See all reflections.

In August 2021, I ran a half marathon, reached 7.5k people with my online shares, launched 0 businesses, simplified my FIRE strategies, made HamForGood plans for the next century, and started working out in the mornings.

My name is Hamilton and these are my August 2021 release notes.

Self

August was pretty productive for me considering all of the travel I did this month. I'm not where I want to be but it's still a huge improvement over the last few months.

HamForGood

I've been pretty quiet about HamForGood for awhile. Mostly that's because I haven't been making any profits which would cause something worthwhile to occur. Thus nothing to report.

But I have been thinking about it a bit and how I want to run it and I've come to the conclusion that it's time for it to change.

Major updates are:

• HamForGood now invests 10% of all profits into a HamForGood Fund
• The Fund gives 1% of its assets to Causes / Charities

By my calculations, this will be more impactful than direct giving after 40-80 years, blowing it out of the water in the next 100. It's a very long play but some things are more useful that way.

On top of this, it simplifies both my accounting flows and my giving flows. The former because I'm now just doing a simple calculation across all profits to the Fund rather than doing project-based accounting. The latter because I now have a good way to combine my personal and project giving efforts.

You can read more about this change in the 2021 HamForGood Refactor.

Healthletics

I started doing morning workouts and it's been a pretty awesome change. I think it's due largely to the 'most important things first' mentality and forced execution.

For me, exercise is a keystone habit. If I'm exercising, I'm likely able to do a lot more of my systems habitually. If I'm not exercising, things start to fall apart pretty quickly. Thus it would seem that optimizing for this habit may be a good strategy for improvement across many of my other systems.

So far I've found this to be true. Working out in the morning:

• Gets me out of bed, saving time
• Helps clear my mind, increasing calm and focus
• Increases probability I'll exercise - with all its perks
• Keeps my workouts efficient - as I have to finish them within my morning timebox

A few cons I've noticed:

• Can be hard to get up in the morning
• Workouts don't feel as good - not lifting as much or as intensely

This worked out super well while I was traveling. I was able to get my workouts in without worrying about scheduling / missing other activities later in the day.

I'm a little concerned by the lower lift volume and intensity and will be monitoring it over time to see if there are any negative effects I need to resolve. But for now it seems to be a good change so I'll keep doing it.

Finance

Awhile back I was recommended The Simple Path to Wealth. I finished it last week and think it's the single best resource available that provides a crash course into building personal wealth and Financial Independence.

I'd highly recommend it. You can read my takeways and updated plans for Financial Independence in: The Simple (, Long, Short, Boring, Probable) Path to Wealth

Adventure

In August I traveled all around: Georgia, Tennessee, and Alaska. We also got some time to reconnect with friends here in NY which was much needed and long overdue.

Exploration

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hamilton Greene (@sir.hamy)

• Got famous in Nashville, TN

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hamilton Greene (@sir.hamy)

• Ran a 1:45 half marathon in Alaska (Read more: 2021 Alaska Trip)

Connection

I've been trying to get back on my hamventure kick but it's been halting progress. One thing I've noticed is that smaller group activities seem to yield deeper connections / higher quality time spent. Thinking about how to find and leverage more opportunities that create these environments.

Projects

Business

August was a Business month. I did a lot of thinking about what I should build and made some designs and plans, but ultimately didn't get anything out the door. A large part of this was the substantial amount of time I spent traveling.

But another part of this was lack of clear vision about what I wanted to build and why. This is something I'm trying to get better at preparing and thinking through before it's time to build.

I'll be switching back over to Art mode in September but hope to get back to Business projects (and actually launch something) in October.

iamhamy stats 2021-08

Shares

August was my best month in shares in terms of people reached since the end of 2019, with over 7.5k people reached. This growth was driven largely by increases in watch time for my YouTube channel which in turn brought increases in my other sites and profiles through links and mentions.

I talked about how I've been pouring more effort into YouTube in my 2021 H1 Review. These past few months seem to be evidence that this investment is starting to pay dividends so it's something I want to continue pushing on while we're getting this positive feedback.

A common issue I find myself running into is spending a ton of time planning and creating shares. However I often find that when I do this, I end up inserting too much content into each share which makes it really lengthy and less valuable.

Going forward I'm going to try and keep my shares as simple and concise as possible while still providing the pertinent information. It feels wrong at first - like I'm leaving out important info - but the more I do and think about it, it becomes clear that message clarity is most important and you can always add in extra info later if it's necessary. You can't however make an artifact more clear after the fact.

Career

No updates to share here. I've been grateful to have a job that lets me take time off and that allows me to pursue the problems I think are most important.

Further, I think I've been getting more clarity on what it is I want to do with my life and how I'm going to structure my efforts towards that goal. Perhaps more to share in my quarter review.

Ham

It's been a good month. I've been learning and growing and while I haven't been my best Ham, I know I'm making progress. That, I think, is a key part of my life satisfaction and it's something I've finally been able to achieve with some regularity in the past few months.

Thanks for reading, I'll see you around the interwebs.

-HAMY.OUT