2023 was a huge year of firsts. I tackled most of my 2022 goals and had some huge change-ups that I didn’t expect. I think that I’ll always be able to slow down and prioritize health more, but this year I want to go fast. Fast, but in the right direction. So, really my issue has never been being too fast, but just being fast to the wrong place. This year my only goal is to keep the compounding going. No big breaks, and always learning more.
Newsletter Edition 1
January is a month of unique emotions. The pretty lights come down, the songs stop, and we are back to work. Vacation is over. Every year I feel like life will be depressing after all the festivities are gone, but it never really is. I think it’s because of the second part: the motivation this time of year brings.
I’m typically not one for big life changing New Year’s resolutions, mostly because the only people that ever seem to set them fail miserably at meeting their goals. Unfortunately though, looking at the statistics of my past years, I seem to do the most head down grinding in the beginning of the year. I feel highly motivated at this time of the year, and I am trying to figure out why.
Could the productivity gains be the result of a week and a half off? Or is it more based on the reflection on the past year? Honestly, I think that this period is so productive for me due to the unique mix of going back to work with fresh topics but not being expected to be perfectly on top of everything since everyone is gone. This gives me the motivation to work, and I put my energy into my passions.
But why not put my energy into my passions all year round? Maybe that’s a “resolution” for the year. Consistency is difficult, but incredibly powerful. This year I really just want to harness the compounding effect that it brings. My whole life I have had big project ideas and never went and worked on them because I’ve kind of just stayed in my head all the time.
For a lot of my life, I have sat around and thought about things, learned a bit about how it could work, but kept it at that because of over-analysis or analysis-paralysis. A few weeks ago I heard that, “More thinking leads to more thinking. More action leads to more clarity.” This sentence made me smile, because I’ve recently gotten much more into this type of thinking. Action is everything. Not even for success, but to drive the feeling of satisfaction.
This week was another cold one in Tacoma. I decided that it wouldn’t go to waste though, and I had a great week including some of the best tennis I’ve ever played and a few fun runs with the dog. Over the past year I’ve found my passion for physical activity to be overtaken by my fear of discomfort, and it’s something I’m also trying to work out of.
A lot of my exercise last year was for the wrong reason, and I want to begin to be more mindful again. I got obsessed with the data and grew frustrated when my fitness levels started to plateau even with higher levels of effort. Next week, I’ll start back up with long, relaxed, thoughtful runs targeted for mental relaxation. Although, of course, “long” will probably be less than 5km for a few weeks. With a great routine, a high level of fitness doesn’t need to be at the forefront. Instead, it becomes a symptom of continued discipline.
Anyways, this was the first installment of my newsletter that I am testing out. Talking with Hokua in Medellín about this idea made me excited to start on something different, and so far I happy with the result. For the nerdy details about the implementation, read the building a newsletter post.
Overall, email newsletters are broken. I cringe at almost every email I receive from a big corporation’s mailing list. Some exceptions would be the changelog by Linear, weekly updates by Read.cv, and recently Meta Quest’s marketing emails. This tech stack is going to be important going forward with Launch with Lee, as I hope to incorporate it into a variety of projects.
I was including a “things to fix” section regarding the tech setup of the newsletter sender, but fixed a few of them while writing this. So now, all that’s really left is to make the emails appear more cohesive across mail apps, and possibly expand the Postgres db to include more data on each user for a more personalized experience.
I’m happy with how this has turned out. It’s an aspect of the web that doesn’t even make most people bat an eye. But for me, I love this stuff. I always screw with people’s forms to see if they half-assed it and am judgmental about the email content itself. And putting dreams into action feels great. To more of this in 2024!