This is a set of bullet point lists about variously things I’ve done, experienced or come across in 2021. Items listed in no particular order.

Inspired by Fogus.

Past editions:

• 2019 Year in Review
• 2020 Year in Review

Jobs:

No paid work for me in 2021. I spent the bulk of it working on KB Clip

Advisory:

• Two companies, both doing well.

Programming Languages & Technologies

Nothing new here. I spent the whole year doing Elixir, which I love.

Why I love it, in two parts:

• The Sublime Developer Efficiency of Elixir, Phoenix and LiveView
• The Business Case For LiveView Is Strong Enough To Change How You Staff Your Dev Team

And a crash course to get started:

• Learning Elixir, Phoenix and LiveView: A Primer for Experienced Programmers

Content:

• Number of blog posts: 13
• Personal Journal Entries: 26

Popular Content by me:

Some of the elixir content took off, but I didn’t write enough, esp in the second half of the year.

Content I’m proud of:

Again, the three elixir posts above.

Health:

Physical health was bouyed by the habit started in 2020: 30 mins or more of daily walks. Mental health was overall good.

Learning:

I switched to the Colemak-DH keyboard layout. I’m writing about that but overall happy with the move.

• State of my personal wiki:
  • Character: 570,132
  • Words: 94989
  • Pages: 137
• State of Notes.app:
  • Pages: 1139
    

Roughly a 3% increase in personal wiki content and 24% increase in the number of notes.app documents.

• Biggest Doh!
  • Nothing huge this year thankfully. I do wish I had made more progress with KB Clip than I actually did however.
    
    
    

Best Blog posts or other content read

The best stuff I come across I will typically post on twitter. These stand out:

• People Matter by Dan Luu
• Willingness to Look Stupid by Dan Luu
• Out of Sight, Out of Mind by Jesse J. Anderson on object permanence/ADHD
• Class 1, Class 2 Problems: Great mental model
• 2016: How Doctors Die
• Avoid Easy Things
• The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday by Kishore Nallan
• A life is worth about 10 Million dollars
• Sierpinski: More nostalgic than anything. Sierpinski Triangles were some of the earliest programming I did way back in the Apple ][ era.
  

Best Books Read

Overall number of books read in 2021: 160 or so across paper, kindle, and iBooks.

Professionally, Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen stands out.

Favorite Media:

Ted Lasso is still my Favorite. Hawkeye, Wandavison and Spiderman No Way Home stand out on the Marvel properties. Witcher S2 was fairly strong as well. And it’s still tough to beat the NFL and College Basketball March Madness for sports.

Overall, TV and movie consumption went down in 2021. This is a list of stuff I would normally watch but didn’t get around to: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/tv-technica-2021-our-favorite-shows-and-binges-helped-us-combat-pandemic-fatigue/

Favorite Gadget:

I’ve not been into mechanical keyboards before this year, but I love the Moonlander and I’m excited to try out the Elora when it is released.

Also, the expensive Airpods Max are a daily use item for me.

Favorite Life Tip:

Learn Colemak. I’m not a faster typer, but I do think it helps with fatigue and long term hand/wrist health. It’s probably much less feasible if you are laptop-only however.

Travel & Conferences

Obviously, still very little in 2021. Just one small but energizing retreat.

Recap: Todo in 2021

The 2021 Todos were originally published in my 2021 Year in Review

• Done:

  • Launch one or more businesses in 2020
  • 30-60 min walk everyday (or equivalent exercise)

• Partial Credit:

  • NA
    

Did not accomplish:

• Launch one or more businesses in 2020
• Principles by Ray Diallo
• Learn more awk
• Average at least five meditation sessions a week
• Write 5 times a week
• 24 or more blog posts
• Average a tweet and half a day
• Get better at marketing. Try to average marketing efforts daily.
• (Late January add) Learn more about options trading.

Todo in 2022

• Improve on the walking 30 mins daily habit. Add something, anything to that.
• Get hundreds of backlinks to KB Clip
• Start a new and maintain a meditation or mindfulness habit, 4 days a week
• 12 or more blog posts
• 12 or more videos or equivalent on Engineering Management