2021 review - a challenging year!

As always, better late then never for my yearly review of the past and long-gone 2021, a tradition I’ve started way back in 2013. To say that last year was challenging would be an understatement, here goes:

COVID pandemic subsided thanks to the vaccines

The whole 2021 was about getting our shots. Me and my wife got it in May and the second dose in July. Our then-12-year-old got her shots in July as well. This gave me a much-needed feeling of safety which resulted in us staying in our home town for the summer months.

We ended the year with our 9-year old getting her first shot right before Christmas and in January of this year our 5-year old also got her jab. Me and my wife got ourselves a booster. Team Moderna, BTW.

My grandfather celebrated his 95th birthday in November and a few days later died of COVID-19. That’s one of the reasons why I found it really hard to deal the fact that many of my friends had different opinions on the whole pandemic and vaccines. It’s like if they lived in a different reality. I had trouble dealing with it and I wrote a well-researched blog post which (surprise!) didn’t convince anyone. 😢

Nozbe - my productivity business of 15 years!

Thanks to the vaccines, we finally managed to have an in-person Nozbe reunion after almost two years of not hanging out together! On this reunion we announced that I’ll still be the co-host of the NoOffice Podcast with Rafal, but we both gave away our Polish NieMaBiura podcast to Magda and Ewelina from our team. And the girls are killing it!

We continued developing our “Nozbe Teams” app throughout the year - we shipped 46 updates of it and this resulted in us announcing a few days ago that Nozbe Teams is the new Nozbe.

Other than that, as the CEO, I started getting some one-on-one business coaching, survived a thorough tax control and also decided on the structure of the company for the future.

Sales-wise this year was hard. Our way of promoting two products - Nozbe Teams and Nozbe Personal - gave us fewer customers than we had hoped and we lost 15% YoY revenue. I’m really doing everything I can now to make this new year a breakthrough year for us, finally. 🤞

This is finally my only blog

At the end of last year and beginning of this one I finally migrated my old sliwinski.com blog to here. While doing that I published my favorite blog posts from both 5 years ago and 10 years ago. I also added new features like previous/next posts using JavaScript.

I also published my book, “It’s All About Passion!” online to read for free. You can also get the PDF/mobi/ePub versions if you subscribe to my Newsletter. Speaking of my Newsletter, I got back to sending it on a monthly(ish) basis, so do subscribe.

My home office got a total makeover!

I started tinkering in my home office back in March, finally finished it up in April, only to change almost everything about it in November with the 2022 version and a very modern video streaming setup which I upgraded today by adding a new Sigma lenses to my camera (more on that, soon!).

I’m #iPadOnly with a bigger iPad!

I finally bit the bullet and got myself a new M1 iPad 13” as my main computer. And I’m loving it!

I switched my trusty cute iPhone 12 mini to an iPhone 13 Pro with a new magsafe-style wallet.

Personally I’m feeling great!

I started off the year doing an “Exodus” with friends which helped me focus more on my prayer and mindfulness.

I started traveling again a little. Together with my wife we discovered that as we have older kids now, we don’t want to go on honyemoons anymore, as we like traveling with our kids (we visited Germany as a family). However we swapped these for at least one getaway weekend a quarter. We had one in February, April, September and December.

On one of these weekends, I finally got myself something I always dreamt of owning. I won’t tell what it is as I don’t want to be judged. I’m writing about it because this pandemic has taught me that if there’s something you’ve been dreaming about and you can get it, then just do it. Maybe you should do so as well.

Sports - two triathlons but less practice.

In the beginning of last year I did a full yearly medical checkup along with a physical cardiology test. All is good. Remember to do your yearly tests, too!

I started off the year with 72kg and ended it with 75kg, which is not good. As I’ve crossed the mental threshold of 70kg I find it really hard to get leaner, despite eating well. I need to double down on it. I feel I should be slimmer than this.

In 2021 I spent a total of 252 hours doing sports, which is less than record-breaking 2020 (380 hours) and 2019 (324 hours).

• Swimming - I was afraid to go to the swimming pool because of the pandemic, so I did only 11km, mostly in the sea. Far off from my 50km goal.
• Cycling - Also not my best - only 1300km - my worst year since I got a road bike - I hope to beat it this year and get back to regular biking. Milestones: B6, RV10, SV6, M1, C1.
• Running - I did less than previous years - only 422km, far off from my 500km goal. My private milestones: SG2, P2P4.
• Walking - More than 200km which is good. Also 50km spent traveling using my scooter. Nope, not an electric one!
• Tennis - 70 hours which is my second-best year since I started practicing in 2018. I played a lot!
• Weigh training - not so good, only 7 hours.

I managed to participate in two triathlons in October and did pretty well, despite my training not being as regular as I had hoped. I’ve already signed up for a triathlon in May of 2022. This will be my 15th Olympic-distance triathlon (what’s with the 15 number, anyway?) and 17th overall.

Now that I play tennis and also do other sports, I’m reviewing my goals for this year, to make sure they’re realistic:

• Swimming of 24km or 2km per month (0.5km per week)
• Cycling of 1500km or 125km per month (~30km per week)
• Running of 420km or 35km per month (~9km per week)
• Walking of 240km or 20km per month (~5km per week)
• Tennis of 60hours or 5h per month (~1h 30min per week)
• Weight training of 24 hours or 2h per month (~30min per week)

Another challenging year ahead!

2021 was hard and I hope 2022 will be better. So far I can report that I’ve made significant strides into making it so.

After all, it’s the journey that is the destination. I’m grateful for doing what I love, for having an amazing team on my side and having great Nozbe users and this blog’s readers to support me.

Let’s go! 💪