My Reflections From The Past Year That You May Find Useful

Lessons that helped me gain progress after 7 years of constant failure and no progress

2021 was an amazing year for me because it feels like every experience good or bad gave me an opportunity to either reach new milestones or get new lessons.

It was the year I finally made what I can consider a stable income online without the need of finding a job for example.

Contrasting that with 2020 where I made about $5 for the whole year online, it only goes to show that calling 2021 amazing is an understatement.

In this article, I want to reflect upon the things that got me here, the things I did differently from the previous years and I am sure that if you can follow them too, this year will yield phenomenal results for you.

Allow inspiration to drive change in your life

I can still remember my youtube binging sessions in 2020 that got me fired up to start writing on Medium.

Before then I was just pretending that I had something useful I was doing with my life but I had none as everything else came after I had started writing.

I had only one problem which was that my country was not eligible to be in the partner program.

When I did figure it out, I wasted no time overthinking the actions I needed to take.

The principle was simple. Get an American account/company and be ok with paying 30% of my income in taxes and the rest would work out.

Had I waited for just one month longer, this option would also be off and that meant a more expensive process that required $500 upfront for me to get started.

Whenever we have challenges in our lives, it is important to keep our minds open to any form of inspiration that can come through at any time. It might be in form of mental stimulation or it might come as a brilliant idea.

Whichever the case, once it happens, move towards and act upon it as soon as you can.

Give yourself 6 months worth of concentrated effort in doing things that inspire you

All my online businesses have taken at least 6 months of concentrated effort to yield results.

It is only in 2021 that I realized this. Prior to this, I had a tendency of quitting about 3 months into my journey.

But anything, given a long enough time horizon of concentrated effort will always work out. I mean, you can go looking for all the secrets to success but the more you look, the more you realize that there are no secrets.

My number one cause of failure for instance was giving up too early. Sometimes, I gave up without exploring all the available options. This was sad because, in hindsight, I kept getting close and abandoning the projects probably right before the breakthroughs.

Find leverage in the things you do

I live in one of the poorest countries in the world where the average income of skilled workers is $110/month or $1320/year.

With these odds, it can be really tough to get ahead if you decide to get jobs around here. In my case, I shifted my focus to building online businesses.

This helped me tap into economies with higher compensation for my time which has helped me have an income that is several multiples above my home country’s average.

Not everyone lives in a poor country though and I understand. But my experience shows that you can put yourself in a place of advantage in the work you do.

When it comes to making money, for example, you can put your money to work so that you do not have to actively work for all your income.

2021 was the first year I got so sick since 2005.

I was constantly sick due to... you know what starts with C, and then I had lots of headaches that forced me to stay in bed most times.

It was also a tough year as I lost the office space I was working from so I had to do my work from home which is really a bad idea when you are in an African household.

But because of the nature of my work, it didn’t affect my businesses or income as well because much of my income isn’t directly attached to my work input.

Push yourself a little harder on the consistency front

Consistency is important in getting things done. It is also what gets you to do the work that moves you from point A to point B.

In 2021 and my resolution in 2022 was and respectively is to optimize my work to the level that gives me the opportunity to consistently show up.

For instance, writing here is something I want to do 5 days a week and take the weekends off. This approach helps me publish at least 20 articles a month without burning out.

I have been testing it for about 5 weeks now and it has helped me make my writing practice healthier and more manageable. This way I can write and have time for my computer science studies as well as my art.

I found that adding those two days to my writing schedule was not effective because it did not increase my results yet it drained me creatively. Had I stuck to that routine, it would have caused me to reach a point where I would not be able to write even 5 stories a month.

Therefore in your own life, try to optimize your work around a habit that helps you become more consistent in what matters to you.

Elevate your skills, traits, and beliefs constraints

I have explored this idea in my article on… 3 Reasons Why Your Side Hustle Will Fail.

But basically, you rise to the level of these 3 constraints.

When I was struggling with building my online businesses, I didn’t know anything about these constraints until I came across Alex Hormozi.

I have found his frameworks to be very important in helping me get ahead and this theory of constraints as he calls it is particularly very important.

You can have skills but if your traits or beliefs are lacking, you will temporarily be limited by the constraint that you lack the most.

A skilled person who claims to believe in themselves a lot but has painful laziness as a trait will find it hard to get ahead because of that lazinesses. But it doesn’t stop with this example as the variations can happen in several ways.

Understanding this theory of constraints helped me evaluate my life from the perspective of these 3 factors and it was really amazing to notice the progress I was making as I addressed each one of them.

I hope my reflections can give you something to think about in your life. I hope they can help you improve your work and life so that this year can be a lot better than last year.