2021 — The Year I Love to Remember
If you follow me on any social media channel, I suspect that by now you would know the 3 most important things that happened to me this year. As 2021 winds down, I thought there was no better time to pause and reflect on my journey, bask in gratitude for some wins, acknowledge my struggles, and plan to do better in the new year.
A recap of the biggest wins
- Migrated to the UK from Nigeria where I had lived all of my life. I consider this a win because I initially struggled with making this decision for a while before I finally overcame this fear for the unknown. I had always envied nomads who have no specific attachment to a place, and emigrate as easily as they immigrate. Although on the 1–10 scale of adventure, I would rank myself a solid 8, migration had always existed in the realm of the 2 points keeping me from a solid 10, so yay!
- I met my co-founder Santiago online, who then convinced me to join him on this journey of eliminating grocery shopping hassles for diet-diverse households at Clickerance. Wrote about the mission, some update about the brand as well as shared the deck we used for our pre-seed fundraise. Really excited about the update made in building the product and look forward to the public release in Q1, 2022.
- In what I consider to be me and my wife’s biggest win of 2021, on June 25, 2021, became a first time parents of Olivia. I now often introduce myself as a Dad of two: A beautiful daughter and a startup. Just watching her grow up has been magical, and nothing more remarkable than having her turn 6 months on Christmas day. Most certainly felt like a different kind of Christmas. More importantly, I am really proud of the amazing job and sacrifice that her mum makes daily for us to see Olivia hit her development milestones. In my opinion, while fatherhood might be a lot of fun and some sacrifices, motherhood is more sacrifices than fun. Thank you Busola for consistently straddling the role of an amazing wife with that of a selfless mother.
Where I struggled
- Even though I like to think I reached new levels of focus in 2021, I struggled to maintain some of these all time highs in a manner I really wanted to. Simple hacks that helped me improve included turning off all notifications on my mobile except calendar notification, time-management tricks with calendars, blocking out time to think, and setting a 9pm daily screen time downtime for all mobile apps. My biggest learning did struggle many times, especially on days where I had up to 30% of my calendar not allotted.
- I have always prided myself as been able to have tough conversations very early instead of kicking the can down the road. This year, I did a terrible job at this and it cost me a lot. I am still trying to fix some of those relationships that matter and were impaled by my delay in exercising judgement. This put me in many uncomfortable spots in 2021. My biggest learning is to temper my irredeemable sense of optimism with some pragmatism, and to try and get in front of the narrative very early.
- I started a daily gym routine that I was so hyped about, then fell ill for some days, and became scared about going back to my previous routine. I still try to get some exercise done every other day, but I have really struggled with getting back my mojo of hitting the gym. Still haven’t figured how to get back in the rhythm yet and had to pause my gym subscription as a result.
- I allocated more time to personal development this year but easily sacrificed it when operational things needed my attention. I always planned to make up for it later but I often don’t. Even though I read more books and articles, listened to more podcasts than last year, I struggled with committing to the discipline of a schedule. I didn’t hit my reading target even though I did come really closer than last year.
2022 on the horizon
Everyone hates new year resolutions. Right? Well, I do too. So I’ld like to think of the below as simple qualitative things I want to be able to reflect on at the end of the year and be satisfied with the outcomes:
Execute 🎯: I want to be able to double my execution rate this year. Be top-notch in setting goals across my different expressions, but achieve them in half the time or double the planned outcome. Feels like a really tall order so fingers crossed on delivering on this consistently.
Communicate🎙: Better to over-communicate than to under-communicate. Stop kicking cans down the road, just get on with it.
Seek Knowledge🤓: Respect my personal development calendar and stop treating it like some stuff that can be easily procrastinated. Seriously avoid having “a serious opinion” on issues I don’t know so much about. I have always been able to do a good job at this, but recently it feels like Twitter’s algorithm has been altered specifically to bait me into offering a take on matters I should simply read, smile, nod and keep it moving.
Share Publicly 📢: Whether it be writing or speaking, I am increasingly aware of the value I offer by sharing even the most mundane of my experiences. I want to do more of this in the new year, even if it’s for an audience of one.
A personal mission 🚀: I want to contribute more to helping immigrants better navigate their new countries from the simple to the most difficult of things, especially people of African decent. Started hosting weekly Twitter spaces to facilitate gists from various professionals in the diaspora (Tuesdays at 7pm GMT and still thinking of calling it #TAIL — Through An Immigrant’s Lens, and themed after providing Tailwinds for immigrants to thrive 😃).
Cheers to 2021 and we look forward to a more rewarding 2022. 🥂
