Happy end of the year. We’re in the final week and busily doing bugger all in preparation for all our New Year plans where we’ll definitely do everything.
A year ago this newsletter was something I’d only been writing for a few months.
I began by adding 15 friends who I thought would like what I write and by Christmas, it had grown organically to about 50 subscribers. We’re now almost 500 people which is an impressive 10x considering I do zero marketing.
So thanks for allowing some random bloke to send you emails each week.
Best of
Excluding the last three months, here are some of the posts that I think are most worth your time if you haven’t read them already:
Is your work better than you think it is
A mental model that got me past the issue of just putting stuff out there and might help you kickstart your ideas. (also my first post)
Using first principles to explain why some people succeed and others don’t, even when they do something ‘good’. Especially useful if you create anything and wonder why you aren’t achieving your goals.
(my writing audience may be small but this is just a secret test environment for my podcast which had 2 million downloads this year)
Wisdom, and the things I don’t need to know until I’m older
How to shamelessly act your age and stop worrying about how you look (and stop looking down on others).
Don’t finish what you start, Start more of what you finish
Turning common advice on its head to make it actually useful. A good read if you’re setting any New Years’ goals and want to hit some of them.
(If you felt like doing more writing now is an ideal time for trying a new habit and I have to say SubStack is quite fine.)
New Years ruminations
For the last few months, I’ve been writing about time and how we understand it and use it.
I have a lot of posts coming up that I’m excited about on this topic. This post below was a really warming read from last year on the nature of new years goals and where we can mess up on them.
And so, onto the main event. Some more stuff that I wrote.
Stop trying to cram in change and make room for change
It’s a New Year and everyone is talking about goal setting and what they are going to achieve for the year and it is all a bit samey. It seems that everywhere I look someone is writing their unique take on the same thing.
VCs are giving their prediction for the year (which also comes with the prediction that they are going to become the best VC ever).
Founders are talking about the shit that 2022 threw at them and how they will smash this year.
Self-help gurus are telling you to lock yourself in a cabin without internet for 3 days. It’s important to religiously analyse your life and set ambitious goals to achieve 10x more than you ever have before (it will definitely work if you use the notepad they’re selling).
Considering the self-obsessed nature of social media, it really gets worse right about now. There is genuinely extra pressure for everyone to get all self-obsessive:
How am I going to change?
What am I going to achieve this year?
What will I do to make this the best year ever for me?
The world is pressuring you to narrow your mind.
To stop thinking about the world and think about yourself. To stop thinking about the infinite canvas of time the universe exists upon and think about one single year.
Whenever I sense the presence of a conforming box-like way of doing things I tend to panic so this will be me providing an out-of-the-box view of things.
Whilst everyone else is grinding their gears on how they are going re-wire their personality into a kick-ass achiever this year, I want to think more holistically about change.
Places change
I remember going on holiday to Malta as a child. It was a lovely quaint island. Everything moved at such a slow pace. The roads were quiet. Every now and then one of these ancient busses chugged past.
They looked as if they had come out of a movie and they were slower than my nan. The locals would sit around passing the time. There was a vibe, and the vibe was chill.
15 years later it has lost its chilled vibe a little.
The towns have been built up with hotels and apartments. The old buses are replaced with new air-conditioned modern buses that actually work.
Every local owns their own car now and they are in a rush to get somewhere. This has made Malta one of the worst places for traffic in the world.
I still love Malta, it’s great, but it’s different.
Whatever the Malta was that is in my head from 15 years ago is gone with the wind. It was a moment in time. Now it is a completely new thing.
Whilst I was ignoring Malta being all in my own world I came back to it expecting the same thing, obviously, that thing no longer existed.
People change
Something similar happened with a friend.
There was a guy at my college who I didn’t get along with. I couldn’t really understand why anyone was friends with him. He seemed to constantly make up stories to make himself look good. I felt like he was both touchy and toxic to be around. He started to get into drugs which only made him worse and then I never really heard from him after going to uni.
I met him again this year. He is now one of the loveliest people I have the pleasure of knowing. Turns out he used to be full of anxiety issues and was a really torn soul. The drugs brought these things to a head and he went completely tee-total. Saw a therapist. Learned to understand his emotions and others.
I am now very pleased to call him a friend and feel really bad that I never thought to look out for him.
He’s not the only one that changed.
I had these opinions of my old friends which are all completely invalid now:
Friends who were obsessed with meat are now vegetarians.
Friends that were trying to score the most girls are now gay or married or both.
Friends that were the idiot of the group are now doctors with a family and a published book.
Nothing stays the same
We’ve established that other people and places completely change. Whilst we are all worked up about changing ourselves we often expect everything else to stay the same.
I’m not going to tell you what habit to take up this year to hit your health or success goals.
I am lightly nudging you to open your mind to the possibility of change in everything you know about the world.
The faster that you can accept the reality of the world around you, the better your life will be.
If I go to Malta and expect it to be the same I will be disappointed, if I am open to an adventure with new things to see and appreciate, it will be fun.
If I expect someone who used to be an a-hole to still be an a-hole, I am going to miss out on friendships. If I am open and accepting to change I can celebrate their growth with them.
New opportunities will arise this year that you can’t imagine. Professional opportunities, new hobbies, and exciting adventures.
If you try and force a single life path for your future it likely won’t be the best when you realise that everything else in the future will be changing.
If you are closed off with all your rigid targets, you won’t be open to possibility. You will be shut off from the change in yourself that you can’t possibly know you are seeking.
When we try too hard to force something we can get churned up and tossed around by the waves of life. What we should be doing is learning to go with the flow and surf those waves.
I have nothing against setting some goals for the year. I personally always try to push myself each year with a challenge in these areas: adventure, work, health and creativity.
I really believe that one needs to be heavily weighted on both sides of this argument.
You should plan and take responsibility for your life path and goals.
You must also be completely open to change and chance and abandon all your plans when it makes sense
I think it’s amazing to notice how much the world changes around us. So many of the best improvements to our lives can come from being open-minded. The strangest chance opportunities do just happen now and then but only those open to them seize them.
My 2023 (perhaps)
So I have a plan for next year but it is a plan that I’m highly aware has many potential fun paths that can lead from it.
I’m continuing to grow my podcast and investing in some help to increase the output and quality whilst reducing my time.
Carry on writing.
The rest of my time I want to tell stories on YouTube and get good at creating and making people laugh whilst they learn something.
I’m aiming to break 10 world records and document the process
Climb a bunch of mountains and try out other adventures (Q1-2)
Become a mountain guide in Nepal (Q4)
Whatever else hits my inspiration to make a video out of
By the end of the year, I’m hoping to have done some things I’ve never done and learnt a lot about the world. Ideally, I’ll have an audience but if not I’ll have a lot of experience and a year that I enjoyed.
It is completely possible that by next month I’ll be doing something different, but only if it’s better than the current plan.
Self-reflective ponder
Knowing myself and my ability to find entrepreneurial solutions to anything I’m in proximity of, I’m rather concerned I’ll have to say no to many things and only allow opportunities I am really excited for.
Another skill I'm working on...
(also not a humble brag, I didn't say say my entreprenurial solutions are any good)
At the end of 2023, even if I don’t have a YouTube audience I think I’ll have a tonne of opportunities.
Firstly, all the opportunities to make fun content having adventures just through contacts and skills that I’ve made. But also the millions of opportunities I can’t even imagine.
Perhaps through my podcast or my writing. Perhaps through an old friend or perhaps a random person, I meet on a plane. Life happens and the world is busy doing a million things whilst you plod along. Keep yourself open to serendipity in the strangest of places.
And on that, here is the first adventure I made a video of this year which I promise will make you laugh if you give it a watch.
The end
2023 is going to happen whether you’re ready for it or not.
If nothing else, enjoy it.
After all, it won’t happen again.
I downloaded substack when you mentioned subscribing to Erik Hoel's on the podcast. It's been a good change in conjunction with forcing my reddit to grayscale to wean off it's addiction