2024 Review

Wins

• I launched my new brand and personal site.
• I started posting consistently on social again.
• I connected and reconnected with a lot of folks.
• I attended two conferences: Front-end Conf in St. Pete and Config in SF.
• I launched two (small) products: FramedThoughts and SimplyWords.
• I completed sessions: Building Better Products and Getting Started with Shape Up.
• I launched my newsletter, Build Quality, and released 17 issues.
• My workspace was featured in workspaces.xyz.
• I completed my first Shape Up workshop with an external team.
• I ran my annual 5K and beat my time from last year.

Stats

• 1900+ Online Connections
• 120+ Connections
• 1200+ Content Posts
• 580+ hours of Focus Time
• 17 Newsletter Issues
• 60% Avg. Newsletter Open Rate
• 365 Days Rings Closed
• 360+ 10k Step Days
• 36 Books Read
• 2300+ Miles Traveled
• 80+ Movies Watched
• 24+ Shows Watched

Favorites

1. Book: The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. It’s easy to be cynical, but it’s hard to be optimistic. Matt Ridley explores major points throughout history and shows how, things on the whole, have favored optimistic. It was an excellent read.
2. Movie: Godzilla Minus One. This movie was incredible. It was a fresh take on a classic. It was about the people, not the monsters. It was about how the monsters test your character. It was about the road to redemption. It was beautiful.
3. Show: Beef. I was riveted in every episode. The acting was superb, the story was gripping, and there were so many hidden meanings and messages within it. I also love when shows leave the endings open to interpretation. That’s art.

Learnings

1. You can never predict what lies ahead. Planning is important, but you must stay adaptable to the impermanence of most of life. Life is change, and you need to be ready for it. I never would have been able to predict what would happen in 2024, and that’s expected. The sooner you accept it, the more resilient you become.
2. The only way to learn anything is by doing it. You can read books, listen to podcasts, or watch videos, but you never really know how to do something until you do it. Each time I wanted to acquire a skill, I would acquire all the knowledge. But skills are applied knowledge, which requires the doing part to apply the knowledge. You learn by doing.
3. Principles are the secret unlock for adaptability. While I do believe in process, I believe more in the principles that a process is derived from. The core and fundamental truths that allow you to experiment and find your own expression.

Takeaways

1. Cultivate an experimental mindset. Act like a scientist. Challenge assumptions, test theories, and continuously iterate. Life is just one big experiment.
2. Learn desired skills through practical application. When I want to learn a new skill, I will do it with an active project. And with an experimental mindset, I can continue to test out the skill, learn, and iterate in a tight feedback loop.
3. Work backwards from the first principles to form processes. Principles First is my philosophy for everything. Acquiring knowledge is about distilling principles because they can be transferred to other domains. Shape Up as a software development philosophy—when distilled into principles—is applicable to other domains, such as building a house.