2022: Year in Review

The year 2021 was the year of learning. I’ve started working full-time on CSS Weekly, and while I’m happy with the progress I made, I’m not entirely happy with what I’ve accomplished, particularly not with what I didn’t accomplish.

I failed to keep promises both to myself and my audience, and I’ll work on improving this intensely in 2023.

Highlights

CSS Weekly — Published 47 issues, started a YouTube Channel.
YouTube Channel — Published 30 videos, 10 shorts.
Blog — Published 30 blog posts.
Inspiration Bits — Published 4 issues.
Biggest Shift — Started working on my first course, Mastering Prettier & Stylelint.
Personal — Wrote every day, practiced Hungarian daily, and exercised sporadically.

CSS Weekly

This year I spent most of my time working on CSS Weekly. Either on newsletter, social media, or YouTube. In general, it seems like I’ve spent way too much time thinking, learning, and exploring than executing and creating. This is definitively an aspect I will improve.

The newsletter continued growing slowly, but I didn’t make much progress with creating a community around it, which is something I will tackle in 2023.

Starting a Youtube Channel has undoubtedly been one of the major shifts in my journey as a content creator. I’ve needed to learn how to set up recording gear, edit videos, and present ideas and concepts clearly—all of which is incredibly challenging.

I think I’ve improved a lot, but I still have a long way to go to a respectable level. And I’m really looking forward to this journey.

Inspiration Bits

I put the newsletter on hold while focusing on CSS Weekly, mainly video creation.

I ended up publishing only 4 issues:

I’m not too happy about this, and I feel I have a lot to share in this area, so I will publish it regularly from now on.

If you’re looking to grow as an person, consider subscribing to Inspiration Bits.

Mastering Prettier & Stylelint

Mastering Prettier & Stylelint was my most ambitious project of the year.

And I consider this to be my biggest failure in 2022. I wanted to finish it by the fall but ended up publishing only the first two modules. Creating a course is certainly much more challenging than I initially thought.

I’ve reevaluated my priorities and have a much better system now to actually get it done.

To anyone who prepurchased—thank you. And to anyone who is still considering purchasing it, you can get 50% off on the discounted prices by the end of the month with the coupon code JANUARY50.

Blog

At the start of the year, I continued publishing daily, like in 2021, but this type of work has run its course, and I decided to change things dramatically here. 2023 seems like a great start for this change.

Key Takeaways

There are quite a few important things I want to keep in mind in 2023 that I believe will help me both accomplish more and be happier with the things I do accomplish.

Things take longer than expected

It’s just the nature of creative work. While it’s a good idea to set ambitious goals, you should always keep in mind that something unexpected might emerge that messes up your plans.

Be more generous with your timeframes and more conservative with your promises.

Leave personal things at home

When working from home, it can be difficult to separate personal from professional, and for me, this seems to be even more prominent with my thoughts.

I’ll often wander and worry about things outside of my control, and it shows in my productivity levels.

This is particularly challenging with small kids who often get sick because not only do they stay at home, but more often than not, end up infecting you as well—and recording a video with a runny nose, cough, and sore throat is pretty much impossible.

As soon as the work day starts, everything personal should go away—at least when it’s possible.

Exercise and meditation at the start of the day are good ways to get into the correct, productive mindset.

Experiment and fail more

To achieve more, to get a breakthrough, you should feel comfortable trying out different things, particularly things outside of your comfort zone.

Two to three major failures per year (or one major success) would be a good indicator that you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone, learned, pushed your own limits, and challenged yourself.

If you fail more, you’ll learn more and ultimately achieve more.

2023 Goals

This year, I will double down on creative work. I’ll build and publish more. Much more.

And as I promised a year ago (and didn’t deliver), I’ll share more about my creative journey both here and on social media.

Thank you for being a part of my journey.