My retrospective of my 2013's words

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Creative Commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jre/473712033/

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On the 7th days of 2013, I did a blog post to share with you what would be my three words for 2013. The principle was simple: I choose three words that will help me drive my years in the direction that I want. I see those like a moving part of my life manifesto. Since we are in the last day of the year, I think it's a good time to review those.

It was the first time I did this exercise, and I have the intention to do it again for the next year (they are almost already chosen). For my first attempt, my three words were: kaizen, time, and discovery.

Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese word that roughly says: continuos improvement. This is a word that I would be able to take every year without reaching an end. I think I managed pretty well my life in 2013 with this principle in mind, but mostly on one aspect: my career. I'm not one of those crazy people who likes to work 80 hours a week, even if I enjoy a lot my job, but it's still something super important for me: I need to wake up in the morning, and like what I'm doing for a living. At the end, we give an enormous part of our life to exchange duties against money: it's kind of crazy when you think about it. At the beginning of 2013, I wasn't totally happy anymore with my job, so I made the switch, and I'm really happy about it. I also think that I'm a better evangelist today. As the perfectionism that I am, I see many more aspects in my personal, and professional life that I would like to improve, but I'm satisfied about the journey I had until now.

Time

This one was probably the hardest for me: I was tired of constantly running, having a full agenda, and always have stuff that I need to do. I end up all my projects, refuse many, and concentrate on three important aspect of my life: my job, my blog, and my friends/family. It was a difficult step for me, but even if I didn't really learn how to stop, and relax, I had way more time to try it. I also didn't have the stress of working on many things at once, or running many projects. I now like to do my personal stuff, so I can do it on my own pace.

Discovery

This one was really about learning, and discovering. I managed to go less to the same restaurant or coffee shop this year. I took time to try activities I never did before, and even visit places where I never went before, even in my hometown. Traveling was an integral part of my role at Mozilla, and in every city, I took some days off to visit. Just in the last four months, I visited San Jose in US, Krakow in Poland, Brussels in Belgium, Guadalajara in Mexico, Budapest in Hungary, and Athens in Greece. It's six new cities, and five countries I never travel to before! Even if this word won't be in my list for next year, it will always be omnipresent...

In retrospective, even if this year went blazingly fast, I'm quite happy with it, and I'm looking forward to another amazing one...