Annual Reflection
In which I answer seven difficult questions about 2023, to help me navigate 2024.
Farnam Street shared a list of seven questions to reflect on 2023 before thinking about 2024. So, now that I write
, I thought I’d answer these in the open.
Reflections
You’re fired
Imagine you were fired as CEO of your life today and someone exceptional was brought in to take over. What do you think they would do differently? What would they see as getting in the way of success? What would they do more of?
What you measure will get gamed, and so a competent CEO would need to first define “success,” so we can measure it. I have three “success milestones,” which maybe I’ll write about later, but they are — and haven’t changed much — as follows:
Wherever my son is, I can afford to travel without a second thought.
Before my forties are through, I will be able to spend 20 hours per week writing stories without burnout.
There are people at my funeral who will talk about me sometimes after, unprompted, until their funerals.
The first two bullets are financial. So a more competent CEO will ensure I
invest and save more
kill frivolous expenses (let’s define “frivolous” in some other letter)
make more money in 2024 than I did in 2023
The latter, however, is only achieved through acts of shared experiences. This, of course, is easier with more money.
Still, I think a more competent CEO would mainly target problems with procrastination and follow-through, which are my chief nemeses. I get into frequent moods where I’ve used up all of my good braining in my work and then abandon for days or weeks my pass-times.
In solving this systemic organizational or motivational problem, I think they would ensure I do more shared experiences and time block my day-work schedule so that I can more easily invest time in writing stories without burning the candle too much.
Eliminate ruthlessly
Most people attempt to do too many things. The problem is that too many priorities divide your attention, reduce the quality of your work, and stress you out. On top of that, none of them seem to get done.
Choosing the right thing to work on matters as much as the work you put in. Write down your top ten objectives for 2024.
Now circle the three to four that matter most to you. Everything not circled should now be considered your ‘avoid at all costs’ list.
That doesn’t mean you don’t care about them - you do. But all of these things distract you from what really matters. All the energy that goes into your 9th-objective comes at the expense of your top one.
Let me start this list with no particular order, but just as things come to me.
Spend 30 minutes at the gym at least 4 times per week - for a year.
Increase my income by 28%
Finish
Finish “The Friar”
Reach a milestone where
can sell “Thirst” at PAX Unplugged 2024 (this substack hasn’t been updated in a minute, but we parked it. See designthinkinggames.com)Feel good about the amount of time I spend with my family by this time next year
Finish “Byrnharrow”
Finish
Kick-off a new professional Call of Cthulhu actual play I’ve been calling “Glamour.”
Pickup archery.
Now, the three I choose - with difficulty:
Increase my income by 28%. To achieve the “success milestones” that I named above, I need to increase my earnings. I think 28% is doable in my current field. I acknowledge, however, that there is much about this other than my strategy and effort that is outside my control.
Spend 30 minutes at the gym at least 4 times per week - for a year. This quarter, I had — not so much health scares, but — health “reality checks,” that involved a torn rotator cuff earned because I just reached too far for something, and a super aggressive blood pressure medicine dosage. When I am 70, as best as possible through my actions, I want to be still able to do - hell, I may still have to work. This must begin now. I’ve spent twenty-odd years doing jack all.
Feel good about the amount of time I spend with my family by this time next year. As much as I want to finish The Thief, or see Thirst’s success, or Swán’s, my time with my family is running out. The clock’s ticking. Memento mori.
Passive mode
Newton’s law is a powerful algorithm that can help you get what you want, simplify relationships, and improve your life. Think about it: we often respond to actions with similar reactions. If someone doesn’t help us, we don’t go out of our way to help them in return; conversely, kindness often begets kindness.
To get this powerful force working for you, identify the areas in your life where you are passively waiting for someone to make the first move.
Stop waiting for life to give you what you think you deserve and go out and make it happen.
Reflect on where you might be passively waiting for others to act. What proactive steps can you take to initiate positive outcomes?
There are a number of things that, in hindsight, I can see I’ve been passively waiting on others for. Some of these are out of my control. But, let’s list them shamelessly:
I’m bummed
isn’t performing better. I don’t write stories because I love to write, I tell stories, and “telling” implies there are others who listen.I wait for some folks without names to act in a way that will benefit us collectively, and I get morose and aggravated when they don’t.
I wait for inspiration motivation and delusion to get me to a point where I look in the mirror and like what I see.
My proactive change here is to first eschew any reliance or even interest in success vanity metrics like listens, clicks, and views. If I think
is “very good,” then it is very good.Similarly, I must act in a way that de-emphasizes the role inspiration and motivation play. In truth, I don’t need inspiration or motivation to check a box on my to-do list - I just need to check the fucking box.
Avoid weakness
The lesson is to identify your weaknesses and architect your life to avoid them to the extent possible. We all have strengths and weaknesses. By identifying and minimizing our weaker areas, we demonstrate self-acceptance and resilience.
My weaknesses:
I am envious. It has always been true for me that the grass is always greener elsewhere. Social media in particular exacerbates my envy, and so strategically I must just tune it out and use it only self-promotionally - or not at all.
I am melancholic. I get into — and always have — lame Byronic moods. These moods stop me from acting, exacerbate my envy, exacerbate my procrastination, and so on. I believe that deliberate practice rewires the brain (consider reading my essays at
), and so I believe I can train away this “melancholia” (Romantic and Victorian Lit was my jam, you understand) through daily gratitude practice - which I used to do, but have abandoned.I give too much power to things outside my control. This is why I started
many years ago. I’ve gotten better, but it’s a constant exercise to practice stoicism.
Avoid toxic people
The most successful people carefully curate what and who they let into their lives. These are ‘lead dominoes’ that start a chain reaction.
The behaviors of those you frequently associate with often become your own. What you read and who you follow on social media eventually shape your future thoughts.
Thankfully, I largely have a very curated circle of people who are good for me. However, I am prone to catching whatever contagion finds me through doomscrolling and reading the news.
In the past, I stopped reading the news except for once per week (#slownews). I will adopt this again, or even go so far as to read the news once per month.
Similarly, I need to squash social media’s presence in my life.
Film crew
If there were a film crew following you around all day documenting your success, you’d do all the things someone successful would do.
Consider what actions you would want a film crew to document and which ones you would prefer they not see?
I would want a film crew to consider me
calm under pressure
proactive
not the sometimes-whiny bitch that I am
present
and a good storyteller.
Easy mode / hard mode
In the real world there are no points for difficulty.
One reason the best in the world seem to consistently get better results than others is they are almost always playing on easy mode while the rest of us play on hard mode.
What can you do to put things on an easier setting? Go back to basics. What’s one thing you can do today that will make tomorrow easier? What can you can do this year that will leave you in a better position for next year?
I think certain daily routines and investments in time are the main answer here. The chief goal I don’t think is do things easier, but make things less hard. “Hard” being often subjective, here’s what I think would help:
Spending a little quality time with the family, daily, so a spark doesn’t become an out-of-control fire, but maybe even kindles some warmth.
Daily gratitude journaling, benchmarking, and prioritizing, so the difficulty of my job, of living in a modern world, and managing my demons - is just less difficult.
Spending 30 minutes at the gym at least 4 times per week, so I don’t tear another rotator cuff because I’m an inactive dork.
Sleeping well, rising early, so the day doesn’t get away from me, and I don’t inspire early onset dementia or Alzheimer’s which new evidence suggests is at least exacerbated by poor sleep practices.
And that’s it. Those are the seven questions.
Reflecting on reflecting
My chief takeaway is that I must deprioritize my hobbies so that if they conflict at all with increasing my income, spending quality time with the family, and being moderately active, I need to cut them out.
I will consider strategies for achieving this, but I think the big a-ha is that I prioritized these hobbies too much in 2023, to the point where I write morose missives like this rather than appreciating the accomplishments.
It occurs to me that some reader I imagine (who is more likely a fabricated naysayer from deep within) might dock me for prioritizing money.
Get real.
Money is how I see my son in person. Money is how I make
, how I make . Money is how my final years are more likely to be spent in comfort, than in crippled, demented, despair.I didn’t graduate with an English major to Forrest-Gump my way into product engineering just so I would never wax poetic about being a millennial in a capitalist dystopia.
Want to do this yourself? Here’s the list of seven questions.