2014 for me was a good year. I got few decent projects to work on, got myself better with Time Management, Customer Service and setup my target and motivation for coming years.
Hereby I am briefly listing few things that were game changer for me in the year 2014.
Learning from the best
Good or bad being in web development I have to keep myself updated with so many new technologies and changes coming out. If you don’t keep up to date with these changes, pretty sure you will get left behind.
Most of the stuffs I learn are from the premium course site called Tuts+. It’s one of the best value for money. Since I had been member for a while now I still can get loads of stuff for only 19 Dollars per month. This site covers courses around modern day good practices around web development, app development, web design etc.
My recent obsession had been learning PHP Framework called Laravel. It’s one of the robust framework around. My main source for learning had been through website called Laracasts.
Time Management for Better Productivity
One of the myth busted on 2014 was if you work long hours you are more productive. In fact from my personal experience I found out that balancing time working and taking some break in between was more productive for me.
Whenever I worked on freelance projects I started working for a period of time and then took plenty of break in between. This kept me refreshed and more focused.
Other habit I changed was not working for an hour at least before going to bed. I stopped being in front of computer at 10 and hopped into bed at 11.
Selecting a niche of services
In 2014, one of the thing I selected was the nice of services that I liked to target. Most of my work were based around Custom WordPress Development.
I stopped working on Premium Theme Customisation and work handed over by other developer. The main reason I stopped working on these kind of project were the complexities it bought over and also I found it relatively hard in giving an estimate for these kind of projects.
Setting up the ballpark figure
I did set up the minimum ballpark figure for the projects that I was taking on.
The reason I chose to setup the reasonable ballpark figure was mainly because I wanted to work on project from scratch to finish or at least the designs provided in the form of PSDs. This helped me provide proper estimates as well as focus more on planning the website for better optimisation especially for faster loading speed and On Page SEO Optimisation.
Focusing on Customer Service and Satisfaction
Selecting the precise niche and setting up ballpark figure, I was able to filter out the kind of projects I wanted to work on. In turn I was able to plan and deliver the projects I took in proper and planned way which resulted into timely delivery of project as well as the quality of the work was way better.
My main goal being getting few but happy clients, and always getting satisfaction in the quality of work I was delivering.
Planning ahead for 2015
I am really excited about 2015. Two of the main things I want to learn and get better at 2015 are PHP Framework Laravel and get my head around App Development.
