What a year!
More Covid, cautions/restrictions
Wednesday quizes w/ old friends
Motorcycle trip to John O' Groats with good friend (ending in break-down!)
Got to see family in Wisconsin/Michigan, though family got Covid (and my mom pretty badly)
Missed out on trip to Colmar to see old friends
Promotion from JVM Practice Lead to Head of Engineering and then Head of Technology at Nimble
Great year for reading/learning
Ended year w/ some great new opportunities
Completed "Business Analytics: From Data to Decision" course
Contributed (ever so slightly) to the Eyam Half Marathon as treasurer
Great memories with my family - walks, games, reading
Contributed to several open-source projects
On the whole, figuring out my place at the (still relatively start-up) Nimble Approach consultancy is in the foreground. Made a lot of new friends, great/interesting conversations, and just given me a new perspective on a lot of things
Main Thoughts/Quotes
A few main quotes have been on my whiteboard for most of the year:
"I have not yet met a man who wasn't my superior in some way" - Emerson
and
"If you don't have a plan, someone will have a plan for you - and it won't be much" - Jim Rohn
I also should say, remaining my favourite quote:
"Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl
I often quote that in some form with talking with my daughters. :-)
It's really been great, talking w/ clients, colleagues, families and friends - just on what they enjoy, or frustrations they've had.
One theme which came out seemed to be the concept of "zero-sum thinking". That somebody-else's gain in some way detracted from their own goals/achievements.
People are very rarely pathological - I've not yet (I don't think) met a truly evil person.
It's great when people can really feel trusted/vulnerable enough to open-up. The world often isn't nearly as bad as it seems!
Films
Not a lot of these really spring out, though we did just watch "Don't Look Up". Spoiler alert:
I really liked the ending - I got a bit emotional when Leonardo's character said "we really did have it all, didn't we?"
Podcasts
As ever, my favourite podcasts included:
The Daily (NY Times)
A Bit of Optimism
Cautionary Tales w/ Tim Harford
The Knowledge Project w/ Shane Parrish
Making Sense w/ Sam Harris
Planet Money (NPR)
Revisionist History
Today, Explained
This American Life
What Trump can Teach us about Con Law (now What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law)
Books Read
Moving to audible has really helped - allowed me to "read" during runs.
Tips from fs.blog/reading have helped too.
I've read (or partially read)
Measure What Matters
Sapiens
Accelerate
Beautiful Visualisations
Storytelling with Data
How to Measure Anything
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Designing Distributed Systems
Foundations for Architecting Data Solutions
The Compound Effect
How to Make the world add Up
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
The Art of Saying No
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Good to Great
Why E=MC2 (Brian Cox & Jeff Foreshaw)