As I started this blog post, I’m reminded of a Tweet I saw from Remkus from early November.
You see, I remember my list from last year (notice the “goal”? Same as last years goal) and thought “Oh my god, I’ve failed at this, spectacularly”. Upon reflection I…haven’t? There has been a lot of success this year. Albeit not quite in the ways I expected. Nevertheless, I’ve set out to achieve most of the goals.
So I’m beginning this year by looking at these goals and how I did.
- Improving my Personal Branding – Success (Kinda). I spent the early part of last year rebuilding Dwi’n Rhys, posting more on Instagram and I’m happy with how things are looking now. Sadly I didn’t manage to fix WP Email Capture or Winwar Media. At the time of writing, the latter I’m aiming to do this in the Crimbo Limbo. At the time of writing this sentence I didn’t, instead dedicating myself to a game of Civilization 6.
- Side Projects to Cover the Mortgage – Dismal Failure. Sadly two ideas I wanted to push out are ideas and didn’t really succeed beyond a bit of traffic: Buy a Fucking Aircon & Dad Joke Ipsum are out there, but to be honest the first one I’m probably going to let lapse. Dad Joke Ipsum is still getting a bit of traffic and probably just need to cover it in Adsense. I have another side project I’ve launched and it’s doing okay. Will be sharing bits about that when I can.
- Work Less – Success 🎉. Yep! Largely managed to book most of my Friday afternoons off. Only two projects from clients ate into that time, but they were fairly big projects that I wanted to get finished. One such ate the time in December, and one in May. But overall that’s 2 months in 12, so better than my 75% goal. I did occasionally do quick bits and pieces – so I wasn’t completely absent, but this was achieved!
- Appear on a Podcast – Success 🎉. I did appear on “…and we have an office dog” podcast. You can listen to it here.
- Score more than 23 in a match in cricket – Failure – I did well, but I was 10 short, scoring 13 in a match.
- Play more than 8 matches in cricket – Success 🎉 – I played 9 games in the Thursday league, and 6 matches in the Saturday league. 15 games overall (and that’s not including a couple of friendlies I played).
So overall, a 66% success rate for my goals. Not too shabby!
I got thinking of this year’s goals, and what I want to achieve in 2024. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind start to 2024 already (which is exciting/terrifying). So with that headspace in mind, here’s my goals for 2024.
Professional Goals
Get back into public speaking
Now that the majority of the pandemic is behind us (COVID is still a thing folks, please look after yourself), and events are beginning to happen again. So I’d like to get speaking. The WordPress Talks page on my freelance site will be 4 years without any new content. Now that WordPress events are opening up again, hopefully there will be an opportunity for me to speak.
There is the big goal – WordCamp Europe 2024 – but I must admit looking at the dates and my life, there’s a chance I won’t be able to attend 😢. So need to keep my options open. Hopefully will get the opportunity to get up on stage again.
I realise I use the word “hope” a fair bit. But the goal is to do one public speaking event.
Diversify my income away from web development a bit
Similarly to last year’s goal where I pay off the mortgage with side projects – 2023 was a bit of a downturn for my WordPress business, in that there wasn’t quite the level of work as previous years. I was fine, more than fine, but it wasn’t quite as strong as I would have liked.
So this got me thinking – I’ve got a couple of side projects that have a decent level of traffic (think 1k a month) and often the only things on this sites is Adsense. Which is brining in a solid if unspectacular amount. It covers the costs of being there, but could be better.
I had a lot of free time when the world was going to pot during the pandemic, and I made a lot of ideas come into fruition.
My goal is to get at least 2 months income of £30 or more not from revenue streams that exist for me (Adsense, Twitch, Plugin Sales or Web Development Work).
Rebrand Winwar Media
Winwar Media’s website is looking tired man. The site has lacked content for ages and I want to use it as a place where I can sing about some of the side projects I do. It’s the name of my company but it’s very much unloved for a long time, which – similarly to the above – gets a lot of traffic so I want to be able to direct people to the right place through it, be it my freelance stuff, my plugins, or just a few side project sites I release.
I have ideas on what I want to do, and it’s a line on my Side Project Spreadsheet Trello Board (yes, make that language make sense), but I want to be able to look on the new site with pride.
Personal Goals
As well as the professional goals, I’ve some personal goals I’d like to achieve in 2024.
Reconnect with the WordPress folk I enjoy spending time with. I’ve two events – PicnicPress and WordCamp Europe 2023, that were very dear to me as I met some people I’ve not seen for a very long time: the WordPress community. The hope is that there’s more events where I can run into them again. Granted the former I put on so hopefully put on more events next year (time willing).
Take a catch at cricket and continue my batting improvements (score 23 in a game) – my last two goals in cricket are to continue improving in the field and batting. I’d like to take a catch at some point (weirdly, nothing seems to come in my direction so I think I had two half chances last year) – but definitely get better at batting and cement my place in Earlestown’s teams.
Like last year, I’ve not got as many personal goals as professional ones, and even those feel a bit weaker and not as big as last year. What do you think? I feel they are achievable though.