2020: A year-end reflection

2020: A year-end reflection

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4 min read

Hey everyone. I hope you all are doing good. This is the time of the year when we all look back and see the flashback of all the things we did throughout the year. 2020 was tough. But I got to say it was the best one I had. So I am going to reflect and share my journey here.

โœ I started writing

Writing is the best thing I did this year. I created my blog on hashnode back in 2019 but it wasn't active for months. In 2020 I decided to revive it and started writing again. I am glad I discovered hashnode which I think was a turning point for me. I always believed in the mantra of learn-apply-share. So I started sharing my learnings, experiences, and documenting my journey.

I had no idea until Mohd Shad Mirza introduced me with #TheNextBigWriter. His feedback was crucial and helped me improve my writing a lot. The community has given me so much and I am thankful for it.

This year I wrote 14 blogs which got around 25k+ views

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๐Ÿฅ‘ The developer community

The more I got involved in the developer communities, the more I was learning new stuff. I became active on Twitter and started following folks who inspired me a lot. I thought Twitter is a waste of time until I realized how powerful and helpful it can be. I learned to use it the right way. I kept sharing and interacting with awesome people. I learned a lot just by watching what they do.

๐Ÿ›  Learning by building

When everyone else I know was running for collecting certificates by doing courses after courses I realized it's not helping me much to learn and grow. So I started focusing on building stuff by myself. And I learned a lot by creating my projects, fixing bugs, finding solutions, writing bad code, and then trying to improve it.

I built so many projects by applying what I have learned. I Contributed to open source and even built open-source projects. CoverView, the one I built for fun has even got 100+ stars on GitHub. And last week I won the giveaway of Rs 5000 from Devfolio because of this project. This is the first time I earned money by writing code.

๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ’ป Skills

I got better at writing code. I learned JavaScript, react, and played with styled-components and TailwindCSS. I started seeing apps and websites from a developer's perspective. I transitioned from a code newbie to an intermediate level. I got better at communicating with people and expressing ideas too.

๐Ÿฆ„ Giving back

I am a part of the Developer students club on our campus. So I conducted my first ever live session on youtube this year.

I was nervous and in self-doubt but the end, it was all worth it. I learned a lot and had a great experience. Now I feel maybe I can start a youtube channel someday.

๐Ÿ“– Books read

I am an avid reader but I read only a few books this year. Rather than just reading so many books I decided to read just a few and try to apply them in my life. Inner Engineering, Atomic habits, and deep work were a few of them.

โ›ˆ Burnout and failures

I had ups and downs. The journey wasn't all about milestones. I have failed. I have failed a lot. And learned from my mistakes. I pushed myself so much and faced burnout. I committed to stuff and failed to complete it. But I realized the importance of having a balance of everything. I took breaks, started new hobbies, and learned to appreciate other things in life.

โณ Finishing up

Apart from these, there are so many little things I learned and experienced. And each one of them has helped me become a better developer, a better person. I am grateful for all the people who encouraged me, mentored me, and gave me feedback to improve.

I encourage you all to review your year and try to write about it. It helped me understand how far I have come and how far I have to go.

Well, I even started with my next year's plans. There is a long way to go and I can't wait to explore more.


I keep writing about the things I learned and applied. So you can connect with me on Twitter, Github or Linkedin. Also, subscribe to my newsletter and stay up-to-date with my latest blog posts.

โšก Happy learning!

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