Looking back at 2024

An annual review of what’s happened in 2024, and what I’m planning for 2025

Jan 18, 2025
Every year, I take the time to go over the events of the past and I dream up a few new goals or adventures. I had followed a really consistent format for years. I looked at five big events from the last year, five favourite moments, five challenges and then I’d set myself five new goals for the year ahead. You can read last’s year review here.
 
This time around, things felt different…

Mangoes at Christmas & Daily Summer Thunderstorms

Summers in Australia can be intense and that’s thrown me off. While the rest of the world seems to pause between December 20ish until the second week of January, my reality (and that of many other parents and carers) is a little bit different.
I have school-aged kids who are still not quite old enough to look after themselves 100% of the time so from early December until the last week of January, my work hours are very limited, and more importantly, the mind space required to do good work is minimal.
Between coordinating school holiday activities, driving around to these activities and battling the heat of a humid Brisbane summer, all with the usual craziness of Christmas and New Year’s thrown in the middle of it all, it’s hard to find a moment to reflect and set new goals.
While I’m seeing people get back into a work routine by the second week of January, I’m trying to find all the things from my kids school list, labelling all the things, dealing with the heat by putting on the sprinkler and dishing out countless mangoes and ice blocks.
So instead of rushing into planning a whole year’s worth of projects I’ve taken my time. IO started in mid-December, and I’m only just now, four weeks later, putting the final touches on my plan for the year ahead.
 

Looking back at 2024

It was a big year. I had forgotten about how much happened until I wrote it all down (the actual list is even bigger, but I’m keeping some things to myself)
 
On the family side of things:
  • My partner just had his first full year of being self-employed. So we started a company where our work is quite different, but we’re figuring out to make our strengths come together.
  • We celebrated being together for 15 years!!
  • Three guinea pigs and three chickens joined our family
  • Many, many car repairs led us to getting a second car, which means more flexibility to get around and sign up our kids to activities they’re interested in.
  • We did a lot of camping early in the year (and each kid went on a solo trip with my partner)
  • I went on a trip to Greece to see my sister getting married (and discover a new part of the world) and got to spend 10 days with my parents and my sister’s new extended family.
  • We travelled to Sydney twice (to see family and friends). We spent a week in Armidale, enjoying a cooler climate (it almost snowed!).
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On the professional side of things:
  • I completed the Notion Mastery course (highly recommend it to anyone who wants to dive deep into Notion)
  • I got my first two Notion certifications (Essentials, Settings & Sharing)
  • I became a Notion Ambassador, and was a Featured Template Creator!
  • I got a handful of paying clients for whom I built custom Notion workspaces
  • I hosted two online workshops, with a total of 750+ registrations 🤯
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The end of year feeling

I ended the year with two major thoughts/feelings
  • “Meh”
  • Freedom of time is what’s important to me right now
 
Even if the list above is full of really amazing wins I felt “meh”. Going through the process from Downshift’s Annual Review, I realised what was missing and why what looks like a great year on paper left me feeling tired by the end of the year.
 
  1. I completely forgot about the goals I had set myself back in December 2023. I wrote them once and then just chugged along, throwing a lot of metaphorical spaghetti at the wall. So I got a lot done, but I changed my mind a lot, set different goals throughout the year and chased the next shiny thing.
  1. Those goals were way either way too vague (creating a business based on Notion) or too big to be achievable right now (doing my SFG 1 certification). In other words, they weren’t smart/S.M.A.R.T. goals, so it left me feeling like I hadn’t even made a move on anything.
 
The most positive thing to come out of 2024 is some clarity around the reasons I work for myself, and why at some times of the year (like right now), work takes a bit of a back slide. I’m doing this all so I can have the freedom to chose what I do with my time. And I did have a lot of that last year.
 

What’s ahead

Instead of specific goals, this year I’m choosing core values that will help me achieve what I want.
 
This year my focus is on:
  • Genuineness (meaning being true to myself towards others, but mostly, for myself)
  • Health (finding a good workout routine & prepping my meals ahead of time)
  • Courage (to publish more videos, to host in-person events, to do the uncomfortable thing)
  • Creativity (spending time on creative arts, just for the fun of it)
  • Connection (with family, friends and communities I belong to)
 
To make sure I don’t make last year’s mistake, I’ve included these as part of my start-up routine so that they are obvious and visible at all times. Or at least a lot more than they were last year.
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To be more specific in terms of the goals or projects I want to take on to live through these values this year, I’m taking a slower approach. Instead of “what are the five big goals” I want to accomplish in 2025, each school term (they line up well with quarters), I’ll look at my calendar, see what’s already there, see how much free time is left and I’ll figure out what I need to do to make sure each of these values are taken care of.
 
I’m trying to focus more towards using the PARA method, so in practice it means never having much more than 10 projects on the go, and making sure there a good balance between projects that will help me live through my chosen values. Because many family projects take up my time, it will force me to be more focus on the professional side of things for the year ahead. Or that’s what I’m hoping will happen.
 
So this is the part where my yearly review still feels undone. Because I’m trying something a bit more open ended. And giving myself permission to play around more with freedom of time (without feeling guilty when my time is not used for professional pursuits).
 
Until next year…