I purposefully avoid setting yearly goals, as so much can happen during that time. My real goals can change (and make me feel bad for being so indecisive) or I could pass good opportunities by being too focused on a different goal. What I like is setting a direction or a topic and – in absence of surprise, good or bad – try to follow it. In 2022, it was setting up the processes to run my company as smoothly as possible. For 2023, I want to reach out and experiment. That means getting myself out there to connect with interesting people and maybe find new clients, employees, friends,... The world is a fascinating place and that's the year I want to experience it. Here are some of the goals that go in that general direction:
* Finish the setup of my blog and start publishing posts from my (too long) draft backlog.
* Back in October, I started doing 3-month experiments with my day-to-day life to try different structures and seek personal fulfillment. Thanks to being a freelancer/contractor/consultant, I worked for 6 months at 120% plus the overhead of running my company and at 10% the next 3 months. Neither have much room to construct a meaningful work-life balance: work too much and there is no life, work too little and there is no point. Now that I work between 40 and 80% and it's the most fulfilling life I've had so far. But the lines between work and life are still too fuzzy and I know I can improve both by finding the right structure, hence the experiments.
* Publish some open source utils that I've created to scratch an itch and found no good alternative to – think Home Assistant / IFTTT but for commands on your own computer.
* I work on using technology to bring innovative solutions to SMEs (it won't awe the average HNer though...) and I used to organize hackathons. So I'm thinking about offering summer internships to build a Proof-of-Concept showing the value technology can bring.