One of my habits each year is to review the year publically, using my personal productivity app everyhour.xyz. Why? A nice review of progress while also a good place to make targets from. Publically so I can’t skimp on effort.
TL;DR:
❄️ Joined OnDeck Build for Climate
🌱 Got engaged while living in Spain!
☀️ The hard decision to join Entrepreneur First
🍂 vula.vc
My 2022 targets
Let’s review…
1) Less than 150 hours of "Nothing" in the year
2) Execute all started projects — have something to share about them,
even if they don’t go anywhere they should have outputs else they are
totally wasted.
3) Exercising 20 hrs/month
4) Social - 1750 hours. Keep the good thing going.
5) Be earning from the software I am building - TARGET: £2,000/pm by December.
I love the work-life balance. I love working on what I believe in.
I don't love living off of savings...
- Less than 150 hours of ‘Nothing’ ✅ (113.25 hrs)
I record every hour of every day. I have a pot/label called Nothing where I am just being gormless — usually playing games on my phone.
The previous three years this number was 200–220 hours. - Execute all projects ❌
In 2021, I only executed 30% of projects. This year: 73%.
It is better though. A product I built last year called Idealist (but never launched — message me if you want it) helped so much in assessing if an idea was worth pursuit.
✅ Griin — low emissions food kit boxes
✅ Betterway — calculating a better slower way to travel for emissions
✅ The World of Wordle — lots of wordles
✅ All freelance projects went really well — both startups launched or have raised after the MVPs were delivered and the remote working course was well received
✅ Limpet —a mac menu bar app to hold your common text snippets and links
✅ Sustainable side projects — an international group building climate focused startups
✅ De Nada Nights — a pure joy. Music, movies and food evening plans from around the world.
✅ vula.vc — helping startups across Africa raise
❌ Attended — a roll-call site for digital events to connect afterwards
❌ Togethere — making group travel easier to plan and organise
❌ Treemeals.co — I spent a lot of time here. I should have launched the mobile app. I didn’t. I regret that. - Exercising 20 hours per month ✅ (22.5 on average)
Good! I got my target, but still half the number of hours from 2019 and I certainly do not feel anywhere near as fit. I need targets in 2023. - Social target 1750 hours ✅ (1833 hours)
Social is all time with Emma, friends and family. It was a target as through COVID and being nomadic social time was hard. This was a much better year. - Be earning from the software I am building — TARGET: £2,000/pm by December ❓ (kind of…)
This year ~99% of my income came from freelance and Entrepreneur First’s £2,000/pm (pre-tax). Though I am earning less, I am dramatically happier, constantly am learning and am sure this is the more exciting and profitable path.
☃️Jan — March
Lived in Weymouth, New Milton, and London
Went skiing, ran half marathon
OnDeck (my review here), no code, various deep dives in climate projects
💍April — June
Got engaged!
Lived in France (fun video on instagram) and Spain
Began working with Planet Aligned (incredible team)
Started De Nada Nights
🏘️July — Sept
Came back and started thinking about settling in the UK, hence lots of house sitting
Made the hard decision to do EF (as I had other offers)
Built Limpet
💂Oct-Dec
Began vula at EF (here is my review)
Moved to London, living in the coliving
Good balancing with friends (old and new), work and hobbies
2023 targets
1. Less random building
It was surprising to me that I made 10 different projects this year. I thought I was more focused than that! Now, with vula, I want to plow all my creative energy into it.
2. Grow vula
We are in a good place. We need to move to a great, impactful and thoughtful business. I don’t want to waste any opportunity.
3. Continue with thankfuls
Every night Emma and I have said what are we thankful for. I love this and want to keep it up.
4. Be able to lift Emma and do triathlons
While living in London, I started going to the gym and enjoyed it — many thanks to JEFIT app. I can lift Emma, but I want full dirty dancing level. I also have signed up to a triathlon in June, but I want to do more!
5. A salary above £40k
Work will be stressful. I need to know money won’t also be.
6. Be well set up in the South West
We know we want to live in Devon, targeting Honiton initially. I want to be well setup with my home office!
See last years review here:
