See all reflections.

Projects

I've been trying to shift my Projects from "working harder" to "working smarter". I spend a lot of time working on my projects but often I feel like my cycles aren't actually getting me closer to my goals. I'm putting work in but not getting value out.

I liken this a lot to how people workout. Two different workout plans can require the same amount of effort yet produce vastly different results. Many people choose workout plans that don't actually produce the long-term results they desire.

Similarly I've been thinking I need to shift the fundamental ways I go about my Projects in order to change their trajectory. So I've tried to force a reexamination of my core principles by entering myself into several learning programs taught by people actually doing the thing.

• Business - YC Build Sprint (via Startup School)
• Art - SFPC Scrapism
• Shares - Ali Abdaal's Part Time YouTube Academy

I'm currently in the midst of some and others have yet to start so I don't have much concrete to report. That said, I have a hypothesis that another side benefit of these learning 'sprints' is that they take place in small cohorts. This is conducive to building connections and community around shared interests which can be a huge help in improving a craft - and enjoying the journey (cc Zaki).

In January and February I released CloudSeed - a SaaS boilerplate for .NET Core and Sveltekit. I don't have any sales yet but early feedback has been positive and I'm excited to keep building on it in my own projects in future cycles.

In March and April I'll be taking a focus on Shares as I work my way through the PTYA course. I think this is the first time I explicitly took a month to work on Shares so I'm interested to see how much progress I can make here.

Big picture - I'm hopeful that improvements in my Shares can help boost my Business and Art domains by connecting me with more people in my interests. I think this is powerful in many ways:

• Better understanding of the space (new techniques, Customer Conversations)
• Opportunities for Collaborations
• Community (satisfaction, enjoying the journey)
• Audience for launching

Adventure

On top of all this I've been traveling a lot. I've traveled (been away from home) for ~22 days in the first 2 months of the year (including a 16 day stint at the end of February).

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• Skiied in Breckenridge, Colorado
• Skiied in Hunter Mountain, New York

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• Dan's Bachelor Party in San Diego, California
• Layover in Los Angeles, California
• Skiied in Park City, Utah

It was fun. It was exciting. Now I'm tired.

This travel was not quite sustainable - I think 7-10 days is about my max for short-term travel sustainability. A lot of my habits eroded over this time leading to life inefficiencies across the board. In shorter periods with longer breaks in-between this is fine but when all together it can add up.

Now all that said I do want to acknowledge that this length of travel forced me out of my systems and thought processes which helped me think and see in newish ways. I find this useful for self reflection as you can get distance between your usual processes and make more objective judgements about what was / wasn't working so well.

From this iteration, the two biggest issues I saw were:

• Not giving myself time to reflect, review, and accept my day
• Not healing / improving my physical self

To deal with this, I'm most focused on a few things I want to change:

• Self - Taking time to recenter and fortify (esp my diet and my exercise)
• Projects - Reconstructing my creation habits
• Career - Catching up and ensuring I'm on track

Self

I let myself get away from me in Feb. Trying to rebuild my foundation in March.

Body

• Exercise
• Diet

Mind

• Mindfulness and Intent via Meditation

Spirit

• Recentering on my values and ensuring I'm living them

Career

Things are going surprisingly well. Top of mind for me in this bucket is around leverage - or working smarter, not harder.

• Value is based on Impact
• To make an Impact:
  • Understand the Market (Customers) + the Business (Solutions)
  • Then make hypotheses based on that analysis
  • Prioritize the hypotheses by expected Impact
  • Execute on the hypotheses, measure the Impact
  • Iterate

This cycle of creation is basically the same one I use in my personal Projects and is growing adoption in my other Domains as well. It's essentially a path to making educated guesses in a scenario full of unknowns. I'm guessing that's basically the definition of science as well.

Anywho this seems to have been working pretty well so far so I'm going to keep iterating til I find something better.

Fin

I've been busy. A bit too busy.

Going to try to slow down a bit and enjoy the journey.