Till now, my years keep being better every year. I think the reason for that is that as years go by, I’m learning more about myself. I know better what I want, so I do better choices that end up making me happier now than last year and this creates a compound effect as time goes by. So I’m hoping that it only gets better with aging.
In 2017 I’ve made some bold bets in some habits, technologies, work and lifestyles that helped make this year great. This are the ones that standed out.
Reading
One choice I made was betting more on reading. Reading gives me a lot of joy and knowledge, so this year I beated my personal record and I ended up reading 15 books.
My 2017 Goodreads page
Developing a product
In 2017 was also the year where I started to build my own product. It’s been an exciting journey, building a product is hard. Not only the technical and business side of things but also keeping motivation, overcoming obstacles. I had some falldowns this year but I was able to recover and ended up the year on my top performance.
Freelancing
I also was fortunate to work freelance with some cool companies that allowed me to work from across the ocean (NY) for the first time. It was great experience and learned a lot.
Writing
I have written more in 2017 than ever, with 13 stories posted on Medium. Invest in books was by far my greatest story ever with 3.6k views.
Learning React
I learned new technologies, one of them was React. And I’m very happy with it, so far It’s been great working with react. I like how react works, and the ecosystem is huge but most importantly the community is great. People like Dan Abramov, Kent C. Dodds, Max Stoiber and lot more, make it really special. Thank you.
Design
I’ve always loved design. Design was what brought me to web development in first place because I wanted to design websites not actually build them, I thought it was to hard for me. So I’ve always read a lot about design, design practices, design systems but never put it to practice in a meaningful way. Since I didn’t had a Mac, I couldn’t use Sketch but then in the end of 2016 I’ve found Figma. It was great, very easy to use and web based which was a requirement since I used linux at the time. I was sold. And had a great opportunity to use it to design my product which made me improve a lot.
Workouts
In 2017 I’ve been very consistent on my workouts, I have trained on average 4 times a week. Ended up the year in my best shape, physically and mentally.
Conclusion
2017 was a great year for me, I improved a lot of habits that made me more productive, better person and happier. This year I want to keep betting in all this things above, I also want to make some more bets. I want to take my eating to the next level, learn a new language and launch a product. I’ve also made explorations with meditation, cryptocurrencies, travel, running in 2017 but at a very surface level that I want to take it further this year.