Enjoying the ride - 2021 Year In Review
I’m never into new year’s resolutions, but I’m a fan of reviews and reflections. A lot happened in 2021, to a point where I feel like writing a blog about it.
Found it too long writing in chronological, so I’m writing down some of the significant learnings that I’ve experienced, learned throughout the year.
1. Take care of your body and your mind.
I had a difficult start in 2021 with the covid lockdown and travel restriction. Living along in lockdown without knowing when I can go home was dreadful. My productivity for work keeps dropping, feeling devastated with daily life. I was trying hard to come up with a formula or routine to make myself feel better, hence, motivated with life.
Black Coffee, Radio, Zoom, Long walk, Read in the park, Running, Online game with friends.
To be honest, besides video games, I didn’t do any of those before. But soon enough I love doing those every day cause it makes me feel great, even in difficult times.
2. Meet new people, get to know them.
Back then Jupitrr was about networking, I was doing a lot of Lunchclub meets, Clubhouse rooms, ADPlist sessions along some Linkedin DMS. I met a bunch of new people from those, including interesting people from all around the world, some designer peers, some Hong Kong people in London and some career mentors.
Since then, I became friends with a few designers from Hong Kong, ranging from graduates to industrial experts. They helped me to understand much more about the HK UX design industry, as well as learn first-hand design knowledge. More importantly, keep in contact, do catchups, build real relationships. I am forever grateful for meeting them.
3. Knowing when to change
Jupitrr pivoted from networking to content creation in April. Until now, there are roughly 6 versions of Jupitrr existed. No one gets it right the first time. Even pivoting means throwing all the work into the bin, it was still the right decision to make. If you asked what I regret most in 2021? Maybe didn’t pivot even earlier. Many people are afraid of new changes because it hurts, but staying on a dead-end road won’t work either.
Changing the environment is also important. I’m no fan of Zoom and the last couple of months of face-to-face working with my team has brought up our morale, momentum, productivity and happiness. Keep changing until it works.
4. Great things come from repeating small things a thousand times.
Jupitrr hits its first milestone after launching on Product Hunt, surprisingly if we are being honest. During the preparation of the launch, you see a lot of people searching for the best tips, quick hacks to rank higher. However, what I truly believe is that great things don’t come from a single hack, it was a hard-fought result of talking to users, making great product decisions, having fast development loop, great storytelling and most importantly — building relationship.
All the little work you do every day, build the fundamental of great things coming.
5. No one’s stopping you from learning something new.
Working in Jupitrr means I’m a founder, product manager, UI designer, UX designer, researcher while also doing growth, marketing all at the same time. There’re hundreds of things I’m learning like design system in UI, SEO/Social media in marketing. Before this year, I was just focusing on design. The ability to learn fast brings me more than any single hard skill. Maybe it’s for generalists only but I truly believe I can learn anything, it’s just a matter of time.
6. Enjoy the ride
This year is my first year working full time. There were frustrated, disappointed moments especially working in startup. Don’t let it get overwhelming, live every day the best day we can, and be proud of it. We can’t succeed in a second, but we can become a better version of ourselves every day. And it’s gonna be a long ride.
That’s all for 2021. Don’t want to take too much time from work to write this. Same problem Jupitrr’s trying to solve right now — long-form content takes too much time and hurdle to create, which stops hundred of thousands of people from sharing their valuable experience & insights.
In the future, if I have a chance, would love to write something about why our networking idea doesn’t work. For now, let’s get excited about 2022.
Lee
