Simple trick to keep your skills sharp year after year

I like to think about myself as a very rational person. I don’t like getting emotional. Still, there is something about the short days, colored lights and sub zero temperatures, that always crawls under my nails and bites with a handful of nostalgia. It’s this time more than any other, that I go a memory lane several times a day.

I often contemplate about my work. What have I done and achieved last year? Did I meet my goals? What lies in front of me?

Some years ago, I tried to write this down. I made a list in Evernote and listed all the things I want to focus on following year. Mainly, I did this because I felt overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to try and learn. I was suddenly feeling better when I got it out of my head. Following months, I came back to the list just to check I’m not missing on some promises.

I think I got somewhere around 80% done that year and it was awesome. I did some real progress, so since then, every year I do another list. Then I forget, even for the rest of the whole year.

This is my list from last year (Too bad I didn’t keep the old ones too).

The only thing, which didn’t make the cut, was iOS development, which was meant as a reminder to catch up on some latest iOS trends since I’m not anymore actively developing apps. But all the other items got my attention, I even created a fully functional VR demo for Oculus including modeling my own scene. For no particular commercial reason.

So if you want to move forward on some fields of work, just sit down, think about what you did last year and what you want to improve on and add some things you just want to try. Even if it’s only some quick demo with new technology. Doesn’t matter. Just write the list and after a year, you will see you made some progress on most of the things.

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