2016 review and what's next

I almost always set goals for the year. In 2016 I had a bunch of goals and I think it’s fair to say I achieved about 50% of them, which has me beaming! I came to the comforting conclusion about two years ago that I’m in a marathon and my prophetic powers being what they’re (non-existant), estimating time is tough but I sure as hell have an idea about my direction. With that out of the way, here’s how my 2016 turned out to be:

• I started working with the incredible folks at Onesheep.org. This is arguably the best bunch of people i’ve come across!
• I participated in the C4K Hackathon and our team came an impressive second. Yay
• My total gross income reached 60% of the total target for the year
• I learned a lot, in terms of programming and growing my skillset. My goal here was to master PHP, Python and become a Javascript Ninja. I haven’t yet reached the point of mastery, I traded C# for Python and along the way I did a lot of PHP and Javascript. I can’t call a win in this category but i’d say I set a good foundation going forward.
• My other small goal was to make $300 as passive income per month, I’ve ended up at $150 so clear win here.
• I did a bit of travel, whilst Australia was my target holiday destination, I ended up spending time in the U.K, Cape Town and Malawi.
• I had two very enlightening relationships which unfortunately ended because of differences after 4 months each. So for 2017, i’m on a clean slate!
• I took up photography as a hobby albeit not a serious one, something I need to work on for next year.

Watching Mark Zuckerberg’s Jarvis project, it occurred to me that I should surely set some big, audacious goals. Whilst in the U.K at SheepCon, we took time to aim for some moonshots. It was at that point I realized I might have been playing it safe for a while. Sharing goals helps a lot when it comes to knowing your own scale and how far you can/should aim. As a result I came away itching for the year to end and put some new goals down.

In 2017, I’ve decided to focus on the following:

1. I’m going to write 1 blog post every week of 2017! This is a challenge i’m taking with Zinyando
2. Contribute 300 commits to open source software
3. Read 2 books every month
4. Become a strong Javascript React & Node developer
5. Master PHP, and C# to become a strong fullstack dev
6. I’m going to start going to the gym and working out at least twice every week
7. I’ve a REALLY huge goal to transition from software programmer to engineer My approach to this is to take online courses (MOOCS) from top universities on computer science and software engineering to fill gaps in my self-taught programming knowledge.
8. Financially, in 2017 I’m looking to grow my gross income by a factor of 3.5
9. Relationship goal is to become a bit more stable and land a partner who shares and agrees with core beliefs
10. I want to increase passive income and revenue from hobbies and side projects to $400 per month.

I’ll be updating this blog with progress and what i’ll be working on through the year.

Thanks for reading! If you got any comments, just post below.