DEV Community: Kenneth

My 2020 Personal Retrospective

Kenneth — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 09:47:06 +0000

A new year, a new recap! But, just like last year, we're going to do it a bit differently.

Last year, I did a retrospective instead of a recap. This was inspired by Jason Lengstorf his own retrospective post.

I did find the format very useful and it spoke to me as a developer. Since retrospectives are a part of my job.

So let's start off with the first main question.

Where was I at the end of 2019?

Looking back at my previous retrospective I mentioned my son Aiden.

At the end of 2019, we were still not out of the health issue department. Our son still had issues with his hips.

Healthwise, I was at an all-time low. My weight was at it's worst. So I made a goal to lose some.

I'd hoped to achieve this by having a healthy diet and plenty of exercises.

As for work, I was still a Technical Team Lead at my client Easyfairs.

With still much to learn, I had successfully gained the trust of both the team and the product owner.

What went well in 2020?

In 2020 we, finally, got the good news that our son was healthy. His hip displacement was finally solved. Which means we could focus on his progress. This also means that in 2020 he was able to take his first steps. Now, he dashes around the house and keeps us on our toes!

He also started saying words which means we have to watch ours. Kids pick up things fast, especially the things they're not supposed to pick up.

On another personal level, we finally finished the plans for our house. This means in 2021, we can start building!

So, exciting times ahead!

Professionally, I'm still a Technical Team Lead at Easyfairs. Even with the challenging state of the event hosting business I'm still much appreciated by my client.

What could have gone better in 2020?

Missed opportunities

With COVID ruling our lives and forcing us to change our way of life, there were a lot of hidden opportunities. I'm thinking mostly about all the time I gained not spending on traffic.

All of that time was mostly wasted on trivial things. Things that do not add to the value of life.

As someone who has a lot of ambition but is held back by his own thoughts, I could have made a lot of progress.

Then again, I think everyone probably feels that way.

Looking back, it just feels like I had enough time to just do the things I wanted to achieve. Things like content creation, building a Twitch community, developing my own product, ...

(Mental) Health

I thought 2019 was bad but 2020 said "Hold my beer!". My weight is now even higher and COVID did not help on the mental side.

A lot of anxiety was triggered because of financial "struggle". I put that in quotes because there are people who have it worse. I realize that. Though I feel that that does not take away my own mental struggle with this.

My wife lost almost her complete income and had to close down her business due to COVID. In the meantime, my client was letting go of both freelancers and employees left and right. Of a team of 13, only 6 are left. I was among the lucky ones that got to stay.

But not at a caveat, we had to reduce the number of hours that we worked. This means I had time left to work on other projects. But sadly, I feel like I wasted that time as well.

What will I change going into 2021?

Overall 2020 was a year full of struggle. There is no way and reason to sugarcoat it.

But we have to move on and keep a positive mindset. This is why I set some new goals for 2021.

I kept these goals pretty loose and high level for a reason. I want them to guide and motivate me instead of having them cause anxiety.

That is also one of the reasons why I did not add a consistency check. I do not want to be forcing myself to, f.e., post each week and then getting anxious because I do not know what to write about.
Twitch is the only exception to this rule. If I do not stream consistently, it will be harder to reach the affiliate status.

High-level 2021 goals

Improve my health.
- Weight: 70 kg
- Number of kilometers walked: 500km
- Number of kilometers biked: 800km
- Do 1 bike ride of at least 100km
Content Creation.
- Twitch: Gain affiliate status
- YouTube: Get 100 subscribers, so I can get a custom link
- Write more blog posts than last year
- Start a podcast, as an experiment to see how it feels

What are your goals for 2021?

If you want to do a retrospective as well there are 3 questions to answer:

What went well?
What could have gone better?
What will I change going forward?

If you do, and you make it public, feel free to tweet Jason and me to let us know. Over on Jason his post, there's also a link to a supportive community to bounce ideas off.

Happy retrospective!

Improving My Productivity And Happiness With Things

Kenneth — Tue, 19 May 2020 13:20:26 +0000

For years now I've had my share of productivity apps that I used. From simple analog notebooks to Wunderlist, from RememberTheMilk to Things. I've tried them all. Things was the last one I tried and it stuck.

But this past year, it feels like I've not yet used Things to it's fullest potential. This meant I had to put in extra work to make me work. Now I've refined the process to make Things work for me.
If that makes sense.

Things

Things is a powerful todo application out of the box.
It has the standard functionality that everyone expects from a good todo application. But it also contains much more like:

Different views
Area's
Projects
Things URL

The downside is that this is only available on the Apple systems.

The Simple Way

What I started with was very simple.
I created a few areas for that worked for me:

SchabrechtsK
Agilix
Learning
Blogging
Vlogging
Projects

Each of these contained projects depending on what the todos relate to. These were projects like general and financial. Except for Blogging, vlogging, and projects.

Under blogging, I had several projects. Each named after the categories I used. Within each project was a todo item per blog post.
The same applied to the vlogging area.
The project area contained all the projects that I worked on. This ranges from my website to client-related projects.

This meant I had to hunt down each of my todo's. Whenever I had time left I needed to go through each of the todo's and check what it is that I could do and if I wanted to do it.
There was no sign of how big a todo was or how important it was.

The New Way

Things had to change, pun intended. I was spending too much time on finding the right todo's that were important and would fit in the available time. So I started using more of the functionality that Things offered. I also optimized those that were already in place.

Area's & Projects

Now that I had a way to tag my todo's to see priority and size I needed to clean up the structure of my lists.

One of the mistakes I was making is that I was using projects to place todo's that were neverending. A project like General or Finances would never end. Because I add todos to these at least every week to one of these. Never-ending projects are a big nono.
I made the same mistake to my Blogging and Vlogging areas.

So I redefined my areas. I now have a Personal area for all my personal todo's about family, health, and household. A SchabrechtsK area for everything related to skills and personal business, think speaking, researching apps, ...
Next, we have Agilix for all my business-related todo's. And a Projects to keep track of (potential) projects.
The Vlogging, Blogging, and Learning stayed as areas.

For each of these area's I removed the ever going projects. I moved all those todos inside the areas. Which means that all the projects are actual projects with a beginning and an end. This leads to a much easier overview of what is going on and what is in the pipelines.

Putting It All Together

Now that I have my tags, areas, and projects sorted out it was time to put it all together.
For this, I use the planning functionality of Things.

Whenever I have a new todo I place it in the Inbox first. Then I review it and put the correct tags in place.
If possible I will add a start date and/or deadline to it.
Next, I place it in the correct area. If needed I will add it to a project or give it it's own project.

Things has a Today view. In this view, we see all the todo's of which the start date is today or passed. We also see all the todo's of which the deadline is today or passed. This gives a nice overview of what I should be working on today.

When I'm done with my todo's for today I can go to Upcoming to see what is coming up the next few days.
If I want I can also go to Anytime and start filtering my todo's based on my tags. This makes that I can work ahead on different tasks, finding the most important todo's first.
Depending on how much time I have left I can also sort on the size of the todos.

Things has a nice guideline for this: Download the full Things Todo Guideline

Sidenote

One of the pitfalls I use to fall in was that I thought I needed to finish what I started on the same day. I've since dropped that notion. This post, for example, stayed in my Today list for several days. The difference now is that I worked on this post a little bit every day.
This is because it's not THE most important todo on my list but also because writing takes time. That is something that also applies to other todo's.

So, don't beat yourself up if you did not finish your todo list today. There is always tomorrow.

Conclusion

With this system in place, my todo list is doing the heavy lifting for me instead of vice versa.
It is allowing me to more productive while working on the things that matter and fit in the time I have.

I hope this helps you as well to set up a productivity system that can help you. I realize that todo lists and managing them is a very personal thing. Everyone has a different way that works for them. But trial and error will get you there, so take of this what works for you and drop the rest.