A quick blog post about things I learned and accomplished in 2012 and goals areas of focus for 2013.
I hope that by writing them down there’s more chance of me actually doing them.
Life accomplishment of 2012
I married this lovely lady.
New software/apps/tools for 2012
Some of these apps I had used before, but in 2012 I found myself becoming more reliant on them and working them into my daily routine.
- Rdio for streaming music
- Beats headphones for listening to music and getting in the "zone"
- Hammer for Mac (and Anvil) for smaller lightweight websites that don't require a back-end
- MacBook Pro with Retina Display which makes more of a difference than I originally thought
- Several user experience tools including Qualaroo and Mixpanel which I find indispensable
- Heroku for hosting web apps
Things I learned and/or put into practice in 2012
- Started learning Coffeescript for a small Rails project
- Shared some of my code on Github for the first time
- Shipped my first product to Heroku
- Started learning Node.js
- Started designing for retina displays
- Learned how to develop an iPhone app using Titanium
- Shipped a new website and iPhone app for Kareo, along with several software updates
- Shipped a novelty Twitter website Twit Amore for Valentine's Day
Other things I did in 2012
Books read in 2012
- Icon handbook by Jon Hicks
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- Designing for emotion by Aaron Walter
- Information dashboard design by Stephen Few
- The happiness project by Gretchen Rubin
- The elements of content strategy by Erin Kissane
- The 4-hour body by Timothy Ferriss
- Design is a job by Mike Monteiro
Goals for 2012
A look back at the goals I set this time last year.
1. Be more mobile focused Success. Designing responsive websites and with mobile in mind is now a baked in standard and I managed to ship a couple of mobile apps.
2. Release an iPhone app Success. All be it a basic app, I built What Would Marty Do? iPhone app.
3. Compete in a triathlon Fail. Didn’t even get around to buying a road bike.
4. Snowboard Success. This was a lot of fun and thanks to Kris Davis for teaching me.
5. Release at least 3 side projects Fail. 2/3 isn’t bad but there are 4 projects that I started in 2012 and failed to ship.
Areas of focus for 2013
After reading Peter Bregman’s article, I decided that it might be better to have areas of focus as opposed to setting goals I can’t keep.
1. Shipping I love shipping products and getting stuff out there for the world to see. You learn so much through the build, measure, learn process. Hopefully some of those projects I started last year will come to fruition.
2. Contribute more to open source Last year I started sharing stuff on Github. I plan to do more of that this year, whether it be on Github, my blog, Codepen or elsewhere.
3. Write less Usually every January I tell myself I’m going to write more, which tends to lend to me not writing at all. Hopefully if I focus on writing less and shortening my posts I’ll be able to publish more often.
4. Read less Same goes for reading. Between books, Twitter, RSS feeds, email, Instapaper there is too much to consume and keep track of. Plus most of it is useless or repetitive. Debating whether to give up on the RSS feeds and stick to Twitter or a tool like Sidebar to help focus on the newsworthy articles.
That’s it. Exciting year ahead.
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