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Year In Review 2016

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will lam 2016 year in review

*WHOOOOOSH! KRAKOW!* ⚡️ If I was to make a sound effect for what 2016 sounds like, that would be it. While the first third of 2016 was intense as I was enrolled in Lighthouse Labs and heads down learning Objective-C, it was the remaining 2/3’s of 2016 that have been delightful, mind blowing and pushed my comfort levels on all fronts to the point where I if I was honest with myself I’d say, “WTF.. that was crazy.. how am I keeping up??”

In my last year in review, I mentioned the theme would be self-expression. That came out in so many different ways, whether it was through dance, communication, costumes or writing — my authentic-self shone through in spades.

It was a tremendous in terms of progress and my head is still spinning with all the growth I’ve made this past year. The wreckage of 2015  was cleared away and this was my year to really start taking things to the next level. I’ll start off by touching upon where I pushed my comfort zone in bullet form.

will lam at peggys cove
The only picture of myself during my solo East Coast Canada trip

How I pushed my comfort zone in 2016:

  • Was uncomfortable in terms as I was funemployed for the first four months of the year, but knew that it I needed the time to process, heal and put in the work for the next stage in my life and what I wanted out of the rest of 2016
  • Intellectually, while learning to build iPhone apps at Lighthouse Labs — probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life thus far. I’ll touch more upon this later on.
  • I really dated the fuck out of 2016 and pushed my boundaries on what’s possible in terms of how radical honesty, authenticity, and vulnerability really made a difference in the quality of my dating experiences.
  • Took a solo east coast road trip to Halifax and let go of a few things before starting at Taplytics.
  • I took a chance in terms of switching my career focus from Marketing / Product to Customer Success — my growth and understanding of the mobile industry skyrocketed. Time to dig my heels deeper at Taplytics.
  • Went camping for the first time at Boreal Canoe Trip — with some help from new friends
  • My second year at Camp Reset was the catalyst for new aspects of growth — it exposed me to different fun and delightful things in terms of play and connecting with other lovely humans.
  • Went to Burning Man where I’ve seen and burned many different things — I made my way there to become more comfortable by myself and in my own skin, let go of things I thought I had let go, and cleared out space in my heart for new partners. (This will probably be a standalone post at some point)
  • Having a much better understanding of my finances and getting things under control now that I’m gainfully employed again 🙂
  • Training in Olympic weightlifting with the Barbell 101 team under Coach Dinn
  • Started really enjoying the rave scene
  • Going to sleep early — with the help of the Early Morning Resetters and Wake Up Ninjas crew.
  • Moved out of the parental units’ place again and finding amazing roomies — Ana and Becky 🙂

Financial Freedom

Things are finally looking up again in terms of finances — while I took a bit of a pause in terms of savings and building wealth due to a pretty hefty trip to Burning Man. It was a calculated move as the experience outweighed any expenses. It’s one of those once in a lifetime experiences that an open minded adult should check out and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Other than that, I’m on solid ground to continue building my wealth. While I made a private commitment to myself that I’d hit $50,000 in revenues on side projects last year, it was wishful thinking and didn’t any sense as I had so much on my plate.

This year I’d like to re-commit to that and make a solid run for it now that I’ve got some really awesome things on the go. I’ll look more into maxing out either my TFSAs or RSPs depending on how things look by the end of the year.

All of this, of course, will force me to re-prioritize how I spend my time, notably in the mornings. During my mornings, it should be one from not just creation, but value creation that has an intended outcome of producing value for either the company I work at with me benefitting from learning through doing, or generating some sort of business out come on this very blog (email sign ups, consulting leads etc).

Quarterly reviews

I’ll have to do quarterly reviews on how those will actually come to fruition. I’m thinking that a reasonable estimate is to give myself about half a year to be able to build a foundation in terms of creating content and getting to becoming “somewhat known” for thought leadership in the mobile conversion rate optimization realm. 

I’ve kept up my fitness, transitioning from emphasizing general strength training and CrossFit met-con style workouts to Olympic weightlifting. While irregular at some points due to my Lighthouse Labs stint up until April, I’ve made a decent effort at maintaining my strength levels up until starting coaching with Coach Nicole Dinn and her team at Barbell 101.

My flexibility, form, and technique are steadily getting better under the watchful eye of Nicole.

I said that last year that I’d compete at my first amateur Olympic Weightlifting competition, but with enrolling myself at the coding bootcamp at Lighthouse Labs and then starting a new job, it was a bit of a late start, but that’s okay. So as long as I continue showing up, putting in the work and taking care of my body with proper nutrition and sleep, I’ll be able to make that happen and be strong and explosive like bull 🐂.

Nutrition wise, now that I’m all grown up again and adulting, I can take control of my nutrition and eat to perform in the gym. I’m especially excited now that I’ve picked up a new Anova Culinary sous vide machine. It should be a delicious process in terms of hitting my macros and nutrition requirements to perform with some help from Coach Dinn. I’m looking forward to cooking more delicious home cooked meals and seeing meal prep as a sacred practice that will set me up for success.

Finally, sleep wise, with the help of the Early Morning Resetter and Wake Up Ninja groups that I’ve been a part of, sleep has become probably THE top priority in terms of my fitness. The level of consistency has not been at the level since I joined the groups back in September, but having people keeping you accountable and attempting to make the most out of their early mornings has been a strong incentive for me to keep going.

Learning

The majority of my learning came from my experience at Lighthouse Labs where I wrote briefly about my experience. It was probably the most intense learning experience in the academic sense — learning the foundational language, C to prepare for the course and then into Objective-C as we were building apps. I learned as much as I could during my stay at Lighthouse Labs, but I didn’t make the cut to stay in, which was tough to accept but at the end of the day, I’m happy with having gone through the process.

It was something that I deeply needed to explore and dive into the deep end, and I did. I learned so much from such an immersive experience. It definitely empowered me to make some major progress in that environment compared to learning on my own. While it was quite a bit of investment, I’m glad it led to having a much stronger foundation in terms of understanding mobile app development before joining my company at Taplytics, where our bread and butter is in testing and optimization for iOS and Android.

The other part of my learning came from working at Taplytics itself. It’s both an art and a science to understand and execute A/B tests as well as push notifications. Without having to go into the nitty gritty details, I’ve learned so much working at Taplytics and working alongside such hardworking and inspiring team members. I’m excited to dig in deeper and contributing beyond my role.

This is probably the best point and area where I can double down on in terms of learning and growth opportunity professionally as well as financially, which can open up to other business and consulting opportunities. It’s more of recognizing that it is a possibility. But of course, I’ll have to put in the work and actually wrap up our learnings through writing and creating meaningful content that challenges me to write meaningful and valuable content that I can reflect on and others can learn from as well.

At some point in time, I’ll be circling back building apps for the App store. I’ve failed miserably before and on several occasions, but the learnings I’ve taken away have been deeper and have actually stuck to this day. I am definitely not as intimidated, and will swing towards continue to learn building iOS apps and maybe web before the end of 2017, but we’ll see. I’m thinking a realistic time frame would be to pick it up again around April.

Career

During my stay at Lighthouse Labs it was to prep myself for my next role, while I was already in talks with my team at Taplytics, I was talking to other awesome companies as well. In the end, I ultimately chose Taplytics which provides a tremendous learning and growth opportunity. I’m excited that I can dive deeper into other things that add value to the company so as long as it makes sense.

Outside of Taplytics, I anticipate resurrecting DateIdeas, where I want to create an online resource that will be built up over time. I’ll slap ads onto it and see where I can take it in terms of creating a passive income. Nothing too crazy, but with some solid SEO and creating some really good long form content, I should be able to get a decent amount of traffic to get to around a few hundred dollars in Adsense revenue.

Outside of creating passive income streams, a way to push myself would be to actually do some consulting on the side. It will definitely be ambitious, but I’d like to make a real attempt to see if I can create meaningful value for other companies and revenues as a consultant.

Friendships

camp reset 2016
Camp Reset 2016: week 1 above, week 2 below. Can you spot where I am?? 🙂

With my breakup from my long term girlfriend in late 2015, it quickly made space for other lovely friends to fill the void.

This was a year where I made space for new friends from Camp Reset and adjacent communities like the Toronto Burning Man and rave communities, which have a heavy amount of overlap. A lot of those friendships from 2015 were solidified in 2016. And while many new dear friends have entered in my life, a few friends I’ve had haven’t been as present and have withered away. Much like anything else in life, they deteriorated of time because they weren’t given the time, love attention needed to maintain any semblance of a real social bond.

At one point over the summer, I was at the point of “breaking up” with a best friend of mine because of non-communication. Long story short, we were able to reconcile our differences and rekindled our friendship on much more understanding terms now that our lives are different, but not so different that it doesn’t make sense to maintain our friendship.

Our hangouts are more meaningful and awesome ever since getting on the same page with each other. 💪❤️

Dating / Relationships

I went on a fair bit of dates this past year. Looking at my calendar, I devoted a fair bit of time to this area of my life. My motto was “victory through sheer volume.” And it worked. There’s a saying that I’ve learned recently, “While love is infinite, your time and energy are not.” This resonates with me as I’ve grown in terms of the way I love, play and communicate with my partners. It means being radically honest and transparent of where your heart stands and what your wants and needs are as well. It means standing firm on your values and not compromising your core values and finding common ground where you’ve negotiated with integrity and transparency.

There’s a saying that I’ve learned recently, “While love is infinite, your time and energy are not.” This resonates with me as I’ve grown in terms of the way I love, play and communicate with my partners. It means being radically honest and transparent of where your heart stands and what your wants and needs are. It means standing firm on your values and not compromising your core values and finding common ground where you’ve negotiated with integrity and transparency.

This area in my life grew by leaps and bounds in ways I never really thought possible. Without having to go into details, while extremely fun, but it was never really part of the plan that I originally set out at the end of 2015. It was more so a bonus level and I had an “Invincibility Star” much like in Super Mario, racking up experience and bonus points. It was more of a side adventure than a part of my main act.

It wasn’t until I had come back from Burning Man I started seeing someone whom I’ve grown very fond of. She stepped up in a big way when I was in a vulnerable. She’s such a loving, nurturing, supportive and playfully silly partner. She’s the bees knees in my books. 🐝😍

Travel

 

In dust we trust.. Thank you to @mowglizan for allowing me to go in his place! #burningman

A photo posted by Will Lam (@will_lam) on

While I wanted to travel more compared to last year, I didn’t make it to Asia as I intended. I did, however, make it to Burning Man. It was a lot of planning and cost a fair bit of money, but the experience was not unlike anything I’ve ever imagined or experienced. I’ll probably have to dedicate an entire post to my experience there eventually.

As for this year’s travel plans, I’d like to make it to Asia sometime during the summer, and a few other festivals such as Lakes of Fire.

In terms of side adventures, I went camping for the first time and definitely have caught the bug in terms of immersing myself in nature, whether in a forest or a desert 🙂

Failures

– Got kicked out of Lighthouse Labs because I didn’t make the cut there

– A few relationships that didn’t pan out

– Didn’t even get close to $50,000 in savings

– Didn’t create a course

– Didn’t compete at an Olympic weightlifting competition

Wins

– Made it to Burning Man

– Met an amazing partner 😍

– Cultivated an amazing ecosystem of friends in different communities ❤️

– Getting into the rhythm of working at Taplytics

– Started olympic weightlifting training with Barbell 101 team 🏋🏻‍♀️

2017 Quarterly Goals:

– Q1: Build DateIdeas.net, create and publish mobile conversions content including an email course

– Q2: Prep for Amateur Weightlifting competition

– Q3: Compete at an Amateur Weightlifting Competition, Travel to Asia

– Q4: Release an iOS app

My end outcome for 2017 is to create $50,000 in value. It’s a bit of an arbitrary number as I’m allowing myself to assign value to leads that I generate, actual contracts signed, and passive income from DateIdeas.net.

Concluding Thoughts

I feel as if 2016 was laying a strong foundation to really fly this year. While the pace for 2017 isn’t as fast and furious I would like to due to some personal things I had to work through, I am patient. I’ve built the inner strength, emotional resilience and grit to keep forging ahead.

I am surrounding myself with amazingly supportive friends that keep me accountable, I’ve met an amazing partner, and I’m working at a pretty dope company with some awesome leaders and lots of room for learning and growth. I think I’m very much in a good spot right now and I’m grateful for everything I have.

If 2016’s theme was self-expression, 2017 will be focused on value creation.

All that’s left is me that will stand in my way of whether I achieve everything I want and feel I deserve. Below is a quote from a friend that I have as my iPhone lock screen wallpaper to remind me from this.

 

2015 Year In Review

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camp reset
❤️

Summing up my year has been relatively easy because of going through an epic deep New Year’s workshop deep dive led by my friends UJ and Negin (thank you!!). While I normally do it in solitude, it was a nice change in pace with people I love and respect. On my end there were some major life events that overshadowed everything else that forced me to reflect, reset and recuperate. With that being said, some themes that I’ll touch upon cover the major area focuses of my life (as in previous years) are career, relationships, wealth, fitness, travel and learning.

It’s been a rough bittersweet year. I’ll dive into this post with the bad stuff first and then resurface with the good stuff.

Career

Admittedly, things were not well in this regard. Because career is a means to a person’s livelihood, this affected me heavily in terms of self esteem and self worth. I would surmise the majority of people attach their self worth and identity to their careers. I’m one of those people. While I had a good run at my previous role (thank you Hana, you guys rock), it just wasn’t the right fit to put it lightly. I tried to make it work for the good part of the year and ultimately we had to part ways. While it was heartbreaking in some aspects because I really did enjoy working with the team there. It was especially bad when I was getting sick by the end of my tenure there. I didn’t feel like I was being my best and I knew that they could recognize that as well. So that was that. The silver lining of that experience was that it’s given me a clear indication of what I shouldn’t be doing and the real value that I bring to the table.

The major learning here was that I couldn’t do the same things over and over again (marketing) and expect different results, which is the definition of insanity in my opinion. It also led me to understanding that I know a lot of different things, some more in depth than others. All this led me to asking some tough questions of myself in terms of the real value I can bring to the table – helping people effortlessly and tirelessly. It also reminded me of the kickass network of people I’ve come to trust and build relationships over the years in the vibrant Toronto tech community.

While, it’s been tough to separate the two (identity & career) and tease them apart, I know I’m multi-faceted and a resilient person. Everything happens for reasons for which we can connect the dots when looking back in the past. “This too shall pass.”

It’s a shame I didn’t get a role in product management, which has been the ideal for me since my startup days, but that job market spoke and that was that. So it’s time to shake things up a bit and take my career on a different trajectory.

As of now, while it was a good run being “funemployed”, as it afforded me the time and space to reset, reflect and heal, I decided to take a chance with a company and I’m glad they took a chance. I think it’s for the right reasons, and I hope they understand it as well.

As for next steps, I’m doing an iOS bootcamp at Lighthouse Labs, which should afford me the knowledge and firepower to build my own stuff as well as use it as a foundation for the direction I’ll be taking my career next – a much more technical one at that.

Relationships

This other side of my life that took up a huge proportion of my time and energy. This was pretty close after my experience at the previous company I was at. A veritable double-whammy that put me down for the KO. While it was a great run over the last few years, it had to tragically and abruptly end for reasons which I won’t get into. With the abrupt halt, the entire experience brought me down to my knees and having to curl up into a ball to brace myself for the pain I endured. I’m sure there was pain felt on her end as well. How deep, I don’t know and probably won’t find out.

It made me question the concept of love and how to love and do it well. I don’t think we did that very well after all. There were definitely some shining moments. When we were great, it was great. But when it wasn’t so great.. well. You get the idea. It revealed ugly truths about myself and how I don’t want to be in my next relationship. There were certainly toxic elements of our relationship that sprung up, that I’m not sure are a part of my nature or character, but I am cognizant of them. I don’t like them and I’ll eradicate them. I’m a constant work in progress, as with everyone else, but I know I’ll be better than yesterday.

But again from all of this, I understood some immutable truths of myself that I am good enough and deserve to be with someone that complements me. It took years to realize that, but it’s better late than never.

I’m taking the time for self care and healing before tapping into my capacity to love again. It’ll happen. I just don’t know when.

As for other relationships, in terms of friends and professionally, they’ve increased an order of magnitude because of Camp Reset. I can’t describe the feeling of meeting people who are so authentic, self aware, full of life and passion all hanging out together in such a magical setting and getting to know one another through play. The 100 friends from Camp Reset came into my life just at the perfect moment. I couldn’t have timed how things went down any better. I’m grateful to have you all in my life.

Wealth

This has been inextricably linked with my career. While I set some intentions to achieve a very specific amount of money by a certain date – that ambition was derailed for the things that I mentioned above. It’s led me to think about how I can create and decouple career from wealth. Creating passive income streams from side projects and just plain creating. I have been slowly building my email list through blogging, so there’s some opportunity there other than a showcase of my thoughts on the professional side.

I’ve got plenty of ideas and lots to play with in this area. But ultimately I understand that wealth is tied to how much value I can create an freely give away. The universe has a pleasant way of returning the favour when you’ve given so freely and with genuine intent to those who deserve it.

On another note, I finished paying off my student loans which was been a monkey on my back for the last few years. So that was pretty cool.

Fitness

I’ve been consistent as I could be, I know that much. While I wasn’t close to a proper gym, I still made it happen by my gym experience at the humdrum condo gym by buying squat stands, bumper plates, a kettle bell and a few other gym toys that I still use to this day. While I know I am pretty fit, and somewhat strong, there hasn’t been a complete focus because my training has fell by the wayside.

This year with a bit more stability and a bit more control over my schedule to do the things I want to do when I want to, should be dramatically different.

This will happen on two different fronts. On the first front. I’ll be training for my first amateur olympic weightlifting meet. I’d like to push myself to learn better technique and to see how much stronger I can get. I know for a fact there’s a lot more in me than a 265 lb high bar squat, 310 lb deadlift, 175 lb bench and 125 strict press. Exploring the outer limits of my strength capacity is something that really excites me.

On the other front, I’ll be exploring yoga. While I’ve deliberately avoided it in the past few years, a recent experience made me think differently about the practice and discipline of yoga. While I already knew the benefits of yoga on weightlifting for flexibility and such, the soft focus that it hones and the meditative purposes are undeniable.

Travel

This is one thing that’s been a bit more elusive for me because I’ve been pre-occupied with the areas I mentioned above. While I felt like I was on solid ground for a while, I kept on pushing back travel because I didn’t have a stable enough foundation to reward myself with travel experiences. I thought it was the responsible thing to do, and I still do to this day. Now that student debt has been hacked away, I have a better opportunity to make some magic happen and getting my butt off the continent again this year, hopefully in southeast Asia with my best friend sometime in the fourth quarter of 2016.

But before all of that, I’d like to make it to Burning Man and my intent and focus will be getting me there. I’ve done a ton of research and consulted with countless friends and I’m ready to make the pilgrimage.

A breakdown of my year

Things I’ve failed in regularly

  • Mastering my life on the day to day level consistently.
  • Doing the same things over and over in my career and expecting different results (which is insanity).
  • Staying up way too late on the regular (11 PM should be latest I go to bed).
  • Be selfish to devote blocks of time for self-care and “me time”.
  • Settling with things even though I was entirely satisfied with.
  • Not asking or reaching out for help when I really needed it.
  • Eating super late.
  • Going overboard on vices (sorry potato chips…will be seeing much less of you).
  • Not giving myself the fuel and nutrients regularly to power me through the demands of my life.

Wins of the year

  • Wrote a lot more
  • Started Swift Hack Night – and steadily gaining members!
  • Met lifelong friends at Camp Reset! (Helloooo if you’re reading!)
  • Learned Swift and built some simple iPhone apps
  • Got into Lighthouse Labs and will be learning Objective-C
  • Started acting like the most helpful person in the Tech community in Toronto because I have the network and power to do so, and because I want to.
  • Had the time and space to reflect and heal.
  • Got a new job
  • Hit a squat PR and realizing I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was and that I’ve yet to reach the edges of my capacity.
  • Paid off student loans
  • Left a relationship that was toxic (both of our faults)
  • Being more honest with myself and others
  • Expressing myself authentically (writing and dancing.. lot!)
  • Got the fuck off of North America and made it to Cuba for a week.
  • Scheduling “tech free times” in my day.
  • Understanding that I have a tremendous amount of capacity within myself to connect, learn, grow, love and give.

A big theme this year will be expressing myself and getting closer to the core of who I am that encompass all the areas of improvement I’ve addressed above.

A year from now, I’d like to reflect and see that I while aggressive in the growth I expect for myself, I can visualize it all actually happen and putting the work in to make it all happen. But even if “life happens” and some ambitions don’t unravel as I’d like them to, I won’t beat myself up for not being able to accomplish everything.

Sometimes you have a stretch a little to make magic happen. Other times I’ll fall flat on my face, which I’m all too familiar with. However, I’m learning to celebrate the wins I collect on the way, but not be complacent, but rather honour those wins, be humble and keep on making magic happen in my life.

Concluding thoughts

For once in my life, I feel truly alive – unhindered and completely open to exploring this world of ours. While I’m still a big kid at heart, there are many other areas where I need to grow the fuck up. I believe this year will be an incredible year of growth and learning, leap-frogging all other years. Things have been in development for a while now, and it feels that the work I’ve been putting into myself and other areas will manifest itself in ways I can’t forecast or expect – but it’s going to be good. I can feel it in my bones.

A special shout out goes out to Ruthless, Magic, She-Ra and Gabriel for allowing me to couch surf for a bit during the roughest parts of my life and countless other friends who reached out to me and lent me a bit of strength while my head wasn’t all there. Not sure what would have happened had they not been there for me. Things unravelled and worked out beautifully and I was able to regain some semblance of composure because of those friends. A lot of this had to do with the regularity of the Transformers family. I love you all very much and hope to return the favour in my own way sometime down the line.

The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Bandwagon effect (Or when it’s OK to call yourself a true Blue Jays fan)

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blue jays bandwagon effect 2015

Right now, as far as I know, the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays are killing it. I’m seeing it constantly on Twitter, Facebook and a little bit here and there on Instagram for friends or acquaintances who can’t help but lap up that winning (because Toronto hasn’t had a taste of winning since the 1992 and 1993 edition of the Blue Jays) without taking a selfie of themselves at a Jays game.

Let’s get this out of the way. I don’t really care for Toronto sports. The last time I cared about any sports teams, it was when the Leafs made it to the Conference finals in ’93 and ’94, and my favourite players were Doug Gilmour (go Dougie!) and Felix “The Cat” Potvin, and of course the Jays won the World Series in ’93 and ’93. I didn’t know much about baseball, other than the fact I still remember the home run that Joe Carter hit at the ‘Dome in Game 6 to win the 1993 World Series, and could name at least half the roster to this day.

In any case, I’ll digress….

With all this buzz and people pretty much foaming at the mouth about how awesome the Blue Jays are, I wondered to myself, “What was the tipping point now that the SkyDome Rogers Centre is almost sold out every game leading up the playoffs?”

So like any intrepid amateur reporter who knows nothing about sports, I decided to Google up the attendance numbers for Jays’ home games, scrape the data with Kimono Labs, into a Google spreadsheet and present it visually for lazy people like myself  to quickly understand.

So when was it okay for you to say the Jays are fucking amazing without being called out as a bandwagoner?

blue jays bandwagon effect 2015

If you proclaimed you were a die hard Jays fan before the trade deadline on July 31, 2015, when they acquired Price and Tulowitzki, you can confidently say you were a jays fan. Bravo!  Good on sticking to your guns and riding the wave of winning without being a hypocrite!

If you decided to buy a Jays cap, t-shirt and start attending games after July 31, 2015, guess what? You’re a filthy bandwagoner.

In any case, you’ll also notice a downward trend after the trade deadline. Why did this happen? My best guess is because of the Civic Holiday long weekend. The Jays hadn’t caught on yet, and the few home games after the trade on August 4th and 5th, the bandwagoners hadn’t caught on piled on yet and the games were on weekdays after the long weekend. But boy oh boy, after that, attendance skyrocketed and likely will stay above the 45,000 fan mark until the end of the season. But hey, that’s just a guess.

Okay, I’m done with my arm chair quarterbacking. Being the hypocrite that I am with a serious case of FOMO… GO BLUE JAYS! 🙂

P.S. If you haven’t already noticed, I was writing this tongue in cheek. I was curious about the attendance of the Jays because of people raving about them on my Fb newsfeed, so I decided to dive into some data and see what was going on.

If you’re curious about the attendance of the Jays so far, here’s the interactive chart with data that I scraped with Kimono Labs.

2014 Year In Review

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2014 year in review

If I were to encapsulate this year in a sentence or two – I’d sum it up as it being a mixed bag. Lots of progress and major strides in some areas that I’m grateful for and excited to share, and rather underwhelming in other areas.

Let’s start with the underwhelming parts of 2014 as it is something I’m not going to write too in depth about for now. In terms of professional pursuits, things didn’t quite align themselves as I originally planned to be. It’s consumed me for nearly half the year, and yes I’m being deliberately vague, but I’ll soon reveal some cool stuff around the corner for me in the coming weeks, which will make sense when I unveil it then.

The things I learned this past year

Sequence is as powerful as routine and habits

CoachMe_Goals

For a while, when I lived close to work and my commute was all but 15 minutes, for a period of 3 months or so, I felt like I was finally firing on all cylinders in almost all areas of my life.

I noticed after tracking my things that I wanted to make progress in on Lift (recently re-branded to Coach.me), sequence of certain habits made for a powerful combination and built up the momentum that carried me throughout the day.  This would amount to be an “ideal day” as I had prescribed for myself.  Simply put, the sequence or order of the habits in which they were carried out played just as an important role compared to the individual habits themselves.

Simply put, the sequence or order of the habits in which they were carried out played just as an important role compared to the individual habits themselves.

This started by going to bed early. And by early it was before 12. The earlier I went to bed, the better my day went. This was because I woke up earlier and had the chance to focus on setting out my day. Be it writing, creating content, reflecting on what my day would look like – it was a piece of the day that I could selfishly call my own. I would own that early part of the morning and it would set the tone for the rest of the day.

I made sure to set everything up in my Lift app, and the momentum it afforded me carried me throughout the day to knock off things that I wanted to accomplish on a daily basis. Be it learning to code, exercise, starting the day as a producer vs a consumer and so on. And it worked. Now that moved up to North York instead of being in Leslieville, it’s going to take a bit of getting used to, but I’m sure I’ll get back into that flow, which is slowly settling in.

Help popping up in the places you least expect them to

I’ve forged a few new relationships that have been unravelling in rather cool ways. Be it professionally or personally, I’m glad to met those few people who I admire and respect deeply – namely, Matt, Brandon, Kevin, Francois, Hana, and Alexa. All of you guys are awesome and I’m grateful to have met you or gotten to know you even better this past year!

Friendships

alexas going away party

In terms of friendships, I’ve noticed that there are even fewer friends in my circle this past year, but the existing ones I have in my life have deepened and become more meaningful. I hope that add as much value to your lives as you do mine.

As for attrition in some friendships, I’m not surprised that some bonds have weakened and have pretty much fallen off the radar, some not by my lack of effort and some are. That’s okay, maybe those who stumbled upon this already know who you are. I still care and appreciate you being a part of my life.

Humility

While some of the things where I wanted to make big splashes in didn’t work out as planned, it’s made me more humble and understanding that I should shed any expectation or ego when it comes to what I want out of life. For better or worse, I’ll never shed a beginner’s mind when it comes to certain facets of my life. I’ll always give out more in terms of time and help to those I feel who are worthy of my time understanding that I’ll probably get back much less in return. That’s okay. I’ll just continue doing what I’m doing and getting better over time.

Doing things the slow and hard way

With content that’s spreading through the internet involving clever life hacks allowing for instant gratification (Do X thing in Y less amount of time). It’s glamorized and there’s always that next shiny life hacker article that you read learning about, but ultimately unfulfilling.

I’m really understanding the appreciation the long and hard process of learning and attempting to master something. This of course entails doing things over long periods of time, going for depth, rather than breadth and just really immersing yourself in an area of focus. Manifestations of this in my own life are the pursuits of writing, olympic lifting (CrossFit et al), and learning to code. All very hard, challenging in their own ways and oh so fun.

Asking for what you want

The quote “life will pay whatever price you ask of it”, rings true for me. I’ve usually shied away at the prospect of asking for I’m worth and understanding the marketplace dynamics. I’ll be cognizant of this going forward in the future.

Areas of Improvement

Learning to code

didja know app

After my post, I’ve attempted to ship one thing a week publicly – this has mostly been done with my writing and my Bootstrapper’s Weekly Digest (sign up above! 🙂 ) which kept me accountable. Ideally, I’d like to do that with code, and contribute to an open source project, but it’ll have to be my own projects that I’ll be uploading to Github in the new year.

I took a part time Ruby on Rails course at BrainStation and learned a ton in terms of the problem solving mindset and tenacity it takes to become a developer – thank you so much to Jasdeep and Mandeep for being such awesome instructors and being infinitely patient with me and the rest of the class. Thank you to Jay, Duncan and Apoorv for making BrainStation a reality and giving us fledgling developers, product managers and technologists an avenue to learn to code without having to leave our jobs.

While I’ve been keeping my Ruby and Ruby on Rails knowledge up to date my Code School and Ruby Weekly subscriptions so I don’t forget what I learned at Brainstation.  It’s taken a backseat to something I find more pressing at the time when it comes to learning to code for the sake of being a better product manager – the gap in my skill set involving mobile, which leads me to learning Swift for iOS.

So far I finished the Build a simple iPhone app in Swift from Treehouse, which will lead to review on its on in the future, I’m able to somewhat navigate around Xcode. I have a few simple ideas that I’d like to turn into web or mobile products for 2015.

Fitness

I’ve been on and off doing Olympic weightlifting in 2014, mostly due to work and moving out of Leslieville and away from my beloved gyms CrossFit Toronto and Fortis Fitness that were literally a block away from where I lived and from each other. While I haven’t been consistent in Oly lifting training, I’ve still managed to make it work by getting a squat stand, bumper plates and other strength and conditioning toys to continually work on my strength training while doing Wendler’s 5-3-1 program. I’m on my second cycle now and I’m looking forward to wrapping it up when I join a new gym in the new year.

Eventually I’d like to compete in something, whether it’s an Oly lifting meet or a CrossFit competition – that’s something that would be pretty cool to actively participate in as a contestant rather than being a volunteer.

Finances

It’s been a hectic year, but I’ve been plowing a good chunk of my full-time income to aggressively paying off my student debt. I’m a few months a way and I’m getting more and more excited to put this part of my life behind me and move onto putting my money towards better uses. I’ll have to educate myself more about my own finances and put it to work, in terms of investing and in business opportunities in the future.

Appearances

While I don’t think I dress horribly, I think I’ve gotten a bit lazy when it comes to choosing what I wear to work and everyday life.  T-shirt in jeans is cool, but doing it too often wearing the “startup uniform” of a startup t-shirt that I support, jeans, along with my pair of tigers and a hoodie were becoming a bit too common.

It’s true that when you dress better, you feel better, more confident and people’s perceptions about you change as well. I’d like to change that for 2015 for dressing better than I ever have to create an impression that I’m serious about how I look, how I carry myself and I have the skill to back it up professionally.  Allocating a budget for this will play a role in this as well.

Travel

up global las vegas

I visited two places I’ve never been to this past year, Las Vegas and San Francisco, which were both a ton of fun thanks to UP Global paying for the trip for the Startup Weekend / Startup Digest global meet up. While it wasn’t off of North America, it was largely a function of not having the finances to be able to freely travel due to paying off student debt. I’m pretty sure 2015 has some awesome travel destinations for me in store and I’m looking forward to it.

Writing

Last but not least has been my strides in becoming a better and more consistent writer. As it stands, I’ve published posts on my blog, taken part of a 30 day writing challenge and published guest posts for CrossFit Toronto, which I’m all very proud of. Writing about what I’m learning and experiencing has been an invaluable process in forcing me to recollect what I’ve learned and write about it in a way that’s easy to understand for my audience, online marketers, product managers and those learning to code.

Writing has forced me to be more concise and succinct (yes, I’m still a bit long winded, but I’m sure I’m getting better.. I think?), and it’s led me to interacting with folks that I never dreamed of interacting with all due to this little old blog! It’s led me to other consulting and brought me some pretty awesome opportunities so far. I’m going to continue making this blog a focal point in my life as I reflect and share what I’m learning, in hopes that others might find what I’m learning and writing about useful as well.

Hope your 2014 was an awesome year for you and 2015 treats you even better. What was it like for you? Would love to know in the comments! Onward and upward!

You can check out my 2012 and 2013 year in reviews as well.

A simple blog post – how an obscure programmer changed my life

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Lift #500WED Challenge

This post is for Day 9 of the Lift #500WED challenge. Here was today’s challenge:

Write a review—a review for writers—of your favorite recent blog post or article. What ideas draw you into the article? But, more than the ideas, what writing choices did the author make that made it so good? What tools of representation—words, jokes, descriptions, metaphors, hyperbole, informal voice, call to action, etc.—did the author use that you also might use someday?

I stumbled upon a blog post on Hacker News a while back – an obscure programmer by the name of Chris Strom did something that was shared on Hacker News and spread through tech circles like wildfire. The title of his blog post that was shared was simple but compelling enough for me to click through: “366 days or how I tricked myself into being awesome”.

My first thought was, “what happened in those 366 days?… I want to be awesome too!”. Did he go through Shaolin training? Did someone have to crack a whip? Were there hot stones involved?

While that would have been badass and cool, he did something even more badass in that he did something that he had no business in doing – writing books on technologies that he had no idea about. How did he do this? He wrote for 366 days. The result? Three books on Dart, SPDY and Backbone.js.

While I don’t know him personally or what the context of how he arrived at the impressive feat of writing for 366 consecutive days. The stuff that happens in between those days while he was writing was the most impressive. My best guess is that he got the idea from Seinfeld’s “Don’t break the chain” method of self improvement. Doing things daily, checking in (Hey! Kinda sounds familiar to us Lifters doesn’t it??), and reflecting on it, and NEVER stopping.

The simple “trick” that will solve ALL your problems!

He showed that through his “trick” of hard work and perserverance, it really did pay off. Not some grand high flying scheme of getting rich or famous, but through being a writer, producer and author, he built up the discipline and expertise by writing day after day after day. Through the process of doing so, he somehow ended up with three books in that process. The thing is, there was nothing remarkable about his process. All he wrote was just stuff that he was learning about and how he thought he might solve those problems on his own. Lo and behold, he kept on writing and building up his knowledgebase to the point that he had a very well formed opinion on how to tackle those problems and how they fit into the developer ecosystem. All within the course of a year. How cool is that? Nothing glamourous, just guts, grit and hustle. I love that.

DO THINGS THE HARD WAY – DO THE WORK

I think his feat plays into the notion of the American Dream – hiking up your bootstraps and just DOING THE WORK to get to where you want to be through sheer willpower, hustle and persistence. Continually learning, reflecting and iterating are things that I try to do every day, while using apps like Lift to reinforce those behaviours that add value to my life. While he didn’t use aids or tools like Lift, his committing to something and following through is inspiring to say the least.  I’m only on Day 9 compared to his probably 2 years of writing daily. Humbling indeed and a glimpse of what it takes to be great.

Visuals matter

Other things that resonated with me and drew me in further to his post, is Chris’ informal visuals. His drawings used crayons instilling a sense of play – to illustrate a point of his learning/feedback loop. It illustrated a simple concept in a way that felt childlike in terms of his approach and curiosity. Maybe we all need to tap into the inner child once every so often, to view things differently as we’re approaching problems.

Draw in your reader – headlines that work

What I thought was particularly good was his use of his headline to draw the user in. It seems he had a very clear idea of the audience that he was writing for – those who are technical, programmers, hackers and are looking for “clever hacks” to get to a result easier. The idea of “tricking” yourself definitely tricked and baited me to draw me into his post. Clever use of headlines and putting a good amount of thinking into it, or testing a few variations would be a good practice going forward.

A humble and chill dude

What the best thing about Chris’ post was he told the world about his end result, not in a boastful manner, but in way that was like “Hey, I’m pretty what the end outcome of this experiment was pretty awesome – I think you’d find it awesome too”.   I’d probably enjoy having a beer or two with him as well because he seems so humble and chill.  I think he did the world a service by writing something that he thought was remarkable.  I always refer to his post whenever I’m in a rut or in need of some inspiration. I even share it with friends who I think might benefit from his inspiring post. Maybe you might find his post useful too.

What would happen if you did something for 366 days straight?