New Year New Goals - My 2020 Resolutions
Tags: 2020, personal, resolutions
Published: 2020-01-01 05:01:41

2019 was a crazy year for myself, both professionally and personally. In the span of 2 months I got married, bought and moved into my first house, and started a new job. Talk about stress. But in the final moments of 2019, I hope to plan out and goal set for the upcoming year and decade.

Hopefully writing down my goals and sharing them, will encourage me to stick to them.

## 💻 Writing More

I wrote my first blog post on dev.to in 2019. In 2020 I plan to write 12 different blog posts by the end of the year. Sharing knowledge is incredibly important, either for your team or bettering the community.

I had been meaning to write much more in 2019, but every time I was close to publishing a post I always second guessed myself. But hopefully by jumping 'into the deep end' I can keep up this momentum and continue to share my insights/knowledge with others, and learn back from them.

## 📚 Reading More

Reading is a great way to learn from others. Wether it's books, blog posts, articles you can always learn something new. This year, similar to writing more, I'd like to read 12 new books. As a kid I loved reading, and in 2019 I started reading again after not reading for so long.

In addition to books, I plan to read more blog posts and articles. I have no specific goal in mind, but I look forward to the new content that 2020 has in store.


## ⌨️ A New Front End Framework

In our industry we joke about new frameworks coming out every month, day or hour. When developing on the front end, I tend to lean towards React. While I love React, I am interested in playing with some alternatives in either strengthening my love for React or finding something better. 

Being comfortable for far too long in anything can cause you to plateau in your skills. Which is why I plan in 2020 to pickup Vue.JS or Svelte for a small project to see if the grass is greener on the other side.

## 🌐 Open Source

Hacktoberfest came and went this year and I failed to participate. Obviously it's optional but the idea of contributing to the community in which I benefit from is of huge interest to me. I'm hoping by the end of the year to have made a beneficial impact on at least 1 open source project.

My current interest is in creating a plugin for the open source CMS Strapi. If you are not familiar with it, I recommend taking a look at it.

## 👫 Community

I created a developer meetup in the city I grew up in as there's little to no social community. I hope to continue the success of it in 2020 by making new friendships, helping educate others, and learn from others over some pizza.

## 📣 Talking

I had never given a tech talk until this year. I hope to continue some talks in the new year as it has been a lot of fun (in fact my most recent talk I converted into my first ever blog post - 2 birds with one stone!).


## ☯️ Balance

I recently just stopped a part time job as it was severely cutting into my personal time. Early mornings and late nights was starting to cause strain on my mental health and relationships as it would take time to recover. But one thing I hope to do in this new decade is take the time to enjoy the world around me and my life with my new wife. Noone on their death bed wishes they worked more.


# Conclusion

There's certainly more I could add to this list, getting promotions, or a raise. But I think that would be in most people's resolutions.

What's on your list? Got any book recommendations? Did you meet your goals? I'd love to hear your comments down below.