2021 in Review

In the words of Stewart Stafford

“Cast aside any predictions or assumptions that you have about life - what you think is going to happen never does.”

It was a wild year.

Career

2021 was a pretty interesting year for me career-wise. I got new engagements that 9xed my income... Became a better engineer and solved more complex engineering and business problems.

Becoming a Founder

Towards the end of 2020 I started working on an idea for an e-commerce platform, coming into 2021 the idea started to grow into a potential product so I assembled a team to work on it with me, and months later in Nov, we launched EasyCart. An e-commerce platform that helps merchants sell better by giving them AI-powered store assistants to respond to messages and customer interactions across multiple channels.

Mentoring

Raised the cumulative number of people I have taught and mentored to over 100. Bought laptops for 2 budding software engineers to assist their journey. Sponsored 5 people to a software engineering BootCamp and helped as many people as I could with career advice and other forms of assistance within my capacity.

Found love

Found love in the most unexpected place... Looking forward to growing with this woman next year.

Personal development

Read 2 books which was a significant drop for me but I had other things taking my time, leaned more towards audiobooks and podcasts this year. Grew my skills. Not much to say here.

Oh, I also bought myself my entire Christmas wishlist, not sure this has anything to do with personal development, it's just a major flex.

Family

Took on major responsibilities like my sibling's education and initiated the renovation of my parent's home.

The dark side

The year wasn't all great... Had an accident that could have easily taken my life but thankfully I came out unharmed. Had covid. Experienced burnout and mental collapse at some point.

What happens now

Thanks to the number of things 2021 set in motion, I have so much to look forward to next year.

Looking forward to excelling at my current engagements.

I might no longer have the time for teaching and personal mentorship but I am looking forward to just helping more people in general and being as philanthropic as I can.

Looking forward to scaling my startup.

Also looking forward to traveling more... I want to visit 2 or 3 countries next year.

I'd also like to speak at an event next year.

A lot more stuff that I do not wish to share as well.

Conclusion

The major thing I learned this year in relation to crushing goals is it's not about new year resolutions and fancy planner apps. It's just about having priorities and being intentional about them, and of course, making sacrifices and the necessary trade-offs to help you achieve them.

I've also learned not to tie your happiness to whatever plans you have because things often don't work out how you visualize and a lot of people just get depressed when this happens.

That's enough sensible talk for now... Merry Christmas and a Lovely New Year ✌️.