Welcome to the end of the year! Let’s reflect :)
I published my first newsletter on Feb 11 of this year! I posted the first one with no real plan. I knew I wanted to get better at writing, and if I published a newsletter it would force me to be more accountable, and maybe I’d help some folks along the way.
It worked!
Until July I published pretty regularly, and it definitely helped me improve my writing. It gave me a lot to reflect on, and in trying to teach others and share what I have learned, it forced me to learn more myself. Teaching is my favorite way to learn.
Over time I did start to publish less here as I experimented with other platforms. My partner had surgery and I took some time off work, and during that time I spent a lot of time over on LinkedIn of all places! I had a lot of shorter or medium length things I wanted to write, and LinkedIn scratched that itch pretty well.
The general thought was that I didn’t want to spam your inboxes with a 3 paragraph piece of wisdom. The strategy was to try things out on LinkedIn, and then whatever worked out well bring it back here as a longer piece with more rich information.
The experiment lasted a lot longer than expected. After taking a break from LinkedIn, I’ve decided to come back, opening with this reflection piece, and you can expect more of what you have seen before. Engineering wisdom passed on to the current and next generation! I hope I can write things that make an impact, and help others grow.
This newsletter will be my primary area of writing longer form content, with LinkedIn getting my short and medium pieces.
It is my theory that writing will be my most valuable skill, and I would love to spend time every day honing it. I have a lot of really fun and interesting topics to share with you, and I hope you’ll continue to come along for the ride! Thank you for subscribing, and I hope to keep seeing your faces!
The rest of this letter will be random musings and reflections on my year so far, and what I hope to accomplish — so far — in the future.
Read 1 page of a book every day.
Read 1 article every day.
Write one intentional thing a day.
Yesterday I wrote most of this post, so it counted.
Today I am editing and tuning up the writing, I also count that.
These three habits will help me grow my skills. I set out to read 24 books this year, and by May I had read 14. And now that it’s December I can say I read 14 books… So let’s re-establish that reading habit!
Go to the gym twice a week.
It counts if I just drive to the gym, walk in, and leave. Hopefully I do more than that.
Stretch 5 things each day. 3 sets each. “Hold” for 30 seconds of intensity.
This feels like a lot, but it’s 7.5 minutes of stretching each day. I should be able to make time for this.
Eat lunch every day.
If meetings get scheduled over my lunch, move them or eat during the meeting.
Make a list of easy to make meals, have things on hand that are good meals, and meal prep when I can so I have leftovers I actually want to eat ready to go.
Freeze some meals in advance that just need to pop into the oven.
Consume no more than 30mg of caffeine each week.
I find I work better when I am off caffeine, rather than spurts of it.
For now these are my physical goals, and I do want to add on to these, but I don’t want to overload myself and get discouraged. I’d rather pick up a few good habits, than fail at an ambitious list.
On the productivity side:
Master my new Notion Template system [Ultimate Brain].
This has really been helping me stay on top of my habits, and I am loving it so far. The recurring tasks feature is a game changer.
Start a YouTube channel. Even if I abandon it, give it a go and practice at it. This could be a valuable skill.
Drive more followers to Substack. I have 3200 on LinkedIn, and 90 on Substack. No hate on folks who follow me on LinkedIn, but every Substack subscriber is 10x-100x as valuable as someone on LinkedIn. The ability to directly get my content out to all of you is unrivaled. LinkedIn wants to make everything an AI algorithm, and does not share my content with all of my followers everytime, it’s weird.
That’s it for now! As I work on my goals and refine them, these will change a lot over the next few months. That’s okay! As I love saying, plans are worthless, planning is everything. See you next time!
Welcome back :)