes led me to spend too much time on inconsequential tasks while putting off more important ones.
I was not fully present in some work calls, especially team calls. Moving forward, I want to be either 100% or 0% in. If a meeting is relevant to me, I’ll dedicate my full concentration in that tine. If it’s not, I won’t join. No 50%.
Relationships
Score: 6/10
Highlights
Maintained (almost) daily evening calls with my family.
Went on a long weekend trip to the south of France with my dad and went on a beautiful hike across the Basque mountains.
Scheduled occasional catch-ups and social activities with friends and colleagues
I had some great flatmates during my university time which I’m still in touch with. Two of them left the Netherlands so I moved into a new flat with the one that stayed. I now really appreciate living in a bigger space with less people.
I really enjoy my team at EVBox and I’m lucky to call a few of my colleagues and ex-colleagues friends.
Areas of improvement
Many days I was somewhat disengaged in the family calls and multi-tasked. Moving forward I want to dedicate all my energy in thoughtful engagement during those calls. The calls can be shorter but need to be of higher quality on my end.
I have lost touch with many friends and connections due to not checking in regularly. I suppose this is natural to some extent but I feel like I could have done a better job in some instances.
In university I didn’t make any efforts to connect with my classmates. Instead I focused on learning the study material as efficiently as possible while doing my job on the side.
I could have said yes to more social events and spent more social time with colleagues instead of prioritizing work all the time.
Personal finance
Score: 5/10
Highlights
I increased my salary throughout the year to a satisfactory level.
I occasionally invested in lump-sums. My investment portfolio has performed relatively well despite my lack of attention this year. That is the benefit of a passive strategy.
I maintained my personal income statement throughout the entire year to track my income and expenses.
Areas of improvement
I did not follow through with my plan to invest a fixed % of my income every month. This is partly due to how turbulent the year was but partly because of lacking discipline and de-prioritization of my finances in favor of other life areas.
I spent a lot more money than expected on buying things for the new apartment, new clothes, and accessories. I’m happy with all my purchases but I need to adjust my budgeting to match my philosophy of buying quality things that will last a long time.
Health
Score: 5/10
Highlights
After graduating, I finally joined a football team again and started to play regularly.
I was introduced to bouldering in March and got really into it. I went to the bouldering gym regularly (2-4 times a week) until September when I injured my toe.
Areas of improvement
I aimed to run the Amsterdam Marathon in October but did not have a proper training plan. I eventually had to cancel because of my toe injury but to be honest I was in no shape to run a marathon. This lack of planning was a mistake I did when running the Rotterdam marathon last year as well.
I have not warmed up and stretched properly for neither football or bouldering which partly explains my toe injury.
I have not maintained any morning routine
Several people has pointed out that my posture is not great. If more than one person says it, it’s definitely something I need to pay more attention to and correct.
I have not been eating correctly for a large part of the year: skipping meals, eating out too much, consuming too much sugar etc.
I have been very stressed this year due to the intensity of my schedule.
I have been more sick this year than in most other years.
Overall
Overall score: 6/10
2022 was an extremely intense year for me. I’m proud of all the things I’ve accomplished and I’d consider it to be a very successful year. However, there were definitely a lot of low-point moments from which I’ve taken some valuable lessons which I will incorporate moving forward.
In general, I feel like I’ve been lacking the foundations for making important life decisions. In particular, a clear priority of these life areas as well as a long-term vision. I have been reflecting about slow productivity and I want to start working with focus towards a vision of how I want my life to look like.
