A year in retrospective and my New Year’s resolutions for 2019

For the first time, I look back at everything that happened to and around me in 2018 and I set the goals for the new year.

I’ve never been a fan of making new year resolutions but since I have been in the mood of writing down everything it’s on my mind lately I thought it might be interesting for me to write down everything that happened in 2018 and those things that I tried to accomplish as well as what to expect from me for this upcoming year.

A year of changes

2018 started with a lot of changes, both in my personal and my professional life, but all in all the overall result of it can be taken as positive.

A new job

I started the year joining a new company as Product Designer in charge of redesigning one of their main products, but later on, I would be in charge of multiple other tasks.

Joining this new venture has helped me develop my design skills as well as put to practice some others that I wasn’t able to on any of my previous jobs.

Becoming a better designer was one of the goals that I set at the beginning of the year, and while I’ve been busy taking care of my daily tasks on this job, having the freedom to experiment, test processes and be closer to the team and the project has helped me accomplish that.

A new journey

Another of the goals that I set for this year was to travel more, to explore new cities, countries and take out my camera more often, and after coming from my last trip from Switzerland, I can say that I accomplish that too.

I started a journey as a digital wanderer, you can read more about it here. The main goal of it was to explore how people live around and get out of my comfort zone. Now in December, I can confirm that I’ve travelled to 12 countries in 12 months, some of those trips for leisure and some others to work remotely, from Iceland to Poland I’ve crossed Europe with a backpack full of clothes (and a few gadgets) but empty of experiences. But now that the year is ending, I can tell that there are more experiences than clothes.

I’ve got to meet people from everywhere, learn from them and also share thoughts and experiences. It has helped me both in a personal level, becoming less of an introvert, and in a professional level as I was learning how people face problems and what are their concerns about the world that surround us.

But this is just the beginning.

Growing as a person

I set the goal to be better, in general, both in a personal and on a professional level. Take care of myself and have the freedom to decide what to take and what to leave.

In a personal level, I cleaned up my wardrobe of relations that weren’t going anywhere. I kept close all those people that bring positive things to my life, no matter how far from home are. But also broke the contact with those that were becoming ballast to my life and were turning it into something toxic.

I tried to help as much as I could my family and those close to me in need of help without waiting for anything in return. I stopped buying things that I didn’t need to get experiences and good things in exchange.

After a year I can say that I’ve kept close my real friends and made a lot of new ones, both that I already knew and some that I met in the way, but overall I can say that in that aspect, I’m happy about how the year ended.

Becoming a better professional

As a professional, I gave up appearances and focused myself in learning more on those things that I thought were important and would help me develop my career to the point where I wanted.

I started taking free online courses, reading documentation about design principles, UX, research and also a bit of coding and new programming languages.

I also joined a few Slack channels where designers discuss topics that matter to us, we share thoughts and opinions and ask for feedback or advice. I’ve been an active member to the point that people have asked me to mentor them in a few aspects.

I took the decision of mastering design systems, and after an intensive year of learning about them and putting things into practice, I can say that I’m in the right decision. If you want to learn more about them, here is an article I wrote about why they are so important.

There’s still a lot of work to do on my end, but I feel I took the right decisions. It will require a lot of efforts on my end to get to the point that I’m happy with both these aspects, but right now I feel comfortable in my situation.

Enjoy my free time better

Although this wasn’t a mandatory goal, I challenged myself on becoming better on what I do for fun too. From photography, drawing, travelling, crafting, reading and writing.

I tried to get more control over how and when I enjoy those things and keep in mind that if something stops making me happy, I shouldn’t invest time on it.

And although at the end of the year, I haven’t done as much as I wanted of everything, I can say that at least I’ve had fun with all of them.

I turned my photography into something I could use to get inspired, relax and also invest my free time into being more creative, from going outside to staying in editing my photos. I also got a drone that helped me have more fun photographing and exploring new places, so that’s also something position I take from travelling. You can read more about my experience with a drone here.

I also opened an online store with sales on some of my photos as prints, stickers or iPhone cases. You can check it here.

New Year Resolutions

After a year full of challenges and growth, I’ve decided to set my goal higher.

Don’t set any limits

My plan is to keep growing, both in a personal and on a professional level. The plan is to keep learning new things, and from people, without putting barriers to anything and deciding always towards what could be beneficial for me.

Becoming a better designer it’s still one of my priorities for this year, hopefully, acquire more knowledge on how to lead other designers and make use of my seniority to help others get to the point I am, sharing my experience and learning from others.

I’m planning to get to the next level in my career, hopefully, bring these pots to the next level and if it happens, become also a speaker on small designer conferences or meet-ups.

Keep travelling and crossing the ocean

What started this year as a journey as a digital nomad I want it to remain like that, and explore new places this upcoming year. My plan is to finally cross the ocean and visit America, my initial goal is to land in the USA but also visit Canada and whatever gets me close.

As a digital wanderer, I want to remain working remotely wherever I go, no matter which part of the world I am, I want to have the opportunity to keep solving problems, keep designing and keep helping people one way or another.

Release my side-project beta

For the past six months I’ve been working on something I’m really motivated about, and while it’s still in an early stage, things are coming together and I want to get to the point where I can get to release a simple MVP in a beta version to let a closed group of people test it.

Time management will be key for that, but while I manage to keep all my expectations low in terms of how I invest my efforts on this, I plan to have a design ready by the end of Q1 with enough resources to start with the development.

I will use this side-hustle to improve my skills to the limit, both design and programming, project management and business, from performing user research to coming up with a business plan.

Take my passion to the next level

One of my goals for 2019 brings my photography and designs to the next level, improve the way I take them, my workflow and get them to arrive at more people. I want to get to the point where my exposure is bigger and get some credibility through them.

I want to improve my equipment in order to release better quality pictures. I want to work on my video editing skills and start releasing resources and sharing my knowledge I acquired during this time.

My priority will always show the world I see around me in my own vision with the best quality possible and also expose how I get to this point, by making tutorials, video showcases and blog posts.

This also includes my conception of design, principles and methodologies and software. I will keep learning Figma and get my hands deeper into Framer X, in order to get a better understanding of 2019 design direction.

Open Goals

Apart from the ones above, I will leave a door open for new goals and challenges that I need to face, without putting any limits or restrictions to any of the opportunities that might come to me.