• High: Shares are going very well - crystalizing more ideas, connecting w more people, and now making money (Shares)
• Low: A bit too much "empty" travel (Adventure)
• Seed: Enjoying more calm adventures (Adventure)

Observe

Adventure

• High: Enjoying the city more via calm adventures
• Low: Too much "empty" travel - travel w bad ROI in terms of high time / energy / resource usage for little gain
• Seed: Refocusing on meaningful travel and adventures which I'm excited about

I'm not as excited about new places / things / experiences as I once was. At this point I've done a lot of things so net gain from just being "new" is very little.

What matterns to me now is net meaning / fulfillment from that thing. So just going to a new place is really not that exciting. But if it's a new place with friends and is supposed to have an amazing Bacon Egg and Cheese then it's likely that will have good meaning ROI.

Moving forward, I'm continuing to try and push us towards more meaningful experiences.

Community

• High: Seeing more ppl more often over meaningful experiences before 2100!
• Low: NYC is still a very transient, late place so lots of schedules don't match up
• Seed: Friends are getting older and thus coming around to the lame life

Research

Tech

• Low-js web dev - HTMX, Alpine, SSR w F#
• F# - cause I still love it

Books

• Business - Million Dollar Weekend - Good, scrappy advice for launching small bets with high potential fast. I tweaked my Project lifecycle a bit after reading.
• Adventure - Dungeon Crawler Carl - Great easy-to-read sci-fi with surprisingly deep themes, story, and world. Closest thing to Cradle I've found so far.

Podcasts

• Business - My First Million - Great podcast discussing business from a less academic standpoint. It's funny and has lots of interesting takes.
• Business / Shares - Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal - Interesting discussions on lots of different topics

Create

Business

• High: Work is going well - interesting, impactful problems I can solve
• Low: Work is enforcing 3-day RTO which I'm not a fan of
• Seed: Excited for general company direction and plans for our team for the rest of the year

In 2023 I reorganized my life Domains so that the purpose of Business was to sustain my life. This ultimately reduced a lot of unnecessary pressure I was subconsciously putting on my Creations. Now I enjoy work for what it is - a job - and my Creations for what they are - something for me to enjoy.

I'm currently working at Rippling - an HR company. It fits a lot of my values for a fulfilling SWE career which is good for me.

• Smth the world wants (and will pay for) - HR (software) sucks, we're making it better, and cos will pay a lot to reduce the pain
• Smth you're good at - I'm excellent at find problems / opportunites and building backend web services to solve them. I work on a Risk team where basically we do that.
• Smth you're interested in - Risk is an interesting domain for me so I like the kinds of challenges / problems we have - it's somewhat similar to stuff I was working on at IG. Moreover our tech stack is reasonable w Python / Mongo so it's not a deal breaker.

Anyway I'm having a pretty good time at work which is all I can hope for really.

Tech

• High: Enjoying building more
• Low: Haven't built that much in Q1
• Seed: Rebalancing a little from Shares -> Tech and excited for more builds

Projects:

• TravelMap - Visualize your travels on a map

I've really enjoyed my builds this year! I mostly just buid what excites / I'm curious about which has made the builds more fun / meaningful to me.

The downside is I haven't been building as much as I want - mostly cause focused on Shares and videogames. Probably too much videogames tbh.

But I think life balance is kinda cyclical so I'm not worried ab it - I want to build more so build more I shall.

Shares

• High: Shares habit has led to more, better ideas, and more connections w ppl for more ideas
• Low: Still figuring out what works for me / audience
• Seed: My new 3S Creation Cycles for Shares seems like a good endless game

Stats:

• Posts: ~40
• Revenue: ~$60 (source)
• RPM: ~$3

Read more: How much money my 2k subscriber YouTube channel made in its first month of monetization

Top 5 Posts:

1. HTMX vs AlpineJS - Which should you use for your web app?
2. Why you should choose HTMX for your next web-based side project - and ditch the crufty MPA and complex SPA
3. How this Developer’s Side Project racked up a $100k Cloud Bill on Netlify - and 5 ways to avoid the same fate
4. Why F# is a fun programming language
5. The HAM Stack - A Simple Scalable Tech Stack for building modern web apps fast and cheap

See: Top 10 posts in 2024.Q1.

In January I enrolled in the Ship30For30 cohort which is a write-everyday challenge coupled with a cohort learning course. I found it to be very useful in terms of practical strategies / tactics for making frequent small bet writing into a compounding, endless game.

I decided writing every day wasn't for me after day ~20 but the idea of more frequent, smaller Shares was long-term useful - I'm calling them "Atomic Shares".

In Q1 I've averaged around 2 Shares a week and it's been a great way for me to habitually crystalize idea seeds into shareable knowledge. I've really enjoyed this process and have already seen many benefits from better ideas, to more connections, to faster feedback to further this knowledge.

Read more: Why I write online as a Software Engineer - Unlocking understanding, memory, and progress

This increased production also led to more views / engagement which allowed me to monetize my HAMY LABS YouTube channel. It's not much (and way less than minimum wage) but it buys me some coffee and I think that's pretty good for a hobby.

Reflect

Health

• High: Morning workouts and no alcohol has felt GREAT
• Low: I'm getting old and inflexible
• Seed: Excited for more high quality mornings and days

My morning routing has led to very consistent good days. I love it.

More: How I plan my day as a Senior Software Engineer - A Simple Scalable System for getting the most important thing done every day

Finance

• High: I have a job so I make money which is good!
• Low: My projects don't make near enough to warrant my time / resource expenditure
• Seed: Current rate of Tech / Shares growth seems long-term good

Plus the stock market is doing great this year so it makes my net worth seem better.

Happiness

• High: I've been having a good, balanced time.
• Low: Not sad ab anything!
• Seed: The things working well now seem to be good long-term