New Year, New Goals (2023 Edition)

On why you’ll see more/less of me this year

I’m not one for goal setting, in all honestly. I struggle with maintaining the effort over the course of the year to keep myself on track and often the beauty of being a freelance is to switch focuses incredibly quickly if opportunities arise.

Nevertheless, with everything going on I feel like this year with a recession on the horizon could be one of the tougher years for me, with less money for investment into their sites.

I also feel personally if I could make this year work, then this year could be the year. I’ve said since the business turned 4 years old in August this year I’m beginning to look further than web sites for clients and looking to share my over 15 years of commercial web development. I’ve begun looking at what’s next.

I struggle personally to look at the big picture, opportunities that exist outside of my main focus. So I’ve made a few goals that I’d like to achieve in the next year. Some of those personal, some of those professional. Here are where my focuses are 2023.

Professional Goals

Improving my Personal Branding

My personal branding is a mess. Everything is not the same. In the classic case of the busiest shoemakers have the worst shoes, if you looked at my sites that I use to advertise my wares then you’d think I’m terrible.

I have this blog which is everything, Dwi’n Rhys which is my WordPress freelance site, Winwar Media which is the name of the company, and half a dozen other sites. And don’t get me started on my bloody Twitch Channel branding. Twitch handle one name, Twitter another. It’s all a bit of a mess.

I’m not sure exactly how to bring it all together, but I will aim to. Also the sites need redoing. They’re old. So that’s an idea.

I guess my goal for 2023 is to be in a better position personal branding wise than I am now. At the very least get at least one of my sites that use jQuery Migrate (Winwar Media & WP Email Capture) bloody off of it.

Side Projects to Cover the Mortgage

I’ve a bunch of side projects that have been coming out the wazoo. Domains bought, affiliate links not transferred, Twitter accounts began with gusto but died quickly.

I’d like to pick them up and make them bigger. A few people I know have been rather successful with them, and I’d like to improve them.

Side projects are hard. Like, really hard, and do require focus. Sure you can do 5-9pm but there is life as well and I went freelance to eventually craft out working for myself and give myself more time, but ideally – especially with the way the world is going in 2023 I’d like to grow them.

The goal for my side projects is for it to pay for my mortgage by the end of the year. Christ that is such a lofty goal, but we’ll see how we get on.

Which is related to the following…

Work Less

In Blackpool, on September 30th, I had a realisation.

I was just about to close my laptop from a week in work. I’d made the trip up to the seaside resort from one of my favourite weekends of the year – Play Expo in Blackpool. My calendar was opened, and I noticed something.

I had not done as much as I intended.

Sure, I’ve been busy, incredibly busy, but I had manage to cope. Clients were happy, I was happy, and things were getting done. But, inadvertently, I had only worked four days every week for a month.

It wasn’t planned, of course, but every Friday I was busy. I was either in Cardiff for Clash at the Castle, or London for OMG Center’s launch, or at Play Expo in Blackpool. I was busy doing things, enjoying things, or pushing my business forward.

COVID had been an interesting time, in that I had to hunker down a bit and not do much.

So this got me thinking – how can I do it more?

I’d looked on with a bit of admiration with what my good friend Shane has managed to carve out since going freelance in terms of his work schedule. He had one tip – book your time out for other things.

So, for the foreseeable future in 2023, I’m dropping to 4 and a half days per week.

Friday afternoon, which traditionally isn’t the most productive time anyway, I’m dedicating to side projects, hustles, improving things, or just knocking off early and going for a walk.

My goal is to hopefully have had Friday afternoon largely free for 80% of the year.

Personal Goals

These are more “nice to have” goals within my personal life.

The first is an art form I really enjoy – podcasting. I’d really like to appear on a podcast at some point. Because as a straight white man it’s pretty much the goal isn’t it? Not sure where, not sure how, but I’d really like it as a medium I think it’s great.

The second is a sport that I fell in love with in 2022 – cricket. Last March soon after my birthday I joined my local cricket club (remember last year where I said I needed a hobby? Well I found one). Playing wise I feel I’m better at batting than at bowling, but even then I’m not 100% confident. Last season I played 8 games with a high score of 10. In 2023 I’d like to score 23 in a match (the only mate I knew before playing cricket who played cricket’s high score was 22, so I’d like to beat that), and play more than 8 games in the season.

Finally, I feel like I need another personal goal, but I’m struggling. I am proud of the personal growth I made in 2022, so I’m throwing it open to you 🙂. What should I improve in 2023?