2022 Annual Review - These Are the Ups and Downs of the Year

Quick Intro

First of all, please let me wish you a happy new year, plenty of health, love and happiness.

I would also like to take this opportunity to give you a big thank you for being there and investing your time in reading these lines. 

I hope you'll find value in them.

Now let's move on to the review.

The James Clear Approach (From Atomic Habits)

Did you know about the book called "Atomic Habits"? It's one of the bestsellers on Productivity.

Today's post will be based on the approach shared by its author. 

I'll proceed with my annual review following these key points:

• What went well this year?
• What didn't go so well this year?
• What did I learn this year?

We'll start with the first one.

What went well this year?

Blog growth (pmtricks.net). I launched my blog at the end of 2021. Since then, I've learned a lot. I also committed myself to publishing a total of 2 posts per month, and I'm happy I accomplished this goal.

Medium profile and engagement. Looking for new ways to reach audience, I ended up creating an account on Medium. As of today, I have a total of 1.2K readers and a very high engagement with my audience there. I'm also the owner of one of the Top 3 publications on the platform, with over 100 writers submitting drafts.

La Salle collaboration. I started collaborating with La Salle. I've been guiding and sharing my knowledge about Project Management with the students from the Masters in Project Management. 

Gained new responsibilities at work. 2022 has been a successful year for me professionally. I delivered several key projects with high visibility, which led to new assignments and the opportunity to lead larger teams.

Implemented and stuck to my gym routine. I'm happy with my workout rhythm during 2022. I go to the gym twice a week for high intensity training. The result is that I feel well and stronger than I did a year ago. The progress graphs show the same as well :).

Investments. Instead of seeing the current economic situation as a disaster, I see it as an opportunity. The good thing at this point is that I invest in autopilot mode. This means I'm following the Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) technique each month in the products I trust. 

What didn't go so well this year?

Startup collaboration that didn't take off as expected. A few months ago, a startup contacted me to collaborate with them as an expert. I created a training and shared it with them, but I'm still waiting for the initiative to take off.

My Newsletter. In the early stages of my digital journey, I started collecting emails. I used Mailchimp and then moved to Revue. Now Revue is shutting down, so I need to move to a new one. 

Being too focused on work. My brain is almost constantly working. I need a tool to write down ideas on the go. In my case, Notion works perfectly for this purpose. Being focused on work sometimes prevents me from enjoying the moment. 

Losing touch with some good friends. It's true that relationships evolve, but this is something I'm not proud about. I made new friends this year, but keeping the old ones is something to improve in 2023.

I lost my paddle routine. I've been playing tennis and paddle for more than 10 years. But during 2022 I played barely one match every month. Definitely something to increase for the coming year.

What did I learn this year?

Growing up takes time and effort. Beginnings are tough, specially in social media. When you want to build something, you have to assume you may fail at some point. Take it as new learnings and keep moving.

Move out from your comfort zone. You have two options: Peacefully rest and relax within your comfort zone and accept zero growth, or step out and grow fast. It's your choice.

Embrace challenges and take accountability. This one needs to go hand by hand with the last one. It's proven that taking accountability increases your visibility and the impact of your decisions.

Leverage when possible. There're a lot of tools in the market for increasing your productivity. Make use of them. For instance, my Twitter profile goes in autopilot. I just have to add my new Tweets to the proper pool and the tool keeps posting them fully automated. 

I would love to read your comments below. If you prefer you can also send me a DM on Twitter.

By the way, if you liked what you read, let's connect.