Goodbye 2021 👋

2021 is the year of recovery from pandemic. Vaccines were out and helped reduce the spread of deadly corona virus. People tend to feel safe and focus on business instead of corona virus. The economy started to recover as lot of things reopened after a long time. People are back in jobs that had affected them. Travel and hospitality industry which seems to be heavily impacted due to lockdown regained with people started to move out of their home. Only in the last quarter of 2021, with the advent of Omicron variant, recovery was impacted. I hope this would be temporary and will vanish after some time and we could recover at a faster rate.

The year 2021 for me turned out to be a great year despite the year of pandemic. I enjoyed working on my personality with lot of improvements.

Family 👪

Privileged to have my parents, wife, and son with me during this pandemic. Due to work from home, it was a good time spent with family with lot of experimentation in terms of food, opinions etc. The family has been a great strength to overcome this pandemic. I was able to spend more time with my son who turned 5 this year. I could understand him better and his priorities.

Readings 📖

I started a habit of reading books this year and below are the books that I have read which helped me broaden my horizon and be a better person.

Atomic Habits: A good read to make you realize how small things once done can help you achieve something big. The art of breaking a big thing into small. Small optimizations can lead to big improvements. A must read.
Zero to One: A book on entrepreneurship. It teaches what it takes to start a company/business with fresh idea and doing something new.
Rework: This book is about work culture by Basecamp founder. The lessons are related to non-trivial way of managing people and office. A good read.
The New One Minute Manager: It teaches new way of managing people. It has tips for leading teams in an agile world.
Pro .Net 4 Parallel Programming in C#: Yes, I do read technical book sometimes and this was the book on my shelf lying from few years. Got to read and uncovered lot of things related to parallel programming.

Currently, I have been reading ‘The Intelligent Investor’ by Benjamin Graham and would love to continue this habit.

This was one of the best habits I have inculcated during the pandemic that helped me relax, rejuvenate and explore the world.

Health/Sports 🏏

Started to have a brisk walk for around 45 mins daily.
Cricket: Followed my passion for cricket and joined Prodigies Cricket Club. Plays once/twice in a week. This is a great stress buster and helps you rejuvenate, meet new friends from different areas that broadens the horizon.

Community Engagements

It started with knowledge sharing sessions. With the love and support audience has provided, it has encouraged me to do more. Areas Covered: AI/ML and Cloud Computing Delivered 4 sessions and got an opportunity to speak in some international conferences

Link: https://github.com/praveenraghuvanshi/tech-sessions

These type of activity has helped me gain knowledge, correct the misunderstanding and think outside daily work.

Professionally 🏢

Continued to work from home. Delivered some releases of the product. Delivered a session in Quality Conference. Participated and won prize in Harman Hackathon 2021. Patent was granted, thanks to my co-inventor, Manoj Sakhare

Finance 💰

Tried different things to improve the alternate source of income such as stocks, IPO’s but was not successful.

Vacation 🏖️

Goa trip: Had a great relaxing beach trip to Goa with quality time spent with family. Enjoyed the drive of around 11hrs.

All in all a great year with adoption of some good habits, would like to continue to add in 2022.

Happy New Year 2022!!! 🥳