Summary of 2019

It is best to start the new year with a recap of the previous year. How was my 2019? Where have I been and what have I learned? How did I accomplish my goals?

A summary of any activity or period is a basic way to evaluate the goals for that period and an opportunity to draw conclusions, whether the objectives were achieved and with what effort. Subsequently, such conclusions become the basis for further planning, because it is only on the basis of the information that we can decide whether to pursue something and whether we are on the right track.
Especially for me, a young person and entrepreneur, this is important because most of life's journey is ahead of me and so I need to go the right way.

I did a recap of the past year, 2018, in the form of a video, which is here:

For a change, I decided to summarize 2019 in writing.
As supporting documents, I've pulled together: bulletin board papers, my journal, my diary, invoices and more. So I did indeed have something to go on.

Priorities

Priorities are the foundation of success especially for a freelancer. I've written these down clearly:

1. me
2. health
3. sport/movement
4. people close to me
5. traveling
6. meet new people
7. work
8. variability

Having work in first place is a potential problem. It happened to me when I was an employee, and even for a freelancer it's a big risk. Having said that, work always fits in between other activities somehow. After all, work takes up the most time of your life anyway, right after sleep, so it's clear that you won't forget about work.

Promotion

Relatively recently I've come to realise that being able to do something is no good if you can't tell people about it and make yourself known.

That's why I've tried to be proactive. For me, as a professional and an introvert, social media is good for promotion.
So I have been regularly active on all the social networks where I have an account:

Surprisingly, Facebook has become a network that is good for something. Probably due to the sheer mass of users. You just need to unfollow where the content doesn't bring anything decent, or is even just trolling.

I've come to love LinkedIn for the discussions, which often bring interesting information or perspectives. On LinkedIn, it's good to purposefully disconnect with HR ladies, because their posts are overwhelmingly a waste of time. Of course, there are exceptions.

In addition to the cycling jersey, I now have advertising on my car. You can see how I did the decal and what the result looks like here:

Youtube videos

I've been active on YouTube. I made videos on my topics: IT, tech, sports, diet, philosophy and regularly released them every week on Monday. I also did livestreams. For time reasons I stuck to doing one or max two livestreams a month. However, I won't be continuing livestreams for the next year, because having a fixed time slot set aside is quite a burden for me, and due to low participation, even a livestream doesn't have the main advantage - i.e. interaction. Therefore, I will concentrate more on making videos, where I can prepare the topic better and then edit and possibly add to the footage. Moreover, I have a lot of video material in my inventory and can't keep up with editing.

My YouTube channel has grown, I currently have over 200 subscribers, which is 2x as many as last year.
I will still stick to the topics of IT, technology, philosophy, sports, lifestyle and personal growth.

Blog

Here on this site I wanted to publish an article every month. And I have approximately succeeded in doing that. Thematically, I stick to the field that feeds me, information technology. And I will continue to do so. As a freelancer, I always have something new to draw from. And thanks to the excellent SEO, the articles are also good publicity, which I have verified for myself.

Since I have a contact list of some sort, every once in a while I send out some interesting bits or news that concern me. For example, where I'm going to a conference or what new technology I have in my portfolio. Except for a few oddballs, most people are glad of it. And thanks to the email they get a few times a year, at least they know I'm still alive.

Technology

The field of information technology is broad and constantly moving, so there is a need for constant learning. So I purposely told myself that I would learn new technologies. (In my job, I almost lost the point of learning.) I make my choice based on the fact that it must not be an alternative to the technology I already know (which I need to deepen). But it must be a technology that is complementary to or solves an emerging need or something I will need soon. There are many technologies, so it doesn't even make sense to learn something in advance, but it's good to at least look at them, so you know what it is when you encounter it. For example, I used to learn PostgreSQL in advance, but then it turned out that most companies require MySQL. This year, however, I brushed up on my PostgreSQL knowledge. Based on what I saw around me was useful and in use, I incorporated knowledge of Docker technology, for example, which I now use actively and more and more often, and I also run Docker training.

The IT technologies that I have incorporated into my knowledge base and portfolio in 2019 are:

• PHP-FPM
• Gitlab
• NginX
• Icinga
• Svelte
• Proxmox
• Docker
• Python web server+Django
• PostgreSQL

Reading books is also part of the education. I am particularly fond of books that deal with different fields and I am mostly interested in the field of soft-skills, which are needed for both business and everyday life. You can find what I read in my library.

Work

Despite being in different places, I had to put in the work, and much to some people's amazement, most of the time I sit at my PC or think about work - but luckily, as a freelancer, I can do the thinking out in nature on a walk.

Work-wise, it's been challenging for me. After all, the job of an IT specialist is no walk in the park.
I stuck to not accepting any unprofessional work, or work under the švarcsystém (bogus self-employment). So the key was to recognize and understand the types of work. I have even provided consultation on this to others, often employees applying for work at an unfamiliar company.
Incidentally, I had one livestream and two videos on this topic: Vetting companies , How to tell a bad company from a good one? , Why not work for a company that takes subsidies? .

Even though entrepreneurship involves business risk, I didn't go into any projects that were risky, that were beyond my ability and too big a bite and moreover, the risk was on me and then someone else somewhere else was licking the cream. Accordingly, I took jobs that would either be small or build on my knowledge. Requirements in an unfamiliar area I dealt with by paid analysis.

Financially I did not struggle, but that is not surprising given how frugal I am with spending. So I spent money on what could have been an investment: HW, travel to conferences, work environment and health support.

Having more customers is essential! Because the risk is so diversified.
I accommodated the customers who cooperated, and dealt with the others at a lower priority. I took on smaller one-off things as well as long term projects. Each has something to offer, and variety is also good in that it moves you forward more. The essential thing, however, was that if I was developing something, I reserved a whole day for that customer/job and devoted myself to just one big task.

As a result, I have found that operating as an independent professional is more advantageous for both parties. For the client mainly due to the wide range of skills and efficiency. For me, mainly because I can do professional work and professional growth is possible and necessary. And from an administrative perspective, no question. I don't have to deal with attendance, vacation, sick leave and other paperwork. I just have to issue an invoice.

Finances are an important topic on both sides, that's just a fact.
If you're doing cheap work, they'll give you any unprofessional work. And I want the professional work. So doing it cheaply while asking for expert work makes no sense.
So with a higher hourly rate, you're more likely to get more expert work. As a result, you can then have time for yourself. It also gives you time for education :-) . After all, you can't sit at a PC for 8 hours every working day. You need to think of a solution to the requirement/problem first, and you don't have to be sitting at the computer to do that.
More relaxed customers and customers with experience typically accept a higher price. Which is an important factor for good project execution. A higher price will force people to think, prepare and write up the request well. So it saves time and trouble for both parties.
Moreover, you can't compete on price anyway. The important thing is expertise and that's why customers come to me.

I have noticed one more thing: since a capable person eventually either leaves the company or stagnates there, it's suspicious if someone works as an employee, and on top of that for years at one company.
After all, people have long been surprised that I'm not in business. And in retrospect, I could have started the business as early as college or high school if I had thought of it.

Sports

Practicing sports regularly is a crucial priority, as it is the basis for good health, good mood and the desire to work.

The priorities this year were different. And sport-wise, I've gotten to where there's a reasonable investment/performance ratio. I know diet and metabolism from a sports perspective better than any doctor. I know training methodology better than retired hobby racers. After a broken ankle, I can't even compete with those who didn't have health problems. So racing went completely by the wayside.

However, the bike is essential to me and so, as time allowed and within my ability to recover, I naturally rode the bike. I tried to take the rides seriously, but it certainly wasn't systematic training. So I didn't even keep an honest record of the rides.
So, the summary of the year 2013, which was downright cycling, is for me a wonderful memory of performances, not just on the bike, but also in terms of preparing equipment and cooking food and providing facilities, all of which I did myself.

I love going to the water. In the hot summer it's especially great and when it's cold it's cold-water hardening. I started swimming in the pond as early as April and have been practicing swimming technique quite regularly, especially the front crawl, which I taught myself over the previous two summers, so that some swimmers think I'm a long-time racer :-) . But when it comes to the front crawl there is still a lot to improve, both technique and endurance.

I have included walking in my exercise itinerary. So I set out on foot, variously into the countryside and also on hikes in the Krkonoše Mountains with friends or girls.

For camping and hiking I also bought other equipment: sticks and a stool:

Travel and Meetings

When I was an employee, I had no time for anything, not even for travel and events, and finally not even for sports and exercise. However, as I gained control over my own time, I actively put various events in my diary.

For travel, it's good to have a more variable daily schedule and overall control over planning your own time. The benefit of traveling is that you get to experience new things and so your horizons expand. Moreover, it allows you to meet new people, both women and men, and thus meet a lot of capable and nice people.

Conferences in Prague, Brno, Bratislava. Some are familiar to me and have a definite place in my calendar, some were new - for example, the OpenCamp Bratislava 2019 conference.

I also attended the Smart City sessions in Vrchlabí. Where I was pleasantly surprised by their actionability and communicativeness. For me, it was an interesting experience of how the office works.

I accomplished the travelling with flying colours. I visited many towns. So many that I will write the list only at random and leave out the big ones. I have visited and explored these towns: Křižanov, Želiv, Jihlava, Boskovice, Červená Voda, Branžež, Benátky nad Jizerou, Hamr, Humpolec, Jeseník and others.

I also accomplished a visit to a foreign country. I don't quite think of Slovakia as a foreign country. By air I was in Portugal, where I spent a week and a bit in Lisbon with nice people. Aside from the city, we also went to a nearby castle and the westernmost tip of Europe, Cabo da Roca.

I had also planned to stay in Prague for a longer period of time. I accomplished this in the fall when I stayed in Prague for 10 days straight. In the afternoons I was mostly working in Prague and in the mornings or evenings there were meetings or events that I attended.
All the visits this year have helped me overcome my dislike of Prague as I am now meeting mostly good people in Prague.

Gradually, I will again release videos of my travels on my YouTube channel in travel playlist.
You can see some photos of my travels in chronological order on my Instagram.

Conclusion

The year 2019 has been full of work, personal and travel activities. I also had to absorb a lot of new information and changes. It was a challenging year for me, but I kept moving forward. And in all this, I have to persevere in the next year as well, because I was stagnating not only professionally when I was an employee, but in other areas too, and now I can move forward. So I need to keep up the pace of shovelling coal into the boiler of the engine that carries me forward.