Sprint 45 Retrospective and 2026

Jan 3, 2026

Me, very happy to be standing in front of some Luxo Jr. artwork.

Retro

“Sprint” 45 is over, yes its nerdy, but after looking over my unpublished 2024 retrospective it popped into my head. While I did write one for 2024 it never made it to a published state due to what was happening in the start of 2025.

2025 was a mixed bag, mental health struggles and the stress of starting a new job took its toll this year, I lost sight of a quite a few of my targets and goals and ended up falling back into old problematic habits. Thankfully I had the right support and towards the end of the year everything started looking up again.

On the positive side I dropped into my new role with lots of energy and i’ve been able to make a good impact within my first six months, which resulted in me passing my probation without any issues and actually earning a yearly pay review where usually I would of been excluded. The role is challenging and of wide enough scope I can see myself working here happily for a few years.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a handful of holidays and breaks this year, visiting Florida twice, Basel, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Milan, and Westport a few times. While Westport was mostly for work so shouldn’t really count, being a fully remote worker means that any trip out is something to note. Disney still accounts for the vast majority of my time off, but that’s due to it slowly becoming an ’easy’ holiday for us. Planning to visit Disney/Florida isn’t as stressful as trying to organise a new destination, so it felt sensible to stick to the ‘safe’ option.

For professional development, nothing has progressed too much, with the exception of learning a lot more about AWS through my full-time position. While I had experience with AWS before the needs of the business has pushed me to learn some of the deep details of the platform and its oddities. With that i’m also aiming to gain some AWS certifications in the near future.

Personally, I totally fell off the productivity bandwagon, slipping out of managing my budgets and productivity via Getting Things Done, which lead to a lot of interesting situations where tasks have been forgotten or a surprise bill hit at the worst possible time. Most of this goes back to issues at the tail end of 2024 which carried over into the new year, and always seems to be the first thing to be dropped when I encounter some friction.

2026

Looking forward, I have a long list of ’new year resolutions’ which I would like to achieve, but i’ve found over the year that defining them eventually causes problems for your mental view on them. For example, I want to read X many books this year, and as you approach the end of the year you either start cheating by prioritising short books or just give up as you know you can’t hit the target.

Joanne discovered a interesting concept that someone posted, in which rather than setting a goal to hit x value, rather spin it around and define it as a ’never zero’. Do something, even if its a tiny amount, towards your goals.

Here is what i’ve come up with at the moment:

Attain a AWS certification.
Post on my blog more often.
Restore at least one of my retro systems to working condition.
Attend a convention related to my interests/skill-sets.
Work towards a better title in my professional career.

With how turbulent the last few years have been i’m quite wary of setting more goals. I’m hoping I can come to the end of 2026 with a list of extra goals I completed along the way, but for now i’m going to hold myself to a lower standard.