Dec 31, 2021 9 min read

2021 Annual Review and 2022 Goals

Last year I said that 2020 proved to be a year like no other I've experienced. 2021 continued that theme - A year that's been characterised by uncertainty and disruption. Typically I like to scroll back through Instagram and my photo's on my phone to see what I got up to, and there's a lot less highlights. There's a certain element of mundanity to the year which I can only attribute to how disruptive the pandemic has remained on my personal life. Despite this, the year has had a whole bunch of highlights and successes amongst some significant change.

Moving to Manchester

2021 was the year I said goodbye to London and moved to Manchester. I needed a change of scenery and London was too expensive to continue living in on my own. Manchester also provides the opportunity for a new adventure and to be closer to my girlfriend. Long term we have plans to buy in Manchester and my place proves to be a good base to use to look around the area.

Before I left London I made sure to visit all my favourite places one more time - Kew Gardens, Columbia Road Flower Market, Richmond Park to name a few - and truthfully I miss all of those places. Manchester City Centre is sorely missing greenery. It's a concrete and grey city characterised by rain and grey skies. However it also feels like a miniature version of London. There's a lot of good energy, there's a ton of great independent coffee shops and I can get into the centre of Manchester in about 10 minutes walk. There's plenty of quirky and interesting places that remind me of East London which I've only just begun to explore. I'm looking forward to uncovering some more of those places in 2022.

Going Global

The first half of the year at work felt like a lot of busyness with not a lot to show for it. There was a certain element of drifting and stagnation. This was, like nearly everything, due to the pandemic disrupting opportunities to meet colleagues and customers. However I did find time to really ramp up my knowledge of Product Management and create new connections with people.

The second half of the year made up for lost time and really ramped up. Major changes at work meant my Product Manager role changed from being Nursing focused to now being Medics focused. Alongside this, I would no longer be just focused on UK Healthcare and instead would be looking at things globally. This was a major change and required a new way of thinking about problems. Fortunately I was empowered to really run at problems and enact changes I felt needed. As a team we needed to shift our thinking and really start to think outside of our historical ways of working. We needed to level up. To what extent this has been successful I'm not sure yet, but over the next year this is something that will become much clearer.

The global aspect of my role offered me a rare opportunity for travel - I managed to spend a few days in Denmark listening and speaking to some of our customers. This was the first time I travelled internationally for work and during the pandemic. The travel was a mixture of fun and frustrating. Specifically the layovers and covid protocols were frustrating, the rest was enjoyable and it reminded me of when I first started travelling for work. A sense of adventure and exploration in a place I've never been to before.

Getting to meet some Danish customers and understand the value we're adding, but also where the pain points are, was enlightening and humbling. I love speaking to healthcare professionals who are out there helping people and saving lives. Listening to what they do day to day and the challenges they have to overcome is always inspiring. One of the upsides of the pandemic is globally we have come to appreciate the people working in healthcare a lot more than we previously did.

Reviewing 2021 Goals

At the start of 2021 I set out three simple goals:

Run 365 Miles in 365 Days
Read 30 Books in 2021
Post two blog posts per month

On all three of these I failed, although I gave the second one a good go. Lets review.

Run 365 Miles in 365 Days

When I originally thought of this goal, it sounded pretty simple on the surface. It only works out to be 1 mile per day, or 7 miles per week. This equated to one longer run and 2 shorter runs. I ended up doing about 17 miles all year, of which about 12 of these miles we're done in the first 10 days of January. So what went wrong?

I just sort of... stopped. I just stopped trying. Whether it was the bad weather or lack of motivation to try harder I don't know. When I moved to Manchester I tried running on the treadmill a bit, but this was exceptionally dull compared to running through Richmond Park. I've not yet built up the courage to start running in Manchester City Centre. Something about running in the city versus out in nature just doesn't sound anywhere near as enjoyable.

Read 30 Books in 2021

While I didn't hit 30 books this year, I did manage to read 24 books! This isover double what I achieved last year, and almost as much as I read in the last 3 years combined. It's also the most books I've read since 2015 according to Goodreads, where I managed 26.

This increase really comes down to increasing when and where I am listening to audiobooks, as very few of the books I read this year were physical books. I've been finding myself going on walks and listening to audiobooks, or when I'm travelling or just before I go to sleep.

I found that when I enjoyed an audiobook by one author, I would then pick up their other audiobooks too. This explains why I listened to multiple books by Russell Brand, Michael Pollan and Steve Richards.

Another thing I was surprised by was that I actually read 4 fiction books and enjoyed them all. I've always preferred non-fiction, but it was great to just get lost in a story rather than feel like I'm learning something.

Having finished A Promised Land by Obama at the end of 2020, I discovered I had a real appetite in exploring books by other people that worked in his administration. Ben Rhodes' The World As It Is: Inside The Obama White House and Samantha Power's The Education of an Idealist were fascinating listens. What was particularly interesting was that in all three books they were covering the same ground, but hearing their individual perspectives and interpretations of events was really interesting.

I rated 4 books as 5 stars this year. I'm quite cautious about handing out 5 star reviews and like to reserve it for books that truly made an impact on me. This year those four books are:

What's struck me as I wrote out this list is how remarkably different these four books are. At some point I would like to explore the types of books I like to read a bit more in a separate post.

Post 2 Blog Posts Per Month

This goal didn't go as well as I expected, as I only achieved this in two months - January and August. I think, like a lot of new writers, I got stuck in 'what should I write about' mode. I didn't want to write fluff for fluff's sake, and really wanted to publish interesting and longer pieces.

While I'm not particularly interested in the number of views any of my pieces are getting at this point, my review of WHOOP got a few thousand views on my blog and is listed on the front page when Googling. There seems to be a clear appetite for longer reviews of WHOOP - Most reviews I've seen are from people who have used it for a month or maybe three.

I migrated my blog from Squarespace to Ghost midway through the year as I couldn't get my blog to look and feel the way I wanted. I wanted something more minimal and less cluttered. I was finding Squarespace was loading a little too slow and looked a little too basic for me (and their blog editor was horrible to use). So far my Ghost experience has been great, although the migration process sucked.

2022 Goals

For 2022 I have a few areas of focus - I want to iterate on what I did in 2021 but with an increased focus on my personal health. I turned 30 in December 2021 and I am conscious that eventually poor habits and poor routines are going to catch up to me.

For me there are three key pillars to personal health I want to be investing in: exercise, diet and sleep. Consequently I have decided to have a goal for each of these. Alongside this I want to keep my reading goal that I had for 2021.

Like last year I have no plans to set up any professional goals.

Diet: Adopt a Plant Based Diet

2022 should be the year to go wholly plant based (vegan). While there's a lot of debate around whether plant based diets are actually healthier than omnivorous or vegetarian diets, for me I know that a lot of the food-related vices I have are foods that contain dairy and egg - Think of pizza, chocolate and cakes. All culprits in my diet and removing them will help me have a healthier relationship with food.

January also coincides with Veganuary, so it's a perfect time for me to kick off this habit.

Sleep: Sleep More

Sleep is something I've been reading more about and listening to more podcasts about. Andrew Huberman's podcast in particular has been invaluable in helping me understand why sleep is so important for our health. Over the last 6 months I've been trying to have a more consistent sleep schedule. I averaged 6 hours 49 minutes sleep per night in 2020, and 7 hours 12 minutes throughout 2021.

My goal for 2022 is to increase that average sleep per night to 8 hours. The simplest way to do this is to make sure I go to sleep earlier than I currently do, and be consistent about that bed time.

This isn't going to be something I'm going to stress over (Orthosomnia is a thing), but rather periodically check.

Exercise: Building Consistency

Having a consistent routine when it comes to exercising feels like a critical pillar. I think if I can build a consistent routine this will help reinforce the other pillars. My goal is to keep this super simple - Exercise three times per week for at least 30 minutes.

Reading: Read 30 Books

Like last year (and the previous ten years...) I have set myself the same goal of hitting 30 books for 2022. I came close in 2021 and with a little more effort I should be able to nudge this to 30 books.

I read 4 fiction books in 2021, so for 2022 I would like to set a goal of 5 fiction books.

Bonus: Travel To 1 New Country

Inspired by my recent trip to Denmark, I would like to travel to at least one new country. This could be for work or for a holiday. This might get blown up by the pandemic, but I'm going to be optimistic that I'll get the opportunity for at least a weekend away somewhere new.

Conclusion

There's something quite soothing about stopping for a second and reviewing the year. I'm grateful I decided to take the plunge last year and publish a recap of 2020, as it was fun reviewing what I hoped to achieve versus what I actually achieved. My goals didn't go to plan at all, but truthfully I'm not sure I could've ever predicted the way the year would end up looking back at it now.

I like to think my goals this year are more achievable, but perhaps this time next year I will look back again with the same sense of wishful thinking.

I remember feeling quite daunted at the idea of not achieving my goals and how embarrassing it would feel to fail in public. In reality though I don't feel any embarrassment at failing any of my goals. In fact I think people should be more willing to share their failures in public. I could've deleted the post and pretended it never happened, but I'm glad I didn't.

If you're reading this, I hope you have a great new year and a great 2022.

Tom