In between the celebrations of welcoming the new year, it's a moment to think and to reflect on the past 366 days. I pose the question what lessons I've learnt and how those can help in the year ahead. Below, you can find my personal thoughts on a variety of areas as I look back at the previous year.

This exercise in reflection was strongly inspired by Alex Vermeer, who has some excellent blog posts on primarily life optimisation and inspired me to try something similar for my own life.

Before looking back at 2016, I've made it a habit to be grateful for the past years and identify what was most meaningful to me during those years. It helps me to put it all in perspective and reminds myself of previous accomplishments, something which I easily forget.

2013: I accepted an internship at Fueled in New York City. I dropped out of college as well. 2013 marked the beginning of my professional career.

I accepted an internship at Fueled in New York City. I dropped out of college as well. 2013 marked the beginning of my professional career. 2014: A year of living in New York City and becoming a professional product manager.

A year of living in New York City and becoming a professional product manager. 2015: The year I moved back to Belgium and went freelance full-time, successfully being capable to support myself.

Now, without further ado, a reflection on the good and bad of 2016 and what's in store for 2017.

Purpose

I believe that defining a purpose for yourself is important. It helps to set a course in life and directly impacts your decisions and general well-being. I've done this exercise earlier last year and I figured what I truly value most is design and how design is capable of making our world a slightly better place. That sense of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, has been a theme in my life since early 2015, when I started tracking as much as I can of my life through Gyroscope.

Since then, I consider my personal purpose that I want to make the world a better place through design. I do realise that it's naive for me to think that all decision I make reflect this purpose, but I know for certain that some (important) decisions such as my career-change this year were reflected by this idea.

When I speak about making the world a 'better place', I specifically mean tiny improvements. For example, at my current job at Bringme, I genuinely believe I'm impacting a small fraction of people's lives and their experience of shopping online. Again, it's an incredible, small fragment of someone's life, but it's very fulfilling knowing that you are impacting lives in a meaningful way.

Impact

Having a sense of purpose is one aspect, but succeeding in your purpose is a different level. On a professional level, I feel fulfilled thinking about the impact my work has had across different projects.

Beyond your professional impact, there's also the environmental and social impact you can have as a human being. There are a few aspects here. First, I've started to eat less meat and commute less by moving near my job (on average, I drive about twice a week now). Further, it's also the first year I've supported social initiatives such as Music for Life and Red Cross.

Further more on the topic of impact, the tech media has long given me a skewed view about what types of successes you should have early in life, especially at a young age. This year, I let go of those thoughts and decided to pursue my own definition of success. As a result, I have healthier expectations.

You often forget that you are on your own journey and not necessarily competing with your peers. Furthermore, I became more critical looking at media and how that skews your view of success.

Tangibles