Background
At the start of each year, I create 1 Evernote doc that serves as my dumping ground to track key things throughout the year. At the end of the year, I review the doc.
In this note, I track the following for the year:
- 🙏 Stuff I’m Grateful for - Show some gratitude for the people, things, accomplishments, and experiences below. They should be notable enough that you get a warm fuzzy feeling.
- đź“š Meaningful Consumptions - Books, movies, comic books, shows, or anything else that I consumed that I felt was profound enough to document.
- 🧬 Game Changers - Things I discovered this year that had a meaningful impact to personal processes or my life in general.
- 🧪 Life Lessons - Hard Earned lessons I've learned that I can carry forward for the rest of my life. The lessons need to be notable enough that I'd want to pass this down to my kids.
- ⚗️ Stuff to work on for next year - Things that I can know now that I want to fix or improve in the future.
This doc is mostly personal. It’s a way for me to reflect on the year and feel some level closure. It’s a way to put a bow on another year.
2023 Yearly Review (somewhat condensed)
🙏 Stuff I’m Grateful for
- Visiting Family and Friends back in NY. While I didn’t miss NY itself, I did love seeing all of the people that meant a lot to me on the visit back. I especially appreciate how certain friendships don’t change even after decades of not seeing certain people.
- Departures and new arrivals at my current job. There were some notable folks leaving that got me worried about my next steps, but that gap was filled by some great new people.
- My paternity leave. Getting 3 months off work is not a normal thing, but that time and space has really helped me love 2023.
- Massive improvements to my overall health by identifying a few genetic issues and attacking them directly. Reducing blood pressure by reducing salt, reducing caffeine intake, using baby aspirin, and focusing on cardio over weight training. Fixing high cholesterol with plant sterols and avoiding dairy products (cheese, butter, etc).
- Various family visits. Having family visiting is often difficult because it breaks our kids’ routines and causes them to get fussy (which makes us fussy!). But these moments are precious. As time goes on, you spend less time with your extended family so each minute counts.
- We live in a storm saturated region - I’m grateful that this year (despite many tornadoes in our area) we were not largely impacted by any weather.
đź“š Meaningful Consumptions
Games
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Age of Empires II (but the new version)
Books (reading with 2 small kids is hard)
- Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey
- Hail Mary - Andy Weir
- Starry Messenger - Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- The Great Conversations - Norman Melchert
- The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Comic Books
- Invincible - Robert Kirkman
- Mazebook - Jeff Lemire
- Dark Crisis: Worlds Without a Justice League - Superman #1 - Tom King
- The Lonesome Hunters - Tyler Crook
🧬 Game Changers
Things
This is such a weird aspect ratio, but the one that best fits my use case. It’s like single-driving a wide vertical monitor.
Such a simple device but wildly effective to get some light on your desk without taking up desk space.
All iPads should be minis - It’s the perfect size. Fight me.
This this was a life saver during power outages and general needs for power outside of the home.
Since Apple devices have different chargers now and guests come by with their android phones, these chargers avoid having a nightmare in the cable drawer.
This stroller alternative has been our favorite find for summer concerts and carting the kids around the Zoo, garden, and everywhere in between.
I got a big-boy bow this year and the shooting experience is superb. It’s forgiving and feels damp in the hand.
Making the transition to fixed blade broadheads means you’re putting a wing at the end of your arrows which creates inconsistency in shot groups. Iron Will created cutouts to limit drag and these shoot beautifully.
I typically have an incredible ROI on Effort vs. Caffeine intake (I drink instant coffee) - but this just makes the coffee experience much nicer. The caffeine output is much higher.
Processes / Other things
- Keep flosser sticks everywhere except the bathroom. Floss in the car, floss at your work desk, flossing does wonders for overall oral health.
- Using the Apple Watch Ultra as a phone proxy while at home. This helps me stay away from doom scrolling while still keeping me connected for urgent work/personal things.
- Re-organizing Evernote to a flatter structure. Stop using tags and make categorization and single-step thought vs. trying to apply every tagging element to every note. I created a modified version of Tiago Forte’s PARA method.
- Reviewing all my journals from the past decade of keeping journals. It was interesting to see patterns in my thought processes. It was also interesting to see little seedlings of thoughts develop into firmly held tenets.
- Transitioning from using Mint to Monarch for budgeting and Net Worth tracking. It pays to invest in something you use daily and to not have incessant advertisements clog up your view. Paying for a service is a feature.
- Captain Logs, but Summaries. I love captain logs because they help me rewind and see what I did each day. Instead of keeping a log of things happening as they happen (I tend to get busy and stop updating), I transitioned to creating 1 doc at the end of the day summarizing the events of the day by reviewing a checklist of digital artifacts (emails, slack messages, personal messages, etc)
🧪 Life Lessons
- Small kids are a gift - they’re curious, they’re hilarious, and they’re just a joy when they’re not crying. But take the time to recognize the gift and soak it in before it passes you by.
- Your phone can be a cancer that distorts the time around you and makes life fly by faster. It’s like the remote control from Click.
- Go to a graveyard and look at the endless sea of people that once thought they were irreplaceable. You're replaceable. Everyone is. You're not special. Live your life, love your loves, just enjoy your time on earth.
- Each phase of life has it's own positives and negatives - don't harp on positives you had in the past when your life was different. Don't harp on the past in general, it's a fast track to sadness. Enjoy where you are now.
- Do not empower personalities at work. Strong personalities bring drama. Keep them around; they’re great at what they do, but keep them as ICs, not managers.
- Don’t let anyone fuck with your methodology that makes your team successful. Protect the methodology at all costs.
- At work, let teams do things 1 at a time. Don’t assume that knowledge workers can multitask better than anyone else. All humans suck at multitasking.
- Hobbies need to be both consumption based (comics, reading, music) and creation based (woodworking, painting) to have any meaningful value in life. But balance between consumption and creation is important.