My 2021 Annual Review

Time for my 2021 annu­al review.

In this post, I’ll do my best to answer these three ques­tions: 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:

What Went Well This Year?

Simplicity. For 2021, I wanted to sim­pli­fy my life. I got rid of lots of stuff. I also organ­ised our entire home, spend­ing quite a lot of money on boxes, draw­ers, labels, appli­ances, less soft­ware, routines etc. This was easy to do, but the pos­it­ive effects have been monumental.

Seven years without alco­hol. Yet anoth­er year without alco­hol. And still no prob­lems what­so­ever. In February, I drank a mouth­ful of an alco­hol­ic bever­age by mis­take, but that’s all.

OMAD (One Meal A Day). In 2021, I transitioned into eat­ing One Meal a Day (OMAD). I prac­tice inter­mit­tent fast­ing for 23 hours daily by eat­ing one daily meal. It sounds extreme, but this life­style choice works excep­tion­ally well for me. I will stick to this style of eat­ing in 2022 as well.

No snacks or candy. Since I’m stick­ing to the OMAD style (23:1), it was easy to elim­in­ate all types of snacks and candy from my diet.

A daily glass of wheat­grass juice. I might get too little potassi­um (accord­ing to some ran­dom YouTube video). And wheat­grass juice is an excel­lent source of potassium.

Supplements. I ate extra D vit­am­ins every day in 2021.

Strength train­ing. I dead­lif­ted 200% of my body weight.

A per­fect blood test. A few years ago, I tested my blood vitals. I wasn’t too impressed with my res­ults. Extra weight, poor sleep, and work-related stress had taken their toll. In August of 2021, I took a per­fect blood test (i.e. with­in all nor­mal para­met­ers). I’m incred­ibly proud of this accom­plish­ment — it took a lot of effort.

Updating my home office. I decided to invest in my home office this year. I went a little over­board with mul­tiple cam­er­as, micro­phones, an audio inter­face, a new mon­it­or and peri­pher­als, light­ing, a new chair etc. But it didn’t take me long to real­ise it was worth every penny!

What Didn’t Go So Well This Year?

Zero busi­ness growth. My busi­ness didn’t grow this year. It’s a Covid-19 effect res­ult, I think. Business-wise, I just kept the engine running.

Zero extra­vag­an­zas. This was a year of no travel, of no mak­ing of new friends, of no explor­a­tion of new places, of no parties, of no cel­eb­ra­tions. My fam­ily and I kept our heads low through­out 2021.

Not enough pho­to­graphy. I got a lot of spir­itu­al energy from nature pho­to­graphy in pre­vi­ous years, but my pho­to­graphy hit some plat­eau. I hope to redis­cov­er pho­to­graphy in 2022.

What Am I Working Toward?

Do some­thing fresh with my online pres­ence. I’ve been blog­ging in some shape or form since 2001. I enjoy hav­ing a space where I can devel­op thoughts and fur­ther my learn­ing. But per­haps I can do more? I’ve been work­ing on an online course for sev­er­al years — maybe 2022 is the year to go live? I hope so.

“Do it or do it not; there is no try.” This com­ing year, I want to focus my atten­tion on few­er ideas but instead push those ideas further.

Stay pos­it­ive. In the lat­ter half of 2021, I have had a more pos­it­ive out­look on life than ever. This wasn’t planned; it was some­thing that just happened. And it was glor­i­ous! My idea is to stick with this mind­set for 2022 as well.