Our 2023 Review

Hi everyone! 👋🏼

Every year since we started Badminton Insight we have done a recap where we share some of our highlights of the previous year, and also some goals for the upcoming year! It has become a tradition, so here is this year’s! At the end we also have some prompts to help you reflect on your 2023 and also come up with some goals for 2024 😃

Our 2023 Highlights

January – we played our first proper “Asia tour” (going to Asia for more than 1 tournament) where we did 3 weeks in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. We have two highlights from the trip: firstly we went for dinner for the first time with the world number 1 Zheng Siwei after he said he watches our videos & wanted to practice his English!
And our 2nd highlight is that we recorded our most-ever viewed video (Beat Us, Win $100) in KL, which at the time of writing this has 1.6 million views!

February – we won the English National Championships together for the first time.

March – we had heartbreak at the All England (losing after having a big lead), but it was still an experience we’ll never forget as we met so many of you and even heard “smash the subscribe button” while we were on court! Then later in the month, we reached the semi-final of the Madrid Super 300, beating the current world number 5 on the way!

April – on a more personal level, we had our hen & stag do’s – bachelor parties for anyone not in England!

May – we released a video about the new (and now banned) spin serve which went crazy for a few weeks and the video was apparently shown on national TV in the Netherlands and Japan! We also went back to Asia for the 2nd time, this time for a 4-week tour! We didn’t have much success on the court but we met so many people, made memories with friends, and filmed 3 videos!

June – we were still in Asia!

July – we got married 🥰

August – we went on a short honeymoon to the Lake District in the UK! Then after the honeymoon, we got straight back to training for the World Championships in Denmark at the end of August (where we lost to the World Number 4 in the 2nd round).

September – for the third time in 2023, we went back to Asia! This time it was to China and Hong Kong, which was our first time playing in these countries. It was an amazing experience to see the passion for badminton from Chinese fans as China has historically been the most dominant country in world badminton!

October – unfortunately we both were really ill at different points throughout the month. One highlight though would have to be playing world number one Zheng & Huang (and leading 19-14 in the first set!) then going for dinner with him afterwards haha! We also gave a presentation about social media at the Victor Europe distributor meeting in Denmark which was nerve-wracking but we think went well!

November – this month was filled with back-to-back tournaments, where we reached 3 finals in 3 weeks. In all honesty, we were quite disappointed to not convert any of those finals to gold medals, but it was still good to reach 3 finals in a row!

December – we hit 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, and launched new Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes on our website which we’ve been working on & testing for months! If you want to check them out, they’re available now here. 😄

Looking back through those highlights, we have had a great year. However, we also feel that it’s important to share that despite all of these amazing things, it has been a really tough year for us, both on and off the court. We don’t normally share the negatives (as we’re big believers in positivity!) but life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows and there will be struggles (whether that’s injuries, team selections, or things far more serious than that).

But reminding yourself of your highlights and achievements (no matter how small!) has really helped us, so we would encourage you to do the same 😊

Badminton Insight Yearly Statistics

In our previous 3 ‘Yearly Reviews’ we’ve shared some Badminton Insight statistics. We want to continue this so here are this year’s:

April 6th 2020 – 0 Subscribers, 0 Videos, 0 Blog Posts
December 31st 2020 – 15,019 Subscribers, 42 Videos, 17 Blog Posts
December 31st 2021 – 125,981 Subscribers, 96 Videos, 23 Blog Posts
December 31st 2022 – 266,875 Subscribers, 145 Videos, 29 Blog Posts
December 31st 2023 – 416,724 Subscribers, 171 Videos, 34 Blog Posts

Goals For 2024

As well as looking back at our highlights of the year, we also like to look forwards to the next year and set some goals! Hopefully by writing them down and sharing them with you, we will be held accountable. So here are some of our 2024 goals:

Badminton –
- Play the All England again (to get revenge from the heartbreak!) – to achieve this we need to focus on training and performing well in January.

Badminton Insight –
- Run at least 1 in-person event for the Badminton Insight community.
- Improve our workflow to be more consistent at publishing blog posts and on other social media platforms (alongside our regular YouTube videos).

Personal –
- Try to save money to buy our own house!
- Meditate 10 minutes per day.
- Make time to read 12 books each.

Your Highlights & Planning

We would encourage you to reflect on 2023 and plan for 2024 with us too! We have put together some question prompts below to help you with this. You don’t need to do all of these, but hopefully they provide some ideas to get you thinking!

Reflecting On 2023

Highlights of 2023:

3 memorable moments
3 things I’m proud of achieving
3 new experiences

Lessons from 2023:

3 challenges I faced
3 things I learnt

Favourites of 2023:

3 favourite items
3 favourite places
3 favourite songs
3 favourite quotes

Habits of 2023:

3 positive habits
3 negative habits

Planning for 2024

One word to describe how I want 2024 to be
3 goals for the next year (see next section for tips on goal setting!)
3 habits I want to adopt
3 new experiences I would like to have
3 emotions I want to feel more of
3 ways to expand my comfort zone

Extra Guidance On Setting & Achieving Goals

Here are some categories within your life that you could reflect on:

Career
Health
Lifestyle
Habits
Fitness
Finances
Relationships

Go through them (or pick a few) and think about where you are now and where you’d like to be. How can you close this gap?

💡 Remember to think about and know your 'why' - WHY is this goal important to you?

Process Vs Outcome Goals:

Don’t forget to set process goals too as it’s easy to only focus on the outcome!
Outcome goal = the result that you want to achieve.
Process goal = the processes that need to be repeated in order to reach the outcome goal.

💡 Process goals can also relate to habits, as our habits make up so much of what we do each day. When we can get our habits right, this will help us achieve those outcome goals!

Tips For Building Habits:

Start small and stick to a pace that you can sustain.
People often wait for motivation to take action, but the idea is to start so small that you don’t need any motivation to do it. For example, if you want to start doing 10 minutes of meditation everyday, simply start with 1 minute per day, then gradually increase it as meditation becomes a regular habit in your routine.
James Clear famously talks about the power of tiny gains. He says “If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”
This shows how important consistency is. Even if it’s small progress everyday, it really adds up overtime! You can read more about habits here.

“One percent improvements add up surprisingly fast. So do one percent declines.”

James Clear

Please feel free to share this post with family or friends. We have actually just sent these prompts to friends that we are spending New Years Eve with and we are going to talk them through over some pizza 😊

We hope you have a smashing 2024! 🏸

Greg and Jenny