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2020

Don't know what a commonplace is? Read here.

Big Events

  • COVID-19 hit in March.
  • Drove across the country with Kate in April.
  • Moved in with Kate in May.
  • Wildfires blanketed San Francisco with smoke for much of the summer and fall.
  • Left Holloway in September.
  • Launched Ask Jerry in October.
  • Launched career as coach in September.
  • Joe Biden elected president.
  • Traveled with Kate, Danielle & Kevin in October, November, & December.

Thinking Themes

  • Informational Topographic Awareness: It’s about knowing what you know, knowing the landscape of knowledge. It’s about knowing what’s in the neighborhood. What’s nearby, what’s distant. It’s about making choices as to which directions you’ll set a course to learn more about, knowing that you’re actively choosing to leave others behind. It's about knowing who the major and upcoming players. And it's about knowing your history. Where did this thing come from? What's worked before? What's failed?
  • Payless, Nike, and Red Wing: Consumerism is a plank each of us chooses to march ourselves right off of. I'm finding it helpful to view consumer options through the lens of Payless, Nike, and Red Wing. The first is low Quality because they physically fall apart. The second is low Quality because they fall out of fashion. The third, however, is high Quality because they are built to last for a decade. What if we look for more Red Wings, in our relationships, the company we keep, the people who we work for, the places we choose to shop?
  • Balancing Short and Long Term Perspectives: I come across a lot of people who think they're independent, but they're really not. These people unknowingly have a battle for supremacy raging between two versions of themselves: FarOffMe and SoonSlashNowMe. The second almost always is in a de facto vertical relationship, as the junior, to the first. We often give our FarOffMes broad power to make decisions for our SoonSlashNowMes. We tell ourselves we'll be happy when we write that book, have a new manager, start a family, so we start to sacrifice any sense of identity in the moment, all in pursuit of some fictional future.
  • Emotional Acuity: Lisa Feldman Barrett calls this "emotional granularity," but the idea is that each of us stands to benefit from developing a greater emotional vocabulary and then learning how different emotions manifest in different people, including ourselves.

Career

Holloway

  • 2020/01/28: Got our first print copy of one of our books, The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring.
  • 2020/09/15: Stepped away from CEO role

Coaching

  • Began coaching a few friends in September and worked up to 18 paying clients by December.
  • Enrolled in The Hudson Institute's 2021 certification program.
  • Totally redesigned my personal website to reflect my new career as a coach.
  • Began building relationships with many different coaches from different backgrounds.
  • Began using Alan Sieler's "Coaching to the Human Soul" books as my guide.
  • Incorporated Sparks Industries, LLC as a vehicle for all coaching & other revenue to flow through.

Ask Jerry

  • Launched a newsletter in collaboration with Jerry Colonna and the team at Everything in October.

Between

  • Named the podcast and bought between.fm
  • Looped in Hamish for the art
  • Looped in Michael for the music

Habits

  • Went back to riding my bike to work every day it doesn't rain. Began saving a ton of money.
  • Auditing spending on a weekly basis. One atomic habit instead of some kind of big monthly or quarterly review.
  • Lightweight meal-prepping so I can come home from work and eat a cost effective and healthy meal after ~1 hour.
  • Minimizing after-work social commitments so I can focus on being healthy, reading / studying, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour.
  • Minimizing all weekday drinking.
  • Fell out of exercise habits when COVID hit.
  • In late summer, began reading and transferring all journal entries from Evernote to Roam in the morning.
  • Trying not to begin questions with "why" and trying to use "how" and "what" questions instead.

Writing

Media

Articles

❓ considering retiring the articles section, as it's too tedious to save all the good article reads here.

Twitter Wisdom

Books

Non-fiction

Revisited

Completed

Started

Fiction

Completed

Started

Podcasts

Not an exhaustive list, but instead a list of ones that hit me hard.

Music

Live Music

  • 2020/01/26: Elizabeth Moen @ Bottom of the Hill

Playlists

Video

TV Shows

  • Rewatched The Expanse with Kate.
  • The Last Kingdom
  • Raised by Wolves
  • Vikings
  • Began rewatching Mad Men with Kate.

Apps & Tools

  • Switched from Instapaper to Pocket (January).
  • Doubled down on using Todoist for task management (January).
  • Doubled down on using Evernote for knowledge management after evaluating strengths and weaknesses of Notion (January).
  • Moved all people I was following on Twitter to a new list, Following—2019, and unfollowed everyone so I could start clean.
  • Began using TextExpander (February).
  • Began moving all journal entries to Roam Research in early summer.
  • Began using Roam Research for taking notes on books in late summer.
  • Moved back to using iA Writer, specifically to highlight adverbs so I be aware of when I used them.
  • Began using Fantastical for my calendar (all calendars are google calendars). It's great because it allows me to switch time zones, has better visual display, and functions well with mobile. (October).
  • Setup a DSLR camera setup for high quality zoom calls on November 30th.
  • Flow: A lightweight work timer and website / app blocker to help you focus. You have to buy Pro to get the URL blocker, but it’s $0.99 / mo. or $19.99 for lifetime access. (December).
  • Forest: Kate and I started using Forest together. Similar to Flow, it’s purpose is to help you focus. The difference with Forest is that it’s not really a work focus app, instead it incentivizes you to put your phone down. Kate and I love that we can put a timer on together while we’re having dinner or watching a show together. (December).

Vacation

  • Took a week off in Sonoma after leaving Holloway (take more time off next time, buddy)

Skills

  • Web Design: This was a big year in design for me. I redesigned a big portion of the Holloway marketing & e-commerce pages, which we shipped in the spring and summer. I also redesigned my personal site using Sketch and Webflow, and I'm really proud of the outcome.
  • Coaching: As I dove into books on coaching and began coaching in September, I developed a number of skills related to coaching. I'd put listening, asking better questions, and emotional acuity at the top of those lists.
  • Cooking: As Kate and I moved in together, we spent more time cooking. I should say, I spent more time cooking than I have in a long time. The NYT Cooking app was a big help, but I'm proud to say that the number of dishes I can make went from 10-15 to 25-30!
  • Writing: I continued to hone my writing, breaking off to write more independently. Rachel Jepsen continued to be a terrific editor, and the guys at Everything have made me a better writer as well.