Looking underneath it all, one of the major outcomes from the pandemic, is how it's almost forced many to get up-to speed and transition to all things digital. For a long while, prior to 2020, I've felt many outside the tech industry were still lacking skills in this area, despite how necessary and essential it is in todays world. Now, with many now accustomed to online life, they're realising new ways of expressing their creativity with new tools and formats, thus opening up new opportunities and possibilities to reach out to others and do business online.

In the space of a year, it's quite impressive to see what we've achieved in such little time. We're able to negotiate more effectively, in a much safer, dynamic and fluid way. Was this virus nature's way of giving us a kick up the backside to improve our day to day lives? 🤷🏼‍♂️

All that aside, I'd now like to take a moment to reflect on some notable points that happened over the course of our year:

• In July, I switched jobs, and joined creative agency: Apacio Digital. Joining also allowed me to tick off a couple of Career goals in the process:

  • Moving to remote only ✅
  • Moving to a senior position. ✅

  A gamble moving during a time where many were losing/about to lose their livelihoods. But in the end, was a risk worth taking. Now 6 months into the new job, it's going well and I'm much happier.

• A year of important birthdays. 16th, 40th and 60. My Son, mine and my mum's, respectively. Despite not being able to celebrate them in the way we'd hoped, they will still be special for being remembered under lockdown rules.

• My Son finished secondary school, but unable to sit final exams

• My Son started studying at College.

• Ran 5k daily for 31 days

• Decided to turn Vegan Despite many holiday plans cancelled, still managed to visit some beautiful places in Cornwall, Wales and the Cotswolds.

• Ticked off a life goal of dressing up as Mario on my 40th doing what I love the most, Camping!

• By August, we'd spent our first full year living together. We've now survived 2 lockdowns together in the process (and I've not been thrown out!).

• My partner's side business (barbering) officially became a thing!

• 2 side projects I've been meaning to start for a while are now well underway

• Accomplished over 90% of this years personal targets

Last November, I predicted the new year would be “the year of change”. Well, it's certainly been that, hasn't it? But despite the circumstances, I'm happy each of us have managed to look through it all and achieve mostly what we aimed for for the year. And this inspires us as we head into 2021.

However your 2020 has been, I believe 2021 is the year of hope for us all. A year that gives back. A year we can truly look forward to that will allow us to return to a much more normal life, albeit somewhat differently.

Wishing you all a healthier, safe and more positive year to come.

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I've mentioned previously the importance of having a flexible work / life balance and there's plenty of research out there to back this up. Haven worked for 20 years in various offices, I feel well qualified to say that they're the opposite of productive spaces and with plenty of remote experience under my belt as well, I can confidently say that work, or at least your best work, doesn't get done in the office. Nor does it do your mental and physical well-being any favours. With these conclusions in mind, I knew I owed it to myself to make the necessary change going forwards. Fortunately, an exciting opportunity has arisen, and I'm very pleased to announce that I'm moving on to a new job as a Senior Front-end Developer, working remotely. 🥳

Being 40 certainly leaves you with allot to to reflect on. As I look back, the 30s has had made the biggest impact. Those 10 years have been rife with experience in just about everything life can throw at someone and so this period of time has been a major contributor in my quest for improvement to both work and life.

While I figure out other improvements, let me make it clear that I'm both very grateful and fortunate with where I'm presently at. I have a beautiful family. Am completely debt free. Fully own all my possessions. Taught myself everything I know and am doing well in my Career. Got to be happy with that, right?

Here's to the next 40 years! 🍻

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As a former “traditionalist”, that is, someone who has been using those fundamental tools for the vast majority of their careers without libraries or frameworks, I’m well aware of what you can achieve using those tools in isolation. Yes, they get the job done (sort of), it will all look nice and work as you might expect, but as people begin viewing websites on a whole new variety of devices, navigating in different environments, the ever increasing demand and higher expectations, fundamentals alone are not enough to solve these problems.

The dawn of the major players

React, Vue, Angular. You’ve likely heard of them many times over so no introduction needed. When I delved into these libraries and frameworks, I quickly realised that, they all share a common goal of providing solutions to these modern development issues. Issues arisen because the fundamentals alone don’t solve them OR it requires a substantial amount of effort to achieve same results. It’s with that notion that makes you then realise how you’ve served sites to your audiences before and how costly it’s been for them.

Yes, a big downside to these frameworks are that they rely heavily on JavaScript and if a user is browsing without JavaScript turned on then th.... scrap that. Aside from the fact these frameworks do have fallbacks, I just don’t believe that’s a valid argument in 2020 anymore. There are drawbacks to everything. You have to weigh out the pros and cons, and these new tools outweigh the cons by far, this I have learnt. A few of the pros are:

Lazy loading content

Only downloading content as and when the page requires it. This is a massive factor in being able to directly control which parts of a page should be loaded first and loading everything else later. We are now also able to pre-cache pages before they've even navigated to them.

Web apps

With tools like GatsbyJS, you can have your website behave like a native app on the web. A web app, has many advantages but one of those is providing access while offline. Mobile usage is rising and depending on the environment you're in, offline access will be a common occurrence. Making use of service workers , you can serve the user cached versions of a fully working site while you're in the remotist of areas.

Increased security and greater up-time

With tools like GatsbyJS, NextJS, VuePress and a headless cms, you're no longer dependent on complicated server configuration hosting as you can serve your websites data endpoints and call them from your static front-end via api calls. These static pages can be hosted anywhere and because they're not dynamic, there's no server requests and chances of being intercepted.

JavaScript has now been baked into browsers since 1995. Of your audience, what percentage actually goes to the trouble of turning off JavaScript? I know that's a bit naive to say, there are those on screen readers for instance and other accessibility concerns, but allot of these issues have already been considered and some solutions provided. JavaScript has been used everywhere for years and when used correctly, truly enhances your browsing experience. Though I will say that, you should still choose your tools wisely based on your audience base.

Trust me, I was a hard core traditionalist. Feel I still am a bit so I didn't jump straight into these frameworks without some long considerations. React was fully matured before I jumped on the bandwagon. But better late than never as they say. Don't get me wrong, I still love just using plain old CSS and JS for some things where it serves a purpose. However, since using React 2 years ago, it's really opened up my eyes to just what was wrong in development prior to now and looking forwards, the exciting possibilities these libraries/frameworks provide.

If there's one significant advantage you can add to your developer tool belt that's going to massively improve the way you build and serve websites to your audiences, I encourage you to adopt one of the libraries/frameworks and start your journey to thinking deeper into what you're building.

We're now entering our 3rd week of the lockdown and with numbers still high, in the U.K (see below), there's still no evidence of predicting when we will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

- 73,758 total (confirmed tested) cases - 8,958 total deaths.

For now, we live the best we can within our limitations. We stand on our door steps every week clapping in support for the NHS and other key workers while in the meantime, people continue to flaunt the rules that's been imposed by our Government to help prevent the spread of the virus and help protect others, the nhs and the old and most vulnerable (as we're continually reminded). Though, the old, at least from what I've witnessed, are amongst those that are flaunting so I'm not totally convinced this is working...

The reality of it

Both Hannah and I have been fortunate in that we've been able to retain our employment status and have the luxury of a nice garden and home, where I've been able to continue working from and since the Schools closed, my partner is on extended leave. Our kids, aged 9 and 15 both love not being at School though our eldest sadly won't be sitting his final exams, which were due in May/June. Never did I think he would miss such an important aspect in his education.

Outside of work, life continues on in the confides of our own 4 walls. Keeping ourselves entertained and busy especially more so now that we’ve had several exciting trips planned for this year cancelled due to the pandemic. To think what life was like for us last year compared to now. While these are unfortunate times, we’re doing remarkably well and appreciating all being together for such long stretches of time.

On a personal note (and as some of you who follow me may of already noticed) as keeping both mentally and physically healthy is a challenge during these times, I decided to start a #LockdownRunChallenge.

This started on the 24th March and the original idea was to keep it going for however long the lockdown ends. Given now that the end still doesn't look likely for quite sometime, it isn't viable to continue it for too much longer. Especially considering how far along I’ve been doing it already. So I’m looking at ending it after a month. But we’ll see come the time. Whatever comes of it, I’ve already beaten my previous P.B so this has been a resounding success either way and I’m reaping the health benefits from it.

No matter where we are, we are all living in completely bizarre times but the good thing about it is that we overcome this as one. As a unit and we’ll come out stronger than we were before. With lessons learnt (hopefully).

In time, we can look back on it all and take pride in what we went through and maybe we’ll be more appreciative of what we didn’t have / able to do then and can now.

Any comments? Feel free to send me a tweet.

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It's important to mention that, firstly, I've had prior remote work experience, both employed and freelance. Secondly, choosing to work remotely didn't come overnight. It took years to realise if it was for me. Obviously it's much different to working in the office. A complete change in mind set and to some, alters their overall balance in life — so you owe it to yourself (and who you maybe working for) to give it some lengthly thought. Thirdly, I don't work full time remotely. My current arrangement with where I work is that I spend mornings in the office, then work from home in the afternoon. My employer isn't a remote first business. Though the arrangement doesn't fulfil what I requested (full time remote) - I am still very grateful to be in this fortunate position and It's a step in the right direction of where I want to be.

Why did I choose to work remotely?

Aside from the many benefits it provides, to put quite simply and like almost every other remotee, for a better work - life balance. I've worked in offices my entire 20 year or so Career. Not by choice. If it were, I wouldn't. For a "place of work" I consider them to actually be most unproductive - at least for what I do and especially when they're open plan offices.

Jason Fried, Founder of very successful Basecamp touches on this quite well, in this excerpt from his book Remote - office not required.

"If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond "the office". If they do say the office, they'll include a qualifier such as "super early in the morning before anyone get's in" or "I stay late at night after everyone's left' or "I sneak in on the weekend". What they're trying to tell you is that they can't get work done at work. The office during the day has become the last place people want to be when they really want to get work done. That's because offices have become interruption factories. A busy office is like a food processor — it chops your day into tiny bits. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty here, five there. Each segment is filled with a conference call, a meeting, another meeting, or some other institutionalised unnecessary interruption. It's incredibly hard to get meaningful work done when your work day has been shredded into work moments. Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work — this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office, such long stretches just can't be found. Instead, it's just one interruption after another. The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely."

On top of this, the old 9-5 and on location regime seriously requires revising to meet with todays modern day living.

I know I'm fortunate in that what I do in my field of work allows such freedom and that now we finally have the digital communication tools available - this now allows people like me to be entirely location independent. This is where I want to be in my career. Not to be dictated by others of where/how/when I choose to work.

So how's it going so far?

In that first single month of working from home in the afternoons, my productivity levels for the % of time I wasn't in the office, quadrupled and my colleagues were impressed with the quality of work achieved. The quality of work had never been so high and this continues to be the case. I won't deny that there was an element of nerves as to whether I had made the right decision or not, in those first few weeks but I didn't let that small thought get in the way of how much more I was enjoying the work I was doing. I was prepared from the start of what was required in order to stay productive. To avoid the common pitfalls/distractions and pitfalls (link) that often creeps in when being away from the office. A common problem amongst remotees, is the social aspect and loneliness. There's no denying the severity this can cause, especially to ones mental health. In my opinion, It come's largely down to the individual as to whether they need that element allot, a little or even at all in their life. Either way, this should all be considered before going remote. For me, I live in a family of 4 and so a great deal of my social time is spent with them. This fulfils my socials needs anything else is a bonus. My family are aware and respect my working situation and know when my focus hours are and they do a wonderful of allowing me to get on with my work.

I set up a slightly varied routine of how my time working from home should be around work tasks:

• Arrive home and have lunch
• Do a bit of shopping if needed
• See to pets needs
• Brief tidy in the house / chores where needed
• Play some Guitar
• Do some brief exercises - and repeat every hour
• Catch up on my social feeds before returning to my desk
• Late in the afternoon, go for a brief 5-10min walk to the seafront (I live real close by)
• After work, go for a run.
• If school holidays, mix with the family during lunch and walk breaks

My pattern is generally similar If I'm instead, at home working all day. With the addition that I'll have a walk or two extra during the day.

As the working days go on, I'm now finding the clear distinction between where my work properly get's done and where it doesn't. The office time is now for things like meetings, quick catchups / extra social time and helpers needed to get what I need done. Having said all that, what my experience shows so far, is that there hasn't been a single task, that's required me to be physically present in the office, that can't be done remotely.

I am much happier now that I'm in an environment where I feel I can achieve and customise to my liking.

I thrive on productivity and that's the underlying motivation for me to self motivate — which is an invaluable tool to have in an out of office situation.

All in all, I couldn't have expected this part my journey to go any better than it has. I was confident going into this that It was right for me and this is proving so. It's also shown, as I thought, that remote working is the truly right way to achieve and have the work/life balance that we, as individuals, deserve and need in order to have a healthy lifestyle.

Healthier and happier employees are more loyal which leads to greater quality and overal productive work.

If you've ever considered working remotely, I recommend you trial it for a month or two and see if it's right for you. Let me know @danielvanc your thoughts on remote working.

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Collaboration and deep integration

I was particuarly curious to delve in and learn Sanity after watching this video. One of the very first things that had me so excited, was that you're able to not only compose posts in the CMS and see them update on the front-end as you type - in real time, but also publish from your local dev machine to production. And if you implement a hosting service, such as Netlify and configure that correctly (it's very intuitive), you can have Netlify build and deploy from your github master branch (like I have), upon new commits, straight to production. This was, to me, a deal breaker. It means a seemless workflow. Sanity asynchronsily reflects your personal/team account dataset for both dev and (when hitting publish) production. This is HUGE. This means being able to have a local dev site running and your team being able to collaborate in real-time with content prior to going to production. So good.

User Interface

My background in CMSs has been typically Wordpress, Expression Engine and CraftCMS (to name but a few). Their U.Is were, thet's say, average at best. They've gotten better, for sure, but in my mind, they've always struggled to keep with the demands of what users expect in their editing experience. Sanity shines in this department. It's minimal, clean and very functional out of the box. Need it to work as well on mobile as you expect on Desktop? Sanity has you covered VERY well there. The full screen mode for large textarea's are up there for minimalism with popular writing apps, like iAWriter.

The way you can click + collapse panels along with subtle animations is a really nice experience (see the notes and content bars folded down to the side)

Content Structure

I also really really liked how Datasets are set up. That is, the structure for each of your content types. Just plain and simple JSON files that sit within a studio folder, that sits in the root of your project. To add to this, they somehow really encourage you to structure your content properly. An important concept, that's so easy to get wrong on many of todays back-end systems.

Pages with Gatsby

Of course, Sanity had to work well with GatsbyJS. That's a no brainer. And one of the things I really love, is how easy it makes auto-generating pages. For instance, I have Gatsby's CLI running side by side with Sanity's CLI. If for example I need a different title for my posts, I can re-click the 'generate' button and it updates with a new friendly url AND sets up the dynamic page on the fly - as a STATIC page. I can see this being done through my terminal window. All while having to do absolutely nothing. Superb!

Support

As with any products you invest in, it's important that you're covered with adequate support before commiting to their software. The doc's looked great, but I wondered if that would be enough should I need instant help. Fortunately, Sanity has their own Slack channel. The team are really go above and beyond to help you with any issues. I had a few teething problems when I first started using Sanity, so I called upon them. I was really impressed. Couldn't be more pleased with their efforts.

After 6 months of use, I'm very happy to say that It's still a real pleasure to use Sanity. With the continual updates, it keeps gets better and better. And for anyone starting out, they've now made it so much simpler with Sanity Create

I'm just skimming the water here without going into too much detail, and I've only touched on a few of the MANY features Sanity provides, so I highly encourage you to go check this system out if you're looking for a Headless CMS.

Thank you Sanity.io

Any comments? Feel free to send me a tweet.