Revisiting 2017
Mainly to recall what happened last year and to give thoughts and planning for upcoming year(s) I’m once again revisiting the last year (previous years: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 + 2012). Here we go:
Events:
- none (not even Grazer Linuxdays), on purpose
Technology / Open Source:
- lots of work around Proxmox + Ceph
- finally released a new stable Grml release again (and a new release is planned for Q1/2018)
Music:
- Played the drums less often than I wish I did
Sports:
- Badminton: managed to get into the highest available training class (in german: “Kader”) at Universitäts-Sportinstitut (USI)
Business:
- Fourth year of business with SynPro Solutions, which included the biggest company/IT migration I’ve planned and executed so far
- No big news but steady and ongoing work with Grml Solutions and Grml-Forensic
Personal:
- Read ~one book per month on average, which is below my targets but better than in previous years (the non-IT books I recall are “Open: An Autobiography” by Andre Agassi, “Tiere für Fortgeschrittene” by Eva Menasse, “Du musst dich nicht entscheiden wenn du tausend Träume hast” by Barbaba Sher, “Fettnäpfchenführer Taiwan” by Deike Lautenschläger, “Der kleine Prinz” by Antoine De Saint-Exu, “Gebrauchsanweisung für Spanien” by Paul Ingendaay, “Irmgard Griss: im Gespräch mit Carina Kerschbaumer” by Carina Kerschbaumer, “Die letzte Ausfahrt” by Markus Huber)
- Continued with taking care of my kids every Monday and half of Tuesday (which is still challenging every now and then with running your own business, but it’s so incredibly important and worth the effort)
- Started to learn Spanish (maintaining a 354 day streak on Duolingo until the end of 2017)
Conclusion: after a very challenging 2016 I took several arrangements to ensure a better 2017. Recording further metrics about my daily work helped me with capacity and workload planning. I tested lots of different paper notebooks and workflows to improve my daily routines and work, including The Five Minute Journal and the Pomodoro Technique. Trying to get enough sleep and avoid work in the evenings/nights as much as possible (overall it became an exception and not the norm) improved my work-life-balance. In 2018 I’ll get back to attending a few selected events (incl. Fosdem, Grazer Linuxdays and DebConf) and work on some new projects. Exciting times ahead, looking forward to 2018!