2021 was by far the best years I’ve had so far in terms of personal development and career prospects.With the ongoing pandemic, I had a good amount of time at my disposal to try new things and polish my skills.This story list down some key achievements from the year 2021 and how I accomplished it.
Career Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash Up-skilling : I’ve heavily invested on building my career and personal skills.I’ve extensively used ed-tech platforms like Udemy, Educative.io, Medium etc to learn and improve my technical skills.Things I focused on was systems design, writing clean code and tests, design patterns, teamwork and leadership etc.This really paid off at my work and helped me take up some good challenging projects and also lineup for my next promotion.One important lesson I learnt is to Never Stop Learning ! Interviewer : I’ve been actively taking technical interviews since March last year for backend engineers.As of now, I was involved in close to 40 interviews.
It’s a great experience being on the other side of the table and I have plans to continue taking more at-least 1 per week this year.I’ve written a blog on this here: Backend Technical Interviews : An Interviewer’s Perspective I’ve recently started taking technical interviews for candidates applying for backend positions at various levels… freezefrancis.medium.com
Work life balance : I’ve got way better at keeping work away from my personal life.
I used to be a workaholic and found it very hard to keep my thoughts away from work even during my off days.I started following lots of YouTube channels which are run by developers and watching their videos inspired me to flourish hobbies to keep myself engaged and at the same time getting more productive at work.One of my favourite channel is Engineering with Utsav who primarily talks about productivity, side projects and career growth.Ever since then I’ve been able to setup a daily routine at work and been able to do lot more in my 8 hours at work.
Relationship : Being from India, my parents wanted more control of finding me a partner by the usual arranged marriage setup.I learnt the hard fact that they just wanted to get me married without appreciating who I really was or what I wanted in a partner.Ever since then I decided to find someone for myself.After relocating to Thailand, I got into a serious relationship since 2019 and I finally found my soulmate in her.She isn’t an Indian and because of this I had a hard time convincing my parents but eventually they listened and now we are planning to get the wedding done this year.During these times I learnt that I indeed had stereotyped my parents and as they got more chance to interact with my partner they became very supportive and stopped worrying about what society would think of us.Reading : I’ve been trying to develop the hobby of reading but being a person who has no patience to finish a book, I’ve always relied on conference talks, documentaries, podcasts etc.
In 2021 I’d managed to sort some books known for personal development and managed to start reading my first book.I chose Rich Dad Poor Dad as I was interested in personal finance but again my interest in the book didn’t last long and haven’t completed it yet.On the technical side, I managed to read System Design Interview — An insider’s guide by Alex Xu but didn’t complete it as well although it really helped me in my career.
Writing : In the quest to find a hobby, I knew writing would be a good choice for me since I had been active on Quora and few of my answers started getting a lot of attention.
This motivated me to write more and also start on other platforms where I could probably generate some side income.I chose Medium and wrote my first trial story which wasn’t a great success.I didn’t give up but decided to write more on things people wanted to hear from me.I used to get lots of questions on my DMs about my career moves and interview experiences and this motivated me to write more stories on Medium.At the time of writing this article I’ve got close to 60+ followers with more than 8k+ views and I’ve decided to continue writing this year.
Personal finance is often the most underrated skills and at the same time one of the most valuable skills everyone should possess.I’ve been ignorant about this all the time until I heard from my close friends about the investments they have made and all the buzz words of stock markets.Over the course of several months, I spent a lot of my personal time into learning the basics of mutual funds, stock markets and cryptocurrencies.Thanks to the pandemic there were tonnes of contents all over the internet since during the lockdown what better activity could people do?!
Personal Budgeting : It all started with me and my partner creating an excel sheet to keep track of our monthly spending and this is the most important part of personal finance.We did learn some basic on budgeting and then we found a good breakdown of our incomes into living costs, savings, investments, travel & entertainment etc.
Most of the times we stick to this file as a reference but we keep things flexible in exceptional cases.This helped us in getting good control on our expenses and most importantly directed our thoughts into meeting our financial goals.Investments : Although I’d already setup the accounts for mutual fund investments back in 2020, in 2021 I’ve made it a monthly discipline.I’ve now got a diversified portfolio with medium risk investments and net capital is already at profit.On the other hand, being a Non Resident Indian the procedures to open a trading/demat account is very strenuous and time consuming.With the help of friends and contacts I was able to set it up and made my first investment in the Indian stock market.Towards the last quarter of the year, I did spend of lot of time learning the basics of blockchain technology and was able to appreciate the invention of cryptocurrencies.
Once I gained more confidence, I created an account in Binance and bought my first crypto-currency.I’m planning to write a detailed blog of my journey into investment this year.
2021 wasn’t all colorful as it sounds.The pandemic had caused chaos in travel industry and borders were closed which made it impossible for me to visit my parents ever since I’ve moved out of India.I was mostly spending time at my apartment and haven’t visited many places this year but this tradeoff probably gave me more time to explore other activities.Anyways, I’m now hopeful for an exciting and better 2022!.
