2021 review in 8 forms of capital

Since 2016, I had been using the 8 forms of capital framework by Ethan Roland & Gregory Landua, to think ahead for what I would like to achieve for the year. For the uninitiated, the 8 forms are:

💵 Financial capital: money, financial instruments, investments

⚒️ Material capital: possessions, natural resources, tools, infrastructure

🌲 Living capital: nature, land, ecosystems, animals, health (my own addition)

💡 Intellectual capital: ideas, knowledge, words, images, intellectual property

💪 Experiential capital: action, embodied experienced, worldly wisdom

👥 Social capital: connections, relationships, influence

🎨 Cultural capital: song, story, ritual, art, theatre, community customs

⛩️ Spiritual capital: prayer, faith, beliefs, spiritual attainment

I love using this unusual but interesting framework. It’s a lot more holistic in scope than the usual trinity of career, family, health. I like that it focuses on capital but unhinges it from just financial capital to all eight different, just as important forms. The best part is that these forms of capital has transform to one another – for example, if you want to start a business but have no money but rich relatives and friends, you can convert your social capital into financial capital by borrowing.

My intentions for 2021 and the results:

💵 Financial: Hit $5k MRR from all my products by 31 Dec 2021, through consistency rather than intensity.

• This intention was the only one that was specific and time-bound, and it totally flopped. Even $5k is too much to expect from what most say is a long game for SaaS. And I thought I was under-estimating when I set it. I downsized it to $100 MRR along the way and thankfully achieved that in Dec. So breaking it down till it feels motivating was critical. At least I can feel some progress, despite it being not that much in absolute amount. After all it’s the intangible value of working on my dreams that count.

⚒️ Material: Give more, give away more.

• This intention centered around giving and helping others more and more regularly. It’s mostly related to my tech for good, social impact pro bono work. And with the runaway success of safedistancing.sg, I’d say this was realised. I like this cadence of having 1 big tech for good project each year, as some sort of anchor for my memory for what I accomplished for the year.

🌲 Living: Sleep better, move more.

• I did well for the first half of the intention, dismal for the second half. Sleep biohacking definitely brought a marked improvement to my quality of life. My health, sanity and productivity suffered badly due to baby cries at night, and digging deep to better manage my sleep was the best habit ever. Moving more, however, fared worse. I actually slid backwards on it as I got busier through the year. Somehow doing my tiny workouts were a harder habit to maintain than waking up at 5am – strange!

💡 Intellectual: Follow my dev nose.

• I set this intention to learn more development at the time when I’m full-on in developing Lifelog. But half way through that goal changed to marketing even though the learning intention remained. Most importantly, I still followed my curiosity, be it dev or marketing. I learned sooo much about both dev and marketing this year, and pivoted my identity not just once but twice – first to be ing a dev and then to a marketer. Felt like I lived two lifetimes in one year.

💪 Experiential: Look for 1% improvement every week. Just 1%, 1 thing, 1 task, 1 idea.

• No other experiment captured the 1% improvement intention than my #100daysofmarketing challenge. Every day I kept going, even though I was super busy with my own consulting work. Every day I worked at trying something new. Every day I learned new tricks and hacks, especially on Twitter. It was a full immersion over three months, and I’m so grateful for all the fellow indie hackers and creators who journeyed alongside me. I enjoyed the quiet doggedness of the whole challenge. And again, 100 days seems to be the magic limiter, the threshold beyond which a tough habit to develop would finally stick. At least for me.

👥 Social: Quality conversations and relationships, local and global.

• This happened all on Twitter. I joined for the marketing, but stayed for the community. Initially I only thought of Twitter as a platform to market Lifelog. But I made so many like-minded friends along the way, and it’s so much fun just having this extended conversation with the few creators I chat with, and being witnesses to each other’s growth. When curated well, Twitter can be like a massive mastermind group for any niche or topic you desire.

🎨 Cultural: Changing lanes (and identity) to geek/dev subculture.

• I thought I wanted to dive deeper into growth as a dev, but the universe had other plans. I ended up building (sub)cultural capital in the creator/copywriter/marketing/indie hacker circles.

⛩️ Spiritual: Fatherhood that’s mindful and present.

• I stuck on with working from home, even making a permanent base of my work desk now, just so I can continue to be around to see my son grow up. Yes, distractions are still the norm, but I found a system to work around it. My most important work gets done in the early morning, so anything in the afternoon is up for distraction.

That’s 2021 for me through these eight lenses.

How was your 2021?