I’m really bad at taking a step back and looking backwards. I’m often too focused on the future (thanks anxiety). Due to this, I feel like I’m not allowing myself time to celebrate wins and use the last year to influence my trajectory moving forward. I let that sort of planning live in my mind, which means I’m probably holding a lot more information up there than I need to.

I was prompted by an email from Kelly Vaughn this morning to pause and reflect. Then come up with an action plan for the next year. I figured I’d share said plan as a blog post in hopes that it keeps me accountable.

Wins in 2024

First, I have to step back through the year and look at the things that I have accomplished, no matter the size. Things that I’m proud of or that had/or continue to have an impact on my daily life. These aren’t ranked in any specific order. Just what came to mind first (which you could argue says something about the impact its had).

Help change the way Unsplash builds product

This was a big one. I won’t go into many details here since this change probably deserves it’s own post. The gist of it is: when I joined Unsplash they had recently switched to a track-based structure and were trying to do way too much at the same time. They switched to this way of working in an effort to better scale their operations after doubling the product team’s headcount. Unfortunately, it led to much more chaos than it fixed. Things were unfocused, stressful and we were often missing launch dates.

After about 8-9 months of trying to work in it that system, I was pretty fed up and started heavily pushing for another way of doing things. It took another 6 months of convincing and pitching other ways of doing things, but we’ve finally switched to something less chaotic and a bit more sane. Thankfully the CTO understood the frustration and spearheaded the initiative to implement it with my help. I’m not sure it would’ve happened without his help. The way we work now is not perfect by any means, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.

Found more inner peace

I have many other posts talking about my history with mental health—especially over the last few years—and I’m happy to say that 2024, despite having quite a few other less-fun things happen, has been my strongest mental year since 2021. I’m really hopeful that 2025 will continue this trend, and my main personal goal should feed into that trend. I now have a very solid foundation of practices that keep me level, along with the right medication, so I’m much more confident than I was a few years ago.

Strengthened friendships

At the end of 2023 a new group of close friends formed. It was a mix of people I’d known for decades and others I had just met. We’ve become incredibly close over the last year, and I’m so thankful for it. I genuinely love these people, and spending time with them is always a highlight. I suspect 2025 will continue to bring us closer, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to surround myself with on a weekly basis.

Started two hobbies I’ve put off for years

I used to draw all the time when I was a kid. I was never amazing at it, but I really enjoyed it. I stopped as I got older and felt that I wasn’t really able to produce the drawing I wanted. I was never good at realism, and I thought that being able to reproduce scenes in perfect detail was what it took to be a good artist. I’ve tried to pickup drawing a few times over the years, always to fall into the same trap of believing it required a certain output. It wasn’t until I watched the documentary called Sitting Still that my whole view of drawing/sketching changed. My partner and I saw it in Amsterdam, and the day after we watched it we found a stationary shop in Utrecht and bought ball points and a sketchbook. Since then I’ve picked up watercolor and have embraced a “sketchy” style of drawing. I’m having the most fun I’ve had putting pen to paper in a very, very long time.

The other hobby I picked up was guitar. This is the third time in my life that I’ve tried it. Both other times I was very young, which I think was the wrong time for me. Over the years, I’ve gotten so much better at being bad at things that starting new skills is immeasurably easier than it used to be. I care less about failing, and more about progress. I don’t think that’s an easy thing for kids to grasp. At least it wasn’t for me. The frustration and anger of failure mixed with anxiety turned me off from trying new things. As an adult, I not only better understand what it takes to progress, but I better understand my body. Which, for playing guitar, is surprisingly important.

Discovered an unhealthy relationship with anger/frustration

Growing up I didn’t have a good role model of how to deal with anger. My Mom kept it inside, and my Dad had small outbursts. I didn’t want to be the outburst person, so I became the bottle it up person. I now realize that tactic is pretty shit. Sadly, I don’t know any better. I’ve never been taught how to deal with that bubbling feeling in a productive way. In a way that doesn’t fester and come out in ways you don’t expect (hello, panic attacks).

It wasn’t until this year that I realized: I’m pretty sure my burnout and panic disorder stem mostly from anger/frustration. That bottling up and improper storage of energy came out with another way. Towards the end of Firstbloom, there was a lot of bottled up frustration. In fact, the day my first panic attack hit was the same day a particularly frustrating event occurred. It was the last nail in the coffin before my body gave up.

A sub-goal of mine will be to explore anger and how to deal with it in 2025. While I have a regular meditation practice (1,429 days streak and counting 💪), it isn’t enough. I legitimately do not know how to deal with frustration/anger healthily, so I need outside help.

Goals/systems for 2025

As much as goals are helpful, they aren’t useful unless you have an idea of reaching them through discipline. It’s also important (like Kelly Vaughn’s post says) to not take on too much. I also find it helpful to have goals that, when reached, help in many places at once.

Personal goal: less dopamine seeking

This has been a bad one in 2024. I often find myself reaching for the easy hit of distraction during the day. To the point where it’s not even a conscious decision anymore. Before I know it, my thumb has hit the YouTube icon on my phone during breakfast and we’re off to a bad start.

This isn’t the first time I’ve struggled with this issue. It normally happens when I’m feeling a bit more directionless/purposeless or lacking identity, which tends to happen every few years as things naturally shift in life. So, thankfully, the roadmap is pretty easy for me this time around.

Main step: no easy dopamine early in the morning

This is the hardest but most important step in the whole process. The days where I can avoid watching videos not long after waking are the best ones. I have much more focus and I’m better equipped to deal with harder problems. I’m not sure why the morning is so difficult to avoid scrolling on YouTube shorts. Maybe there’s a problem behind the problem, but it hasn’t made itself clear yet. I suspect once I replace my morning dopamine breakfast with something that doesn’t wring out my receptors that problem will make itself clear.

Professional goal: sharpen my technical skills

The last ~7 years have skewed way more product oriented than technical, and I’m afraid I’ve atrophied quite a bit. It’s not that I can’t build good software anymore, it’s that I feel like I’ve missed so many changes in the way we build for the web that I’m lost. I also think I’ve diverged from the popular pathway in terms of how we should build for the web, that my excitement for it isn’t what it used to be. That last sentence probably deserves it’s own post to explore my real feelings but I’ll skip that for now. What I do want to do is focus on getting my hands dirty more, and trying to dig into building for the sake of building again.

Pair program more often

I know I said I’m better at failure compared to how I used to be. While that’s true privately, it’s less true in a public forum. I used to pair program with my colleague so often at Sportlogiq, and it made me a much better programmer for it. I largely attribute that to how comfortable we were with each other. Meanwhile, at Unsplash, I don’t have that closeness with my of my colleagues, and it makes pairing more difficult for me. I’m someone with many years of experience now. It’s hard for me to look like I don’t know what I’m doing in front of them. Especially since I know my colleagues are much more talented programmers. But, that’s something I need to work through and pair more often. I’m leaving insanely valuable education on the table due to my own ego.

1-2 hours of technical discovery during the workweek

I don’t read technical books, blogs or watch technical videos anymore. My focus was on the people side of the equation for so long that I’ve dropped most of my technical curiosity. Which is probably the biggest reason my skills have atrophied.

A framing I’m giving myself that’ll hopefully help is: the first principles of people will always stay the same, and so will the first principles of building good software. However, what will change often is the patterns and paradigms we use in both cases. Now that I have a strong foundation of the human side, it’s time to pause and focus on picking up the patterns and paradigms for the technical again.

Wrapping up

Like everyone with a blog, I would like to write and publish more this year. Will that actually happen? Who knows! I have quite a few hobbies stacked now, so writing will probably take a back seat. I also think I’d like to take a more technical approach to my writing this year as part of my professional goal. So, maybe there will be more practical posts here 🤷‍♂️

Here’s to a hopeful 2025 everyone. 🍻