Spinach + Olive | Blog: new year

2017

2017 – It's About Setting Goals

2016 was a challenging year; professionally and personally but thankfully it was also a rewarding one. On the downside, my creative pursuits such as this blog and photography have taken a hit, especially towards the latter half of 2016.

The culprits (unsurprisingly) were a lack of time and motivation but also because my goals for 2016 were too broad, looking back on my Photography Focus 2016, it was more about exploration rather than specific tasks or projects, which meant I lacked direction and what I was out to achieve. Comparatively, my 2015 One Year, One Lense project was much more effective and rewarding.

Lesson learnt! No. giving up is not an option!

Photography 2017

Looking back on 2016 and my photography, I realized that I didn't accomplish much; not because I didn't take any photos but like I said above it was because my goals were too broad and so for a newbie like myself it was difficult to set tasks and what I actually wanted to learn or achieve. Sure, I wanted to delve into black and white photography but didn't have a strategy.

So for 2017, I would like to take a more task or project orientated approach to photography and hopefull, through those set projects I will branch out to learn new techniques and develop my creativity. Luckily, I do have a few fantastic resources to use as guide and inspiration, so if you want to know what I have planned for 2017, head over to my post Photography Focus 2017, maybe you will also find a helpful idea or two to start your own photography journey!

Reading

For most part of 2016, I felt overwhelmed with work and often just binged on Netflix or Youtube in my free time. Though I did manage to read several books, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment nor did I find them to be thought-provoking or particularly engaging. The problem was, I wasn't picking books that I wanted to read but more just reading whatever was on my bookshelf so that I may clear up some space. Bad move!

But for 2017, I'm going to take reading more seriously. I know that having no time is merely an excuse so I'm using a new technique – the Pomodoro Technique to help me set time aside each day to focus on my reading. More importantly, I've selected a list of books for 2017, so head over to my post 2017 Reading List. I'm a slow reader, so I try not to be too ambitious in the number of books I read, instead focus on consistency.

By the way, if you have any book suggestions, drop me a comment!

Blogging

Blogging in 2016 was sporadic and I didn't set time aside to really focus on my blog. No doubt, blogging takes a great deal of time to produce quality content but the issue here is also consistency, and because this blog is an extension of my photography when that slows it affects the content on this blog.

But it is certainly something I wish to improve upon through 2017 and going forward because I didn't start this blog out of boredom but as a personal project that I would like to see it to fruition. I'm still working out the details such as scheduling etc but I have a few general areas of focus:

➸ Produce high-quality content.

➸ Consistency in the frequency and type of blog posts.
➸ Learn Google Analytics

➸ Improve traffic and reach of posts.

These are my work in progress goals for 2017, for details about my reading list and photography project in 2017, just click on the links above. Last but not least, what are some your goals for 2017?