2017: A Year of Personal Growth

2017 was a great year for my personal growth. And I’m grateful to the people who have helped and supported me throughout the year.

Here are a few areas that I felt I’ve grown in:

Content marketing

I switched my role as a community champion to a content crafter in 2016. For the last few months of 2016, I was learning the basics of content marketing and writing more. In 2017, I lean in to content marketing. Being the main writer for the Buffer blog, I was able to focus on writing for most of the year. I published 54 blog posts on the Buffer blog in the past year.

Now as I look to grow in other areas of marketing, such as email and copywriting, having a good foundation in writing has been immensely helpful.

Speaking engagements

I set a goal to give a talk on my experience at Buffer or remote working in 2017. One talk led to another, and I gave two talks on content marketing and was on three discussion panels (two on content marketing and one on remote working).

The experiences were all terrifying at first but eventually, I found them enjoyable. I was also glad that I was able to help others with what I know and would love to give more talks in 2018.

Reading books

When I was setting my annual goals for 2017, I decided that my main goal for the year would be to read more books. In 2016, I read 11 books, the most I’ve ever read in a year. In 2017, I aimed to read 26 books, one every two weeks.

I read 28 books. Most importantly, I fell in love with reading.

Here’s the list of books I read in the past year:

1. 80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good
2. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
3. Elements of Style
4. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
5. The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
6. How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times
7. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping Our Future
8. Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success
9. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals
10. Headway
11. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
12. Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future
13. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Enhanced Edition: A Leadership Fable
14. Ego Is the Enemy
15. Gone Ahead
16. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
17. The Decision Maker: Unlock the Potential of Everyone in Your Organization, One Decision at a Time
18. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
19. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
20. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
21. Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success
22. Personal History
23. Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
24. The Long Earth (The Long Earth, #1)
25. Thinking, Fast and Slow
26. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
27. The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
28. Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)

My top three favorite non-fiction books are Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Personal History.

Trying new things

2017 was also a year of trying new things.

After taking a Treehouse WordPress development course, I created my own WordPress blog theme, which you’re looking at now. I started a newsletter of curated articles on content marketing and slowly grew it into my personal marketing newsletter. My team lead gave me the opportunity to lead our marketing squad at Buffer for six-weeks to drive mobile app downloads.

Also, I had the chance to visit places I’ve never been to — Madrid, Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Denver. I count myself lucky to be able to travel to these places in just a year.

Hello, 2018

In 2018, I aim to continue growing in these few areas, with an additional focus on writing on this blog. If there’s anything you would love for me to write about, let me know in the comments section below.

Happy 2018, and wishing you the very best for the year ahead!