My personal 2019 reflections
📌 My 2019 Word of the Year: Fearless
🎯 My 2019 Yearly Goals:
- Become a mobile developer ✅
- Build my own app ✅
- Become a writer on Medium ✅
Hello friends 👋🏼
2019 has been the year of forging a new life path and building a new foundation for my life.
Here are my reflections on the past year:
On Achievements
Word of the year:
My word of the year for 2019 was fearless.
Choosing a word of the year serves as an overarching, high level term for me that aligns my life with my concrete goals. I picked “fearless” as my word of the year because I realized I had a lot of fears that were holding me back; being fearless helped me embrace my new life path and jump head first into learning how to program mobile apps. Using a word of the year is a technique I picked up from noah kagan in his podcast episode on goal setting.
Yearly goals:
At the beginning of the year, I set 3 yearly goals I wanted to accomplish:
- 👨🏻💻Become a mobile developer ✅
- 📱Build my own app ✅
- 🖋Become a writer on Medium ✅
I succeeded in accomplishing all 3! 🥳
Become a mobile developer:
This was by far the most difficult, frustrating, time-consuming yearly goal. It took me almost the entire year (11 months) to accomplish this goal and become a mobile developer with no programming background or previous experience. This is also the goal that makes me most proud.
I became a Google Certified Android Engineer, mastered core Android development and fundamental programming, and have built hundreds of bite-size applications.
Check.
Build my own app:
Originally, I was thinking I would have released the mobile app I am working on in August 2019… but becoming a mobile developer took much longer than I had anticipated. I also suffered from severe seasonal allergies (which I will discuss later), which debilitated and slowed me down for half the year.
Late December rolled around, so in order to accomplish this yearly goal, I rapidly developed an app for my personal CV and uploaded it to the Google Play Store. I am glad I did this, because I learned that uploading an app to the Google Play Store actually was not too difficult and not too time-consuming. (I had previously thought it would have been much more difficult and taken significantly more time.)
So technically I built my own app and published it on the Google Play Store… just not the one I had in mind. 😅 (I will be putting the one I had in mind in my 2020 yearly goals.)
I’ll give it to myself.
Check.
Become a writer on Medium:
I have wanted to start writing on Medium for a while. I had been reading on Medium for over a year, and I wanted to start writing simply to tell my story and connect with people. I love the platform and it has given me an incredible amount of value.
I published my first Medium article in “The Ascent” and it was also curated by the Medium staff to be featured in the “Self” topic. I have a lot of content I am developing for Medium and plan to keep writing regularly throughout 2020. You can follow me on Medium to see my future posts.
Check.
On Setbacks
Seasonal Allergies
Boy oh boy. When February rolled around, I lost all my momentum. Seasonal allergies devastated my body and threw me way off course. From February to July, I was basically debilitated most of the day because allergy season was so bad and my body is extremely sensitive to pollen. I was still able to progress, but that was only after caffeinating myself to an unhealthy level, and even with all the caffeine, I was still only able to work about 3 hours per day before losing all my energy.
2020 allergies- please have mercy on my sensitive body 🙏
On Relationships
Building existing relationships
I focused on building and enhancing my current relationships instead of trying to meet new people and build new ones. I am really proud of myself for focusing on this and investing time into building up my current relationships, because I prefer to have fewer meaningful relationships over many shallow relationships.
Meeting someone
I am fortunate I was able to meet someone who has similar life goals as me and we were able to get to know each other so well. It happened naturally as well, which was pretty sweet. I am grateful to have someone in my life that supports what I am doing and can also understand it.
On Bad Tendencies
Getting upset for things out of my control
I noticed I have a tendency to get upset when things out of my control do not work out. I was displeased when I had a job interview this year, in which they were flabbergasted by me and my knowledge, yet I was inexplicably ghosted after showcasing my skills as an Android developer. I was confused and distressed for a while after that. But as the Stoics preach, I need to learn to not get upset from things which are out of my control. In 2020, I am going to stay mindful that some things are simply out of my control and not get so down when things do not work out.
Not listening to my body
Another one my bad tendencies is pushing myself when I need to rest. A big culprit to this was allergy season, which forced me to drown myself in caffeine to function and held me back from going to the gym by depleting my energy. This tendency has its pros and cons. The positive aspect is that I can still get work done even when I feel terrible. The negative aspect is that I tend to get sick and my health starts to suffer as a consequence. So in 2020, I am making a conscious effort to be more generous to myself, listen to my body, and let myself rest when I need to.
On Good Tendencies
2019 was the year I really solidified plenty of good tendencies related to productivity, time management, and mindfulness.
Productivity, time management, and mindfulness habits:
I started using Trello to actively document my work flows and keep me laser-focused during my work blocks.
I setup workflows with Alfred to lessen the cognitive load on my brain when setting up a new work flow.
I consistently used Smarter Time to track my time and focus on one task at a time.
I meditated daily and continued to practice mindfulness, which has enhanced my self-awareness and ability to be fully present.
I finally established a consistent wake/sleep time and continued a strict sleep hygiene regimen, which has given me more energy.
Looking Ahead
📌 My 2020 Word of the Year: Proactive
I am choosing “proactive” as my word of the year because I am establishing a new identity as a software engineer and startup founder- being proactive will help me achieve establish my new identity.
🎯 My 2020 Yearly Goals:
- Build and launch the app I am working on 🚀
- Become financially independent from my entrepreneurial ventures (i.e., writing, programming client work, startup ventures) 🔓
- Eliminate my caffeine dependence ☕️
These are some ambitious goals, but if 2019 was any indicator, I will end up accomplishing all 3.
Hi, I’m Ash 👋🏼 Let’s connect!
🌐 ashtonjones.dev | 👥 @TJgrapes | ✉️ ashtonjonesdev@gmail.com
👨💻 Google Certified Android Engineer |
✍ Writer |
🧘♂️ Stoic && Meditator
