Ian Mulvany

January 1, 2023

My 2022 in review

year in review - 2022 


climbing 

A good year. About 290 Boulder problems climbed in contrast to 315 in 2021, but there has been a good shift in difficulty with 73 V4s in 2022 vs 45 in 2021, and in 2022 I tried v5s about 60 times, succeeding 7 times, compared to a much lower attempt rate in 2021. In 2020 I only did 7 V4s, so this is good and steady progress. For 2023 I want to make more regular use of the kilterboard at london fields. I had 6 sessions on it in 2022, and 12 sessions in 2021, so there is a lot of opportunity to use this more. I’m also planning on building a small climbing wall at home, and am considering a moonboard mini. 

The other thing I managed in 2022 was a day out at rawyl where I came within a whisker of flashing a 40m 6c / 7a route, at the end of a long hot day. That was my first time sport climbing outside in about seven years. 

reading 

I read 15 books in 2022, with a sprint finish in the last month of the year. I credit this to Elon Musk as I spent a lot less time at the end of the year reading through twitter, than earlier in the year. 

My best read of 2022 was "We don't know ourselves" by Fintan O'Toole - https://world.hey.com/ian.mulvany/we-don-t-know-ourselves-book-review-a2faac55

The most useful book I read in 2022 was the agile comms handbook. 

The most innovative book I read was Unflattening by Nick Souanis. 

The most pleasantly surprising book I read was book two of the Percy Jackson series. I really didn't like the character in the first book, but have been progressively warming to him. 


general fitness 

In 2022 I ran about 139 km. I don’t normally run, and it’s not been something that I’ve ever really enjoyed, but I had a goal to improve my aerobic fitness in 2022, and in 2021 I ran about 33km, so it’s a big increase over last year. The key outcome that I wanted was to improve my aerobic fitness. I measure this based on the  VO2Max score determined by my Apple Watch. Before I got Covid I was measuring in the 42 — 43 range and this was above average for my age range. After Covid it took a big drop, falling to as low as 32.2 in 2022, and consistently staying below average. At the start of 2020 I was at 36.2 and I wanted to end the year with a measure that was back to at least slightly above average for my age range. It’s been up and down a lot, but from august I really tried to run more frequently and ended the year at 38.2 with most of the last five months being above average. I’m really happy with this as it’s the key personal goal that I set myself for 2022. 

I did have a period of some mental health issues related to some property damage. It was stressful and thankfully only lasted a few weeks, but it was revealing to go through that. 

work 

It’s been a good year for work with teams I’m involved in delivering a number of critical pieces of infrastructure and also some new products that I hope we can release early in the new year. I’ve been receiving some coaching that has been hugely helpful and I can see that I have a lot of personal development still to work on. 

Industry related, I’ve joined the board of dryad, and taken on the role of treasurer. I’m on the advisory boards for GetFTR and the STM Integrity hub. 

tech 

Large langue models are phenomenal and have been the most remarkable thing this year. Some of my teams are gaining a lot from co-pilot and I’ve enjoyed exploring the releases from OpenAI. I want more time to think about where this all fits in with potential futures for scholarly knowledge. 

I dusted off my coding skills to start to create the foundations for a personal digitalisation project that I hope to spend more time on next year. 

My best tech purchase of 2022 was hands down the Apple Smart Wallet. This seemed initially pricey, but it has stopped me misplacing my credit card on an almost daily basis. 

looking to next year. 

There are almost certainly more things that I want to do than I have time for.  

•  keep up my fitness - it may need a reduction in alcohol and sugar to move the needle more. It’s probably worth it. 
•  Build and use a climbing wall at home 
•  Start scanning the photo archive that I have. 
•  Keep reading. 
•  Take up the piano again. 








About Ian Mulvany

Hi, I'm Ian - I work on academic publishing systems. You can find out more about me at mulvany.net. I'm always interested in engaging with folk on these topics, if you have made your way here don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything you want to share, discuss, or ask for help with!