Looking back to 2022 and hoping for a better 2023
Last year I wrote about my 2021 and personal expectations for 2022. I should be honest and say most of my expectations are failed. Well, that’s life and sometimes it happens.
For 2023 I don’t want to create high expectations for myself, instead, I am planning to create a system of habits which might help me to achieve what I want. Before diving into my past and future expectations I’d like to summarize 2022 as a note to my self-history.
What happened in 2022?
I started 2022 in a managerial role leading a team of two engineers who are responsible for a core product and a bunch of automation scripts around the core. I was lucky to find and onboard two more great engineers and an awesome product manager and grew the team to 5 persons. Growing a team while trying to nurture a safe environment is energy consuming and I suppose this had some effect on my 2022 expectations’ failure.
Unfortunately during this journey, I decided that I was not ready to be in a managerial role yet and stepped out of the company to find myself an individual contributor role again. I am grateful for the opportunity to try leadership, and some years later I may jump into that wagon again not right now.
One very positive memory is the feedback I gathered from my teammates and other peers.
On the personal side, definitely 2022 was not the best year ever. I had to have surgery and just last week I learnt that I need to have a second one as soon as possible. And of course, this affected my expectations from 2023.
2022 Expectations check
Looking at the last year’s article I was not very transparent with my expectations, this year I will be more open.
- In my career goals, I wanted to earn two certificates, I was only able to get one.
- Also as part of my career, I wanted to start a side income. I collected a few bucks from the medium which may buy me a coffee. So I can count this as a success. :)
- Content creation goals are failed miserably, I wanted to create a post at least once a month on medium. But finished the year with 4 posts only. Though I have some drafts, which can be completed in 2023.
- I decided that I should have at least read 24 books in 2022, which was not completed. I was able to read only 14 books.
- Finally, I had some financial goals, which are about my two stock portfolios. With some luck, I was able to achieve my targets.
2023 Expectations
As I learnt my lesson from my failures in 2022, I decided to keep some of my goals more at the contribution level instead of the target level, as they are affected by outer events. What does that even mean? Easy, instead of saying that I will have x$ amount of stock portfolio, I say I will add y$ amount to my investments every month.
- First and foremost my health, due to my job and personal preferences I am living a very sedentary life. I decided to (1) walk more and hit my step count target at least 4 times a week. (2) do additional cardio training at least 4 times a week, which might get affected by my surgery, (3) keep my BMI between 24.5 and 25.5.
- When it comes to personal development I want to finish reading 24 books again. Let’s see how many I will read in the end.
- On the financial side (1) I want to regularly grow my investment portfolio with monthly contributions (2) build our family’s emergency fund again to have resources to suffice 6 months (3) have a total of 100$ side hustle income
- (1) I will be more active on Medium, (2) I will be more active on Twitter and (3) I will be more active on youtube.
- And again I will be taking care of my health, this will be the main focus in 2023.
I wish you all a healthy and happy new year, hope you will hit all your targets. If you like to read more about my learnings on leadership and my data analytics experience feel free to follow me. I will be more active in 2023, I promise.
