2020 Year in Review

December 25, 2020

Welcome back, earlier in January of this year I published a post about my 2020: Self Development Goals, little did I know just one month later Covid came and Ireland was put in a lock down that is pretty much still ongoing. I hope you are doing well and staying safe, lets discuss how my 2020 went.

Goals

Goal: Promotion to Staff Software Engineer
Outcome: Not Achieved - I did let my manager know about my ambitions but Covid kinda threw most Hiring / Promotion plans out the window. This will be a Goal I continue to pursue in 2021.

Goal: Publish 12 Blog Posts
Outcome: Achieved - At this point I have published 20 Blog posts (including this one), this was a good year for blog posts considering I was extremely busy in my role at Walmart launching a new Product. Ideally I would like to get to publishing at least once per week (52 total) but 20 was great for this year.

Goal: Read 12 non-fiction Books Outcome: Achieved - I love books, my audible yearly subscription is something I use to the max every year. Here is a list of books I was able to read this year:

Algorithms to live by - Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths
Mindset - The New Psychology of Success
5 Second Rule - Mel Robins
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
The 5am Club - Robin Sharma
Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
Do the Work - Steven Pressfield
The Decision - Kevin Hart
The 4 hour work week - Tim Ferris (Re-read)
12 Week Year (Re-read) - Brian P. Moran
How will you measure your life - Clayton M. Christensen
Mastery - Robert Greene

Goal: Complete at least 30 - 50 Leet Code Questions Outcome: Not Achieved - I planned on doing a few questions every month but I was never able to just sit down and code on them. I did some small side projects which I think I found more enjoyable than the leet code questions. I do plan on trying to do more of these leet code / Algorithm / Challenge type questions just to keep my memory fresh of Data structures and Algorithms.

Conclusion

Overall I had 4 main public main goals, I achieved 2 of them and didn’t achieve 2 of them (50% success rate), I do think Covid impacted my promotion goal and maybe my leet code goal but instead of making excuses I am going to make a plan to do everything in my control to achieve these and more goals next year. I hope you had a safe and somewhat enjoyable 2020 and you achieved some of your goals.

Until next time

Jason