My 2015 Annual Review

Time for my 2015 annu­al review.

I’ll do my best to answer three ques­tions in this post: ¹This format is inspired by James Clear’s annu­al reviews.

What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well this year?
What am I work­ing toward?

Here we go:

1. What Went Well This Year?

Family life. My son, Jack, was born in September 2014, but 2015 was when I got to know him. Everything is turned upside-down, of course, but I’m happy to have spent so much time with him this year. And I’m equally thank­ful to share this jour­ney with my beloved wife, Lisah.

Freelance life­style. I’ve been work­ing at vari­ous agen­cies for the last dec­ade, so the ‘agency life­style’ is my default set­ting. When I star­ted my com­pany in 2013, I always thought that I would build an agency in the back of my mind. However, in 2015, I embraced the fact that freel­an­cing is a way of life that’s excit­ing to me.

28 days. It wasn’t planned, but one day I got the idea of cre­at­ing a free 28-day email course in which I share 28 PR- and digit­al mar­ket­ing “secrets.” I had no expect­a­tions what­so­ever, but I’ve had close to 2,000 par­ti­cipants to date. To me, that’s an unex­pec­ted success.

Declutter. For 2015, I wanted to sim­pli­fy my life fur­ther (and for this, I can recom­mend Essentialism — The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less by Greg McKeown). I tweaked my freel­ance life­style and got rid of lots of mater­i­al stuff. I’ve also suc­cess­fully moved all my paper­work into the cloud.

Quantified self. In 2015, I took action and star­ted to track vari­ous aspects of my life more ser­i­ously. First, I got ser­i­ous about bio­met­rics, DNA ana­lys­is, sleep ana­lys­is, nutri­tion­al intake, heart rate, and train­ing load, you name it. I also track my email beha­viour, invoicing pat­terns, work hours, etc. It’s early days, but it has helped me ask bet­ter questions.

New com­pany name. I changed my busi­ness name from Mad Science Digital to Spin Factory. It was a small — but essen­tial — step to com­mem­or­ate the shift from agency ambi­tions to a freel­ance mindset.

2. What Didn’t Go So Well This Year?

Unfinished side pro­jects. We all have them. I have sev­er­al side pro­jects that I am pur­su­ing. However, the only side pro­ject I man­aged to get off the ground was the 28-day email course — and that mini-pro­ject wasn’t even planned.

Lack of account­ab­il­ity. This is, I think, the main reas­on why many of my side pro­jects nev­er got off the ground. Because what hap­pens if I don’t push these side pro­jects for­ward? Nothing.

3. What Am I Working Toward?

Public speak­ing. For some reas­on, I feel strangely com­fort­able up on stage. However, I’ve always con­sidered myself a PR pro­fes­sion­al but nev­er a speak­er. So, I haven’t pur­sued speak­ing oppor­tun­it­ies pro­act­ively. But in 2016, I’ll strive to take pub­lic speak­ing more seriously.

Survivalism. For years, I’ve been strug­gling to find a hobby. However, noth­ing sticks. I envy people with pas­sions like surf­ing, ski­ing, dan­cing, fash­ion, travel, climb­ing, etc. I’m cur­rently read­ing many books on sur­viv­al­ism and prep­ping; maybe that could be an interest to explore further.