This has been a horrible year for most of us. COVID-19 has killed millions of people and changed life for millions more. The pandemic has also changed the way we work and live our daily lives.
In this article I'm going to focus on the more positive things which have happened to me in 2020.
Work habits
At the start of the year, I read Cal Newports Deep Work which had a positive effect on my daily work routine. I started using time blocking to get more focused work. I also try to schedule all meetings on the afternoon because I'm the most productive in the morning.
Taking testing seriously
In April I read an article by Kent C. Dodds about testing JavaScript apps. It resonated with me so much that I wanted to see what more he had to say. I ended up buying his Testing JavaScript course and later joining Twitter to follow him.
This year I've learned a lot about TypeScript, testing library and cypress. You could say this is the year I've started taking testing really seriously and it's had an positive impact on the quality of my work.
KCD Discord
Right around that time I joined Twitter, Kent started his own Discrod server. I decided to join there and see what kind of community there would form. This is the first Internet community I've been an active member of.
Blogging
In April I also started blogging. I've had blogs before but usually I stop writing after a few posts. The issue for me is, I don't find interesting things to write about. This time I decided I'll write about anything no matter how trivial or stupid it seems. In 2021, I'm going to focus on the quality and depth of my articles more in the coming year.
First NPM package
This year I published my first open source. It's called tailwind-gradient-mask-image and it's a simple Tailwind CSS plugin for applying a gradient mask on a HTML element.
Learning
I've learned a lot of new things in 2020. At the start of the year I started learning Rust and made learning projects from hello world to a sudoku solver.
I also learned Tailwind CSS and made my first Electron and React Native apps.
I purchased Kent C. Dodds EpicReact course and have been working my way through it since launch. I am only half way through it but so far it has been excellent!
OSS Raid Group
In December some of us in the KCD Discord started a open source "raid group" through which we contribute to open source projects as a group. So far we've contributed to react-i18next, react-testing-library-hooks and Hospital Run. It's been great fun and I'm looking forward to what we can achieve!