2018 Retrospective; 2019 Goals
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Overall 2018 was a pretty good year.
The Good:
- 2018 marked the first full year of my self-employment comeback.
- I was able to maintain billable client projects the entire year.
- After having a few down productive months, decided to rejoin IndyHall as a full time member in July. It’s a bit costly (I pay extra for parking too), but this has helped me focus, both on client work and personal projects.
- Attended WWDC and had some social fun.
- Attended ElixirConf and doubled down on my excitement for this language, community and ecosystem.
- Finished my handoff of Philly CocoaHeads admin duties (still active member), giving me more time for new things.
- Continued to expand my web education.
- Paid off some long time debits.
- Started a savings account for a possible house down payment.
The Bad:
- Many of my recent side projects have died on the vine. Lots of false starts. I’m not shipping like I want to.
- Most of my consulting income comes from one large client. Need to diversify.
2019 Goals
- Diversify and increase my income.
- Add more clients so less dependent on single large client.
- Add passive income through a new product/service.
- Shoot for a 10% income increase.
- Be better at shipping/executing.
- 2017 & 2018 was a lot of learning new tech, demo projects.
- 2019 needs to be about shipping real value.
- Do a better job of tracking my time.
- 20-30 client hours/week
- 20-30 project hours/week
- 50 total “work” hours/week
- Better code documentation.
- Utilize work byproducts as education / blog opportunities.