It has been a while since my last post. I focused December on bringing this turbulent year of 2020 to a good end.
What a year it has been! The Covid-19 Pandemic dominated headlines with a few stints about Brexit and the US-Election here and there. Sometimes I feel bad about saying that, but for me and my family it has been a great year.
At the end of a year, between Christmas and NYE, I sit dow to reflect on the past year and to plan the year ahead. My method is rather simple:
- Check-in on the 3 goals set for the past year.
- Review Fantasy Story for the past year and write the actual story.
- Set goals for the new year.
- Write fantasy story for the new year.
So, let’s check-in on 2020 goals:
Goal #1: Become a family of 4 –> ✅ Feels it always has been 4 of us
Goal #2: Know where to establish our base (which house to buy) –> ✅ We bought a house this year and love it soo much🎉
Goal #3: Revolutionize how XING does Onboarding –> ✅ the FIRST ONBOARDING flow is alive a newly created Onboarded KPI established 🚀
Checked all of the three goals which is why 2020 was a great year and I will always remember it that way.
This is my story of 2020:
Wow, what another amazing year that was. My second son “Jonte Frederik Neubauer” was born and we got to spent so much time together as a family of 4. Lasse struggled a bit to adjust to his new role as an older brother but now is super cute with Jonte, helping out and playing with him. When Jonte was born, I was able to stay at home and remained to work from home for the whole year due to the Covid-19 / Corona pandemic. Who would have thought that I would get so much family time this year? It was a bit of challenge to balance family (managing 2 kids and Kita Eingewöhnung for Lasse) with work time but it was definitely so much better than only seeing my kids shortly in the morning and not all evenings.
We also bought a house in Hamburg and moved-in! The goal was to find a house this year but we didn’t expect it to be in Hamburg because all the affordable areas we didn’t like and everything else was just too expensive. We call our new home Chestnut Cove because it is in Kastanienweg and we love it sooo much. It’s beautiful, cozy and perfectly set. The neighbours seem great too as well as seeing the woods and horses every morning. It could not be better.
At work, I got my pet project, the FIRST User Journey to a great output. The Onboarded KPI is established and used across the organisation. We didn’t get as much Personalization done as I was hoping for and also the parts ahead of the Onboarding journey aren’t perfectly connected but we will catch-up on that next year. My colleagues will lead that effort so that I can focus on a new pet project. I wasn’t able to go to Porto this year due to Covid which was a shame. The team did a great job fighting through the remote situation though. We had some friction which we probably wouldn’t have had in normal life but we got through it and came out better in the end.
I’m looking forward to more face-to-face time with my team in 2021 though! That will be mixed with 50% working from home. Everyone in the team feels comfortable working from home now and for me, it’s just the best balance between family and work time. I miss the office but I don’t need it 5 days a week.
Tomorrow, I will share my 2021 goals.
