Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2023. There’s 365 days ahead of us, that’s 8,760 hours. Let’s make 2023 a great year.

I wanted to get back into the writing habit for 2023, and actually get back into it without fail. It’s Bloganuary again which brings with it a writing challenge (write every day).

2022 Quick recap

In 2022, I started quick out of the gates and set myself some goals here they are in bullet form:-

1. Create daily & not just consume.
2. Grow my twitter to 1k followers (I started 2022 at 485).
3. Get better at creating video content.
4. Design a new product (to Learn Figma)
5. Start drafting “The Product Playbook”.
6. Create a video course.
7. I also wanted to grow my YouTube subscribers (I was at 14, I still am at 14).

It was a lot of goals, and I’d written my 2022 goals before my 2nd son came along, and before I took on a new role at Automattic – which involved a lot more learnings and I no doubt worked too much over the year.

The TL:DR is I struggled to hit / stick to most of the goals above, and below is where I ended up.

• I did create content daily, especially on P2 which is our internal work communication tool. I hit 20k words on P2 in August

• I didn’t grow my Twitter much (but also I wasn’t very active there) – I’m now at 508 subscribers.

• I did spend time improving my video setup and creating video content – but I didn’t actually create much video content at all.
• I learnt Figma a little bit, but again my role change meant I ended up learning svelte instead.
• I didn’t even start writing a new ebook. I wanted to focus on writing for this blog (or on our internal P2s).
• I created the outline of a free WordPress course and even started the first video. But I didn’t stick at it (I hit quite a few video production issues, including doing a whole lesson with my camera set to time lapse).
• My YouTube channel didn’t grow (because I didn’t add content to it). It’s like turning on a TV channel and always seeing that fuzzy black and white screen. Who’d subscribe to that?!

Axel & a new role at work came along

No excuses, I set way too many goals to actually be able to hit on the side of working full time in a new role, and having a 2 year old and a newborn taking up my time outside work.

A newborn who won’t sleep, who is now a 10 month old who still won’t sleep properly.

Automattic is great and they give a very generous 6 month paternity leave so I took most of 2022 to spend with Axel and Zach (rather than writing / sitting on my macbook). I also focussed 100% of my computer time on growing into my new role and learning as much as I could.

So, what’s for 2023 for me?

In 2023 I want to set fewer goals, with a tighter focus. I won’t be publishing daily on here – that’s unsustainable (I learnt that in 2022) so here’s what I’m hoping for in 2023:-

• Focus on my YouTube channel as priority 1 through:-
  • Creating videos in the Online Business, SaaS, Tech niche.
  • Re-purposing some of the videos into my WordPress course.
• Grow my Twitter following as priority 2 through:-
  • Tweeting daily content that adds value.
  • Creating a good thread 1x a week.
  • Blog post => tweet when I make new content here.

So there we have it, two instead of seven and less pressure to publish daily.