September 30, 2020
Personal
- Complete Insanity Max: 30 – I’ve done pretty well staying active during the pandemic but miss being a regular at Orange Theory and the sore feeling that came along with classes. This program is the first time in ~6 months I’ve felt a comparable experience and exhaustion and want to have a program to follow. Here is my progress tracking spreadsheet.
- Outcome: Completed both Insanity Max: 30 & “regular” insanity. Lost at most 10 pounds but after lots of holiday eating I netted out at -3 loss for the quarter.
- Log everything I eat (or a proxy) using lessons learned from Eat this not that program including four day fast mimicking diet – Dieting and meal planning does not particularly appeal to me but it seems to be the only avenue to getting the progress I want. I want to find a happy medium between obsessively counting calories and macros and eating what I want. These meal planning notepads have been helpful in the past.
- Outcome: Did this very well via Fitbit Only 4 days in the 90 day quarter where I didn’t log everything I ate.
- A streak of 20+ morning routines – Staring at my phone before and after sleep is not taking ownership and an easy way to get distracted. I want to start mornings on my terms and not a few minutes before an external obligation or meeting. A successful routine for me includes meditation via calm.com followed by light journaling (just picked up streakers journal) and some activity, like learning a skill or physical activity that does not involve reactively staring directly at a screen.
- Outcome: I’ve gotten better at this but still find myself staring at my phone in the morning or evening before bed. In the right direction but more room for improvement
- Complete Piano for Adult Beginners book and course
- Outcome: Read maybe 3 pages. Given other goals this is low priority.
Professional
- Complete remote communication course – Videoconferencing and remote communication is now more important than ever and have outsized impact on first and second meetings which I have been doing a fair number of as a job seeker. The wonderful folks at GK Training have made this program available to job seekers. Stretch goal of finishing Founder Hacker course as well but want to do things sequentially. founderhacker.com as well.
- Outcome: Finished half the course and will finish in the first two weeks of January. Learned a ton about how to present myself best in a digital environment which is especially important for first impressions where I can’t physically shake a hand or sit next to someone.
- Find a new job – I have a good handle of what I am looking for and exciting opportunities on the horizon so now it just becomes a game of building out a pipeline and managing the opportunities I pursue. With corona, the election, and the end of year approaching I would not be surprised if this spills over into Q1 2021 but only so much is in my control. I’d like to have a quantifiable goal but don’t think this is a volume game so as long as I am pursuing a larger set of opportunities than I was at the start of the quarter I will consider that a win.
- Outcome: As I projected this has stretched into Q1. The only real metric I’ve been tracking is that my pipeline expands week after week which it has. I am excited about the opportunities on my horizon and feel cautiously optimistic that I will secure something before the end of Q1.
- Spin up Shopify store – Basic knowledge of Shopify store is becoming more and more important as ecommerce grows. I have an opportunity to build a store with a person I trust. At best case it makes some money at worst case it is a lesson learned.
- Outcome: I did this. Made a store, sourced product, setup an affiliate partnership but I quickly found that it was pulling me away from my main goal of finding a new job. May revisit after I start a new role or in Q2
- Outreach to 25+ prospects for Fomo and/or Convertkit affiliate sales – Last goal was one sale which is kind of out of my control so # of prospects is an easy first hurdle to clear
- Outcome: Did this. One small sale.
- Publish two blog posts -I publish a fair amount of content online but it is mostly short-form tweets or pictures and those don’t really let me express broader ideas or cornerstone content that drives how I operate. Why you should write online by David Perell truly resonated with the way I think about online brand and content. There is almost exclusively an upside to publishing my thinking more broadly. I want to publish one post about the things I think I know at 30 and one about decision making in the face of uncertainty.
- Outcome: Published one post (excluding goals posts): Things I think I know at 30 . Have one on hiring and one on decision making queued up for Q1 2021
- Secure one Limited partner for Scrappy Capital –
- Outcome: Completed.