2021 Annual review

Another lap around the sun is complete. Here's a recap of my 2021 following a slightly modified version of James Clear's annual review template.

If you want to do your own annual review here is the format I'm using:

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go so well this year?
• What did I learn?
• Where do you want to be this time next year?

As always these year reviews are personal experiences that may be useful to you, not direct life advice for you to follow.

What went well this year?

WiseStudio. My freelance business transitioned into an agency business this year and at first I struggled.

I didn't want the typical high stress, always on call agency lifestyle. But I know that to achieve my ambitions I have to scale up operations and transition from freelancer (which is essentially a high-paying job) to entrepreneur.

The agency is still in it's early days but so far it's going great, we've refined our services down to the few things we do best and have a very clear idea of who we want to work with.

The best part about the agency business model is that it perfectly complements my long-term ambitions of building a diverse portfolio of products.

Travel. When I was 16 I read The Four Hour Work Week, in it Tim Ferriss shares his novel lifestyle (at the time) of running a business while travelling the world.

Ever since reading that book I've wanted to be a digital nomad, living out of a backpack and working on my business in remote locations. But just as that became a possibility financially the Covid-19 pandemic struck making travel almost impossible.

In October we finally managed to start nomading, spending the rest of the year in Portugal where we split our time between Porto and Lisbon.

While the experience was incredible (and we may even move to Portugal in future) one thing became apparent — I don't want to be a digital nomad (not currently at least).

Through travelling I realised a few things:

• I thrive off habits, routines and systems all things that are difficult to establish when you're moving every few weeks or months
• Constantly travelling takes up a lot of your brain space, I'd often find myself procrastinating in the form of searching AirBnB for places to go the following few months.
• Living in one place for a few years at a time with the option to travel anytime is more appealing to me than swapping cities every month.

Ultimately traveling went really well this year, it helped to show me exactly what lifestyle I want.

Sunday Filter Newsletter. The newsletter grew steadily this year but honestly I never really focused on growing it. I never posted on Twitter about it, updated the archive on my website or really talked about it at all.

The lack of self-promotion comes down to the lack of creation on other platforms this year but I'm still incredibly happy with how the Sunday Filter is going.

I've tweaked and refined the newsletter throughout the year and now feel like it's in a great place. I haven't missed an edition all year and now I've changed it to bi-weekly I sit down every other week excited to write.

Mental clarity. One unexpected consequence of running a remote business is the paradox of choice you're faced with.

When you know you can do anything and live anywhere it becomes difficult to make decisions.

Should I start an Ecommerce business or a YouTube channel? Live in the US or Europe?

In the past having so many options led me to wanting to do everything at once. Then trying to pursue multiple directions at once led to inaction.

This year I've had the mental clarity that I haven't had in previous years, I've internalised that I can do anything I want, but not everything.

There is plenty of time in life to get around to all the important things but you need to live life in seasons.

What didn't go so well this year?

Lots of great things happened in 2021 but there were also some not so great things as well.

YouTube & Writing. This year I fell short on the writing and YouTube front. I know I want to create more but when you're in the early stages of building a company actually carving out the time is difficult.

It's not that I don't have the time to create, it's that I kept getting so caught up in the day-to-day and never made the time.

In the past I have struggled with knowing what to create, I've always felt like I needed a 'niche' before I could start but now I'm clear on my overall mission I know exactly what I need to create.

Everything stems from sitting down and writing so this coming year I am making daily writing a non-negotiable.

Making internet friends. Often the best friendships stem from the internet as your friendship is based solely on shared interests and ideas, not location.

This year I made a couple new internet friends but I want to focus on making more. A large part of this stems from creating more on the internet because when you put your ideas out there you act like a lighthouse for others who share those ideas.

In order to make more internet friends and IRL friends in 2022 I need to be the person who goes first.

Hopefully, in 2022 I am also able to turn a few internet friends into real-life friends (travel permitting).

Relaxing. Throughout the year I struggled with switching off from work. I intentionally made sure I wasn't burning the midnight oil, working all of the hours but whenever I wasn't working I almost felt bad for not working.

Fully switching off and not thinking about business was a struggle. 95% of the time being so invested in building things is not an issue as I enjoy the work but I know that my work and mental health would benefit from having more time completely disconnected.

Changing this habit comes down to re-wiring the way I think about work. Internally I know it's much better to work in high energy sprints then to rest but when your to-do list is theoretically never ending it's easy to try check as many items off as possible every day.

What did I learn?

Growth takes time: When I first started working on building things on the internet at 16 I thought that it wouldn't take long to figure out exactly what I wanted to do and make a living from it.

When I quit college on my 18th birthday to go all in on this whole internet entrepreneurship thing I still thought the same.

Now at 22 I understand that I'm still figuring it out and that's okay. I'm 6 years into building internet projects but I still feel like I'm only just getting started.

I'm still looking for the right combination of projects I want to work on and want to build long-term but each day I inch closer to where I want to be.

I'm no longer making the mistakes I was a year ago and this time next year I won't be making the mistakes I am now.

As I mentioned above this year has brought mental clarity and a large part of that is learning to be patient. I know I will get where I want to go, the key is to just keep learning.

Perfection through iteration.

Self-confidence. An observation I made of myself earlier in the year is how much my self-confidence has developed in the last couple of years.

I no longer feel anxious about little things like what other people think of me, I'm not nervous about jumping on a call with someone new and I don't fear being questioned on something because I know who I am and what I'm doing.

I spent some time trying to deconstruct how this happened and I could pinpoint 2 things:

1. Taking on challenges and delivering — when you run a service business you will often agree to work you don't know exactly how to do and then figure it out as you go. Having the confidence that you can figure it out is invaluable.
2. Understanding myself — having spent a lot of time journalling, reflecting and ideating over the last 4+ years I feel like I understand who I am, what I want and how I am going to get there. This assurance helps to build self-confidence.

Life is great, enjoy the journey. For some reason I am always happy, I'm not sure why but 97% of the time I default to happiness and positivity — this does balance itself out with some intense dips in happiness but every time I return to this baseline of defaulting to optimism.

But even though I'm almost always happy and I work on things I enjoy it can be easy to take the journey for granted.

We constantly want to achieve the next thing (especially when we're young and trying to get a few wins on the board) making it easy to forget to stop and appreciate where you currently are.

This year I learned to enjoy the journey and focus a little less on the destination.

Where do you want to be this time next year?

I've meditated on this question over the past couple of weeks and there is one thing that stands out.

This time next year I want over 50% of my income to come from products and tools, not just service work.

The reason for this is that ultimately I want to reach a larger amount of people and have a bigger impact than something like freelancing or running an agency offers.

While I really enjoy working 1-1 with clients and helping to solve their problems, for me this is a means to an end.

Agency work allows me to build a great team, help good companies, build skills, relationships and earn money so that ultimately we can solve problems with products and content.

There are two sets of people I am looking to help:

1. Entrepreneurs and makers
2. Designers + No/low code freelancers

Over the next 12 months the aim is to serve these people through products and tools, not just services.

In previous years I publicly set my goals and aspirations for the coming year, but this year I am keeping those to myself. Primarily because sharing them in public makes it feel like you've almost completed them, but also because I know they will likely evolve as the year goes on. As Derek Sivers says it's probably best to keep your goals to yourself.

Have a fantastic 2022!