Insights

My 2017 Review

by Chance Smith

With goals set last year, and 12 months past, let’s see what my 2017 looked like.

Goals set for 2017

  • lead a meetup
  • teach coding workshops
  • attend 2 conferences
  • 3 books a month
  • mentor new coders
  • 7 streams of income

Time tracking metrics first: tracked in Toggl

  • 1988 hours with Sodium Halogen
  • 120 hours with Smoothie King
  • 310 hours from extra work

This is totalling to 60 five-day work weeks. 😣 🤑

chance's desk at theCO

Income streams

Boom! We did it.

Me:

Molly (wife):

  • Fellowship Bible Church - worship academy
  • Piano/Voice lessons

* temporary/intermittent

3 Books a month

This goal was a fail (learning experience). 😜

I got stuck on “Bringing Up Boys” for the longest. Dr. Dobson has a ton of examples for parenting, but took such an emotional toll to read the book.

  • “Bringing Up Boys” by Dr. James Dobson
  • “10X Rule” by Grant Cardone
  • “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo
  • “The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5” by Taylor Pearson
  • “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey” by Kenneth Blanchard

Lead a meetup

meetup 2017 photo

I had the oppurtunity to lead the CO:de meetup every month. There has been an average of 10 people for each meetup.

I’ve done 20 videos for CO:de and some of which have been used for the Dev.Catalyst program. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnmaTbl4XQyQfwDVYnq9q5Tf4pNdl1Dh1

Teach coding

This year I have created a workshop for beginner web developers that I’ve lead 4 times this year to 40+ people.

chance teaching JS workshop 2017 chance teaching HTML workshop 2017

Attend 2 conferences

  • C4TK: Code 4 The Kingdom (won hackathon 2nd year in a row)
  • Nodevember (5th time to attend)
  • signed up for Python conf for 2018 - PyTN

Mentor new coders

With my solo intro into coding, it was a challenging beginning. I was hoping I could encourage others into the industry and share my experience and knowledge.

The workshops, leading a meetup, and now mentoring a couple members in Sodium Halogen, it’s been a good year. I’ve also been meeting with a biology grad from Union University that is wanting to make the switch into developement. We’ve been meeting weekly for a few hours on Wednesday at 6am. He’s been killing it. I’ve been very-very impressed. Keep it up, Zach the Coder!

Unexpected wins

  • went to San Fransico with Dev.Catalyst team and competition winning students 😮 👍
  • learned a good bit about cryptocurrencies
  • made a average 13% ROI on each crypto investment with a total of 105% ROI
  • practiced a good bit with ReactJS and VueJS (Javascript frameworks)

devcat trip 2017

Progress made

Some wins along the way…

  • healthy and happy family
  • bought 2 vehicles in a 3 month period (no more please)
  • Sodium Halogen completed 6+ projects

Smoothie King got a remodel sk remodel 2017

Python Photo booth - 80 hours in 1 month along side Sodium Halogen work. python photo booth 2017

Warp up

I recommend everyone set goals and keep track. This has been very insightful.

Now I need to set my goals for next year. Join me. 😊

chance smith

If you liked this or want to chat, get in touch with me.