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2015 Year In Review

January 9, 2016 by Will Lam 2 Comments

Summing up my year has been relatively easy because of going through an epic deep New Year’s workshop deep dive led by my friends UJ and Negin (thank you!!). While I normally do it in solitude, it was a nice change in pace with people I love and respect. On my end there were some major life events that overshadowed everything else that forced me to reflect, reset and recuperate. With that being said, some themes that I’ll touch upon cover the major area focuses of my life (as in previous years) are career, relationships, wealth, fitness, travel and learning.

It’s been a rough bittersweet year. I’ll dive into this post with the bad stuff first and then resurface with the good stuff.

Career

Admittedly, things were not well in this regard. Because career is a means to a person’s livelihood, this affected me heavily in terms of self esteem and self worth. I would surmise the majority of people attach their self worth and identity to their careers. I’m one of those people. While I had a good run at my previous role (thank you Hana, you guys rock), it just wasn’t the right fit to put it lightly. I tried to make it work for the good part of the year and ultimately we had to part ways. While it was heartbreaking in some aspects because I really did enjoy working with the team there. It was especially bad when I was getting sick by the end of my tenure there. I didn’t feel like I was being my best and I knew that they could recognize that as well. So that was that. The silver lining of that experience was that it’s given me a clear indication of what I shouldn’t be doing and the real value that I bring to the table.

The major learning here was that I couldn’t do the same things over and over again (marketing) and expect different results, which is the definition of insanity in my opinion. It also led me to understanding that I know a lot of different things, some more in depth than others. All this led me to asking some tough questions of myself in terms of the real value I can bring to the table – helping people effortlessly and tirelessly. It also reminded me of the kickass network of people I’ve come to trust and build relationships over the years in the vibrant Toronto tech community.

While, it’s been tough to separate the two (identity & career) and tease them apart, I know I’m multi-faceted and a resilient person. Everything happens for reasons for which we can connect the dots when looking back in the past. “This too shall pass.”

It’s a shame I didn’t get a role in product management, which has been the ideal for me since my startup days, but that job market spoke and that was that. So it’s time to shake things up a bit and take my career on a different trajectory.

As of now, while it was a good run being “funemployed”, as it afforded me the time and space to reset, reflect and heal, I decided to take a chance with a company and I’m glad they took a chance. I think it’s for the right reasons, and I hope they understand it as well.

As for next steps, I’m doing an iOS bootcamp at Lighthouse Labs, which should afford me the knowledge and firepower to build my own stuff as well as use it as a foundation for the direction I’ll be taking my career next – a much more technical one at that.

Relationships

This other side of my life that took up a huge proportion of my time and energy. This was pretty close after my experience at the previous company I was at. A veritable double-whammy that put me down for the KO. While it was a great run over the last few years, it had to tragically and abruptly end for reasons which I won’t get into. With the abrupt halt, the entire experience brought me down to my knees and having to curl up into a ball to brace myself for the pain I endured. I’m sure there was pain felt on her end as well. How deep, I don’t know and probably won’t find out.

It made me question the concept of love and how to love and do it well. I don’t think we did that very well after all. There were definitely some shining moments. When we were great, it was great. But when it wasn’t so great.. well. You get the idea. It revealed ugly truths about myself and how I don’t want to be in my next relationship. There were certainly toxic elements of our relationship that sprung up, that I’m not sure are a part of my nature or character, but I am cognizant of them. I don’t like them and I’ll eradicate them. I’m a constant work in progress, as with everyone else, but I know I’ll be better than yesterday.

But again from all of this, I understood some immutable truths of myself that I am good enough and deserve to be with someone that complements me. It took years to realize that, but it’s better late than never.

I’m taking the time for self care and healing before tapping into my capacity to love again. It’ll happen. I just don’t know when.

As for other relationships, in terms of friends and professionally, they’ve increased an order of magnitude because of Camp Reset. I can’t describe the feeling of meeting people who are so authentic, self aware, full of life and passion all hanging out together in such a magical setting and getting to know one another through play. The 100 friends from Camp Reset came into my life just at the perfect moment. I couldn’t have timed how things went down any better. I’m grateful to have you all in my life.

Wealth

This has been inextricably linked with my career. While I set some intentions to achieve a very specific amount of money by a certain date – that ambition was derailed for the things that I mentioned above. It’s led me to think about how I can create and decouple career from wealth. Creating passive income streams from side projects and just plain creating. I have been slowly building my email list through blogging, so there’s some opportunity there other than a showcase of my thoughts on the professional side.

I’ve got plenty of ideas and lots to play with in this area. But ultimately I understand that wealth is tied to how much value I can create an freely give away. The universe has a pleasant way of returning the favour when you’ve given so freely and with genuine intent to those who deserve it.

On another note, I finished paying off my student loans which was been a monkey on my back for the last few years. So that was pretty cool.

Fitness

I’ve been consistent as I could be, I know that much. While I wasn’t close to a proper gym, I still made it happen by my gym experience at the humdrum condo gym by buying squat stands, bumper plates, a kettle bell and a few other gym toys that I still use to this day. While I know I am pretty fit, and somewhat strong, there hasn’t been a complete focus because my training has fell by the wayside.

This year with a bit more stability and a bit more control over my schedule to do the things I want to do when I want to, should be dramatically different.

This will happen on two different fronts. On the first front. I’ll be training for my first amateur olympic weightlifting meet. I’d like to push myself to learn better technique and to see how much stronger I can get. I know for a fact there’s a lot more in me than a 265 lb high bar squat, 310 lb deadlift, 175 lb bench and 125 strict press. Exploring the outer limits of my strength capacity is something that really excites me.

On the other front, I’ll be exploring yoga. While I’ve deliberately avoided it in the past few years, a recent experience made me think differently about the practice and discipline of yoga. While I already knew the benefits of yoga on weightlifting for flexibility and such, the soft focus that it hones and the meditative purposes are undeniable.

Travel

This is one thing that’s been a bit more elusive for me because I’ve been pre-occupied with the areas I mentioned above. While I felt like I was on solid ground for a while, I kept on pushing back travel because I didn’t have a stable enough foundation to reward myself with travel experiences. I thought it was the responsible thing to do, and I still do to this day. Now that student debt has been hacked away, I have a better opportunity to make some magic happen and getting my butt off the continent again this year, hopefully in southeast Asia with my best friend sometime in the fourth quarter of 2016.

But before all of that, I’d like to make it to Burning Man and my intent and focus will be getting me there. I’ve done a ton of research and consulted with countless friends and I’m ready to make the pilgrimage.

A breakdown of my year

Things I’ve failed in regularly

Mastering my life on the day to day level consistently.
Doing the same things over and over in my career and expecting different results (which is insanity).
Staying up way too late on the regular (11 PM should be latest I go to bed).
Be selfish to devote blocks of time for self-care and “me time”.
Settling with things even though I was entirely satisfied with.
Not asking or reaching out for help when I really needed it.
Eating super late.
Going overboard on vices (sorry potato chips…will be seeing much less of you).
Not giving myself the fuel and nutrients regularly to power me through the demands of my life.

Wins of the year

Wrote a lot more
Started Swift Hack Night – and steadily gaining members!
Met lifelong friends at Camp Reset! (Helloooo if you’re reading!)
Learned Swift and built some simple iPhone apps
Got into Lighthouse Labs and will be learning Objective-C
Started acting like the most helpful person in the Tech community in Toronto because I have the network and power to do so, and because I want to.
Had the time and space to reflect and heal.
Got a new job
Hit a squat PR and realizing I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was and that I’ve yet to reach the edges of my capacity.
Paid off student loans
Left a relationship that was toxic (both of our faults)
Being more honest with myself and others
Expressing myself authentically (writing and dancing.. lot!)
Got the fuck off of North America and made it to Cuba for a week.
Scheduling “tech free times” in my day.
Understanding that I have a tremendous amount of capacity within myself to connect, learn, grow, love and give.

A big theme this year will be expressing myself and getting closer to the core of who I am that encompass all the areas of improvement I’ve addressed above.

A year from now, I’d like to reflect and see that I while aggressive in the growth I expect for myself, I can visualize it all actually happen and putting the work in to make it all happen. But even if “life happens” and some ambitions don’t unravel as I’d like them to, I won’t beat myself up for not being able to accomplish everything.

Sometimes you have a stretch a little to make magic happen. Other times I’ll fall flat on my face, which I’m all too familiar with. However, I’m learning to celebrate the wins I collect on the way, but not be complacent, but rather honour those wins, be humble and keep on making magic happen in my life.

Concluding thoughts

For once in my life, I feel truly alive – unhindered and completely open to exploring this world of ours. While I’m still a big kid at heart, there are many other areas where I need to grow the fuck up. I believe this year will be an incredible year of growth and learning, leap-frogging all other years. Things have been in development for a while now, and it feels that the work I’ve been putting into myself and other areas will manifest itself in ways I can’t forecast or expect – but it’s going to be good. I can feel it in my bones.

A special shout out goes out to Ruthless, Magic, She-Ra and Gabriel for allowing me to couch surf for a bit during the roughest parts of my life and countless other friends who reached out to me and lent me a bit of strength while my head wasn’t all there. Not sure what would have happened had they not been there for me. Things unravelled and worked out beautifully and I was able to regain some semblance of composure because of those friends. A lot of this had to do with the regularity of the Transformers family. I love you all very much and hope to return the favour in my own way sometime down the line.

The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Bandwagon effect (Or when it’s OK to call yourself a true Blue Jays fan)

August 29, 2015 by Will Lam 1 Comment

blue jays bandwagon effect 2015

Right now, as far as I know, the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays are killing it. I’m seeing it constantly on Twitter, Facebook and a little bit here and there on Instagram for friends or acquaintances who can’t help but lap up that winning (because Toronto hasn’t had a taste of winning since the 1992 and 1993 edition of the Blue Jays) without taking a selfie of themselves at a Jays game.

Let’s get this out of the way. I don’t really care for Toronto sports. The last time I cared about any sports teams, it was when the Leafs made it to the Conference finals in ’93 and ’94, and my favourite players were Doug Gilmour (go Dougie!) and Felix “The Cat” Potvin, and of course the Jays won the World Series in ’93 and ’93. I didn’t know much about baseball, other than the fact I still remember the home run that Joe Carter hit at the ‘Dome in Game 6 to win the 1993 World Series, and could name at least half the roster to this day.

In any case, I’ll digress….

With all this buzz and people pretty much foaming at the mouth about how awesome the Blue Jays are, I wondered to myself, “What was the tipping point now that the ~~SkyDome~~ Rogers Centre is almost sold out every game leading up the playoffs?”

So like any intrepid amateur reporter who knows nothing about sports, I decided to Google up the attendance numbers for Jays’ home games, scrape the data with Kimono Labs, into a Google spreadsheet and present it visually for lazy people like myself to quickly understand.

So when was it okay for you to say the Jays are fucking amazing without being called out as a bandwagoner?

blue jays bandwagon effect 2015

If you proclaimed you were a die hard Jays fan before the trade deadline on July 31, 2015, when they acquired Price and Tulowitzki, you can confidently say you were a jays fan. Bravo! Good on sticking to your guns and riding the wave of winning without being a hypocrite!

If you decided to buy a Jays cap, t-shirt and start attending games after July 31, 2015, guess what? You’re a filthy bandwagoner.

In any case, you’ll also notice a downward trend after the trade deadline. Why did this happen? My best guess is because of the Civic Holiday long weekend. The Jays hadn’t caught on yet, and the few home games after the trade on August 4th and 5th, the bandwagoners hadn’t ~~caught on~~ piled on yet and the games were on weekdays after the long weekend. But boy oh boy, after that, attendance skyrocketed and likely will stay above the 45,000 fan mark until the end of the season. But hey, that’s just a guess.

Okay, I’m done with my arm chair quarterbacking. Being the hypocrite that I am with a serious case of FOMO… GO BLUE JAYS! 🙂

P.S. If you haven’t already noticed, I was writing this tongue in cheek. I was curious about the attendance of the Jays because of people raving about them on my Fb newsfeed, so I decided to dive into some data and see what was going on.

If you’re curious about the attendance of the Jays so far, here’s the interactive chart with data that I scraped with Kimono Labs.

2014 Year In Review

January 2, 2015 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

2014 year in review

If I were to encapsulate this year in a sentence or two – I’d sum it up as it being a mixed bag. Lots of progress and major strides in some areas that I’m grateful for and excited to share, and rather underwhelming in other areas.

Let’s start with the underwhelming parts of 2014 as it is something I’m not going to write too in depth about for now. In terms of professional pursuits, things didn’t quite align themselves as I originally planned to be. It’s consumed me for nearly half the year, and yes I’m being deliberately vague, but I’ll soon reveal some cool stuff around the corner for me in the coming weeks, which will make sense when I unveil it then.

The things I learned this past year

Sequence is as powerful as routine and habits

For a while, when I lived close to work and my commute was all but 15 minutes, for a period of 3 months or so, I felt like I was finally firing on all cylinders in almost all areas of my life.

I noticed after tracking my things that I wanted to make progress in on Lift (recently re-branded to Coach.me), sequence of certain habits made for a powerful combination and built up the momentum that carried me throughout the day. This would amount to be an “ideal day” as I had prescribed for myself. Simply put, the sequence or order of the habits in which they were carried out played just as an important role compared to the individual habits themselves.

Simply put, the sequence or order of the habits in which they were carried out played just as an important role compared to the individual habits themselves.

This started by going to bed early. And by early it was before 12. The earlier I went to bed, the better my day went. This was because I woke up earlier and had the chance to focus on setting out my day. Be it writing, creating content, reflecting on what my day would look like – it was a piece of the day that I could selfishly call my own. I would own that early part of the morning and it would set the tone for the rest of the day.

I made sure to set everything up in my Lift app, and the momentum it afforded me carried me throughout the day to knock off things that I wanted to accomplish on a daily basis. Be it learning to code, exercise, starting the day as a producer vs a consumer and so on. And it worked. Now that moved up to North York instead of being in Leslieville, it’s going to take a bit of getting used to, but I’m sure I’ll get back into that flow, which is slowly settling in.

Help popping up in the places you least expect them to

I’ve forged a few new relationships that have been unravelling in rather cool ways. Be it professionally or personally, I’m glad to met those few people who I admire and respect deeply – namely, Matt, Brandon, Kevin, Francois, Hana, and Alexa. All of you guys are awesome and I’m grateful to have met you or gotten to know you even better this past year!

Friendships

alexas going away party

In terms of friendships, I’ve noticed that there are even fewer friends in my circle this past year, but the existing ones I have in my life have deepened and become more meaningful. I hope that add as much value to your lives as you do mine.

As for attrition in some friendships, I’m not surprised that some bonds have weakened and have pretty much fallen off the radar, some not by my lack of effort and some are. That’s okay, maybe those who stumbled upon this already know who you are. I still care and appreciate you being a part of my life.

Humility

While some of the things where I wanted to make big splashes in didn’t work out as planned, it’s made me more humble and understanding that I should shed any expectation or ego when it comes to what I want out of life. For better or worse, I’ll never shed a beginner’s mind when it comes to certain facets of my life. I’ll always give out more in terms of time and help to those I feel who are worthy of my time understanding that I’ll probably get back much less in return. That’s okay. I’ll just continue doing what I’m doing and getting better over time.

Doing things the slow and hard way

With content that’s spreading through the internet involving clever life hacks allowing for instant gratification (Do X thing in Y less amount of time). It’s glamorized and there’s always that next shiny life hacker article that you read learning about, but ultimately unfulfilling.

I’m really understanding the appreciation the long and hard process of learning and attempting to master something. This of course entails doing things over long periods of time, going for depth, rather than breadth and just really immersing yourself in an area of focus. Manifestations of this in my own life are the pursuits of writing, olympic lifting (CrossFit et al), and learning to code. All very hard, challenging in their own ways and oh so fun.

Asking for what you want

The quote “life will pay whatever price you ask of it”, rings true for me. I’ve usually shied away at the prospect of asking for I’m worth and understanding the marketplace dynamics. I’ll be cognizant of this going forward in the future.

Areas of Improvement

Learning to code

After my post, I’ve attempted to ship one thing a week publicly – this has mostly been done with my writing and my Bootstrapper’s Weekly Digest (sign up above! 🙂 ) which kept me accountable. Ideally, I’d like to do that with code, and contribute to an open source project, but it’ll have to be my own projects that I’ll be uploading to Github in the new year.

I took a part time Ruby on Rails course at BrainStation and learned a ton in terms of the problem solving mindset and tenacity it takes to become a developer – thank you so much to Jasdeep and Mandeep for being such awesome instructors and being infinitely patient with me and the rest of the class. Thank you to Jay, Duncan and Apoorv for making BrainStation a reality and giving us fledgling developers, product managers and technologists an avenue to learn to code without having to leave our jobs.

While I’ve been keeping my Ruby and Ruby on Rails knowledge up to date my Code School and Ruby Weekly subscriptions so I don’t forget what I learned at Brainstation. It’s taken a backseat to something I find more pressing at the time when it comes to learning to code for the sake of being a better product manager – the gap in my skill set involving mobile, which leads me to learning Swift for iOS.

So far I finished the Build a simple iPhone app in Swift from Treehouse, which will lead to review on its on in the future, I’m able to somewhat navigate around Xcode. I have a few simple ideas that I’d like to turn into web or mobile products for 2015.

Fitness

I’ve been on and off doing Olympic weightlifting in 2014, mostly due to work and moving out of Leslieville and away from my beloved gyms CrossFit Toronto and Fortis Fitness that were literally a block away from where I lived and from each other. While I haven’t been consistent in Oly lifting training, I’ve still managed to make it work by getting a squat stand, bumper plates and other strength and conditioning toys to continually work on my strength training while doing Wendler’s 5-3-1 program. I’m on my second cycle now and I’m looking forward to wrapping it up when I join a new gym in the new year.

Eventually I’d like to compete in something, whether it’s an Oly lifting meet or a CrossFit competition – that’s something that would be pretty cool to actively participate in as a contestant rather than being a volunteer.

Finances

It’s been a hectic year, but I’ve been plowing a good chunk of my full-time income to aggressively paying off my student debt. I’m a few months a way and I’m getting more and more excited to put this part of my life behind me and move onto putting my money towards better uses. I’ll have to educate myself more about my own finances and put it to work, in terms of investing and in business opportunities in the future.

Appearances

While I don’t think I dress horribly, I think I’ve gotten a bit lazy when it comes to choosing what I wear to work and everyday life. T-shirt in jeans is cool, but doing it too often wearing the “startup uniform” of a startup t-shirt that I support, jeans, along with my pair of tigers and a hoodie were becoming a bit too common.

It’s true that when you dress better, you feel better, more confident and people’s perceptions about you change as well. I’d like to change that for 2015 for dressing better than I ever have to create an impression that I’m serious about how I look, how I carry myself and I have the skill to back it up professionally. Allocating a budget for this will play a role in this as well.

Travel

up global las vegas

I visited two places I’ve never been to this past year, Las Vegas and San Francisco, which were both a ton of fun thanks to UP Global paying for the trip for the Startup Weekend / Startup Digest global meet up. While it wasn’t off of North America, it was largely a function of not having the finances to be able to freely travel due to paying off student debt. I’m pretty sure 2015 has some awesome travel destinations for me in store and I’m looking forward to it.

Writing

Last but not least has been my strides in becoming a better and more consistent writer. As it stands, I’ve published posts on my blog, taken part of a 30 day writing challenge and published guest posts for CrossFit Toronto, which I’m all very proud of. Writing about what I’m learning and experiencing has been an invaluable process in forcing me to recollect what I’ve learned and write about it in a way that’s easy to understand for my audience, online marketers, product managers and those learning to code.

Writing has forced me to be more concise and succinct (yes, I’m still a bit long winded, but I’m sure I’m getting better.. I think?), and it’s led me to interacting with folks that I never dreamed of interacting with all due to this little old blog! It’s led me to other consulting and brought me some pretty awesome opportunities so far. I’m going to continue making this blog a focal point in my life as I reflect and share what I’m learning, in hopes that others might find what I’m learning and writing about useful as well.

Hope your 2014 was an awesome year for you and 2015 treats you even better. What was it like for you? Would love to know in the comments! Onward and upward!

You can check out my 2012 and 2013 year in reviews as well.

A simple blog post – how an obscure programmer changed my life

October 15, 2014 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

Lift #500WED Challenge

This post is for Day 9 of the Lift #500WED challenge. Here was today’s challenge:

Write a review—a review for writers—of your favorite recent blog post or article. What ideas draw you into the article? But, more than the ideas, what writing choices did the author make that made it so good? What tools of representation—words, jokes, descriptions, metaphors, hyperbole, informal voice, call to action, etc.—did the author use that you also might use someday?

I stumbled upon a blog post on Hacker News a while back – an obscure programmer by the name of Chris Strom did something that was shared on Hacker News and spread through tech circles like wildfire. The title of his blog post that was shared was simple but compelling enough for me to click through: “366 days or how I tricked myself into being awesome”.

My first thought was, “what happened in those 366 days?… I want to be awesome too!”. Did he go through Shaolin training? Did someone have to crack a whip? Were there hot stones involved?

While that would have been badass and cool, he did something even more badass in that he did something that he had no business in doing – writing books on technologies that he had no idea about. How did he do this? He wrote for 366 days. The result? Three books on Dart, SPDY and Backbone.js.

While I don’t know him personally or what the context of how he arrived at the impressive feat of writing for 366 consecutive days. The stuff that happens in between those days while he was writing was the most impressive. My best guess is that he got the idea from Seinfeld’s “Don’t break the chain” method of self improvement. Doing things daily, checking in (Hey! Kinda sounds familiar to us Lifters doesn’t it??), and reflecting on it, and NEVER stopping.

The simple “trick” that will solve ALL your problems!

He showed that through his “trick” of hard work and perserverance, it really did pay off. Not some grand high flying scheme of getting rich or famous, but through being a writer, producer and author, he built up the discipline and expertise by writing day after day after day. Through the process of doing so, he somehow ended up with three books in that process. The thing is, there was nothing remarkable about his process. All he wrote was just stuff that he was learning about and how he thought he might solve those problems on his own. Lo and behold, he kept on writing and building up his knowledgebase to the point that he had a very well formed opinion on how to tackle those problems and how they fit into the developer ecosystem. All within the course of a year. How cool is that? Nothing glamourous, just guts, grit and hustle. I love that.

DO THINGS THE HARD WAY – DO THE WORK

I think his feat plays into the notion of the American Dream – hiking up your bootstraps and just DOING THE WORK to get to where you want to be through sheer willpower, hustle and persistence. Continually learning, reflecting and iterating are things that I try to do every day, while using apps like Lift to reinforce those behaviours that add value to my life. While he didn’t use aids or tools like Lift, his committing to something and following through is inspiring to say the least. I’m only on Day 9 compared to his probably 2 years of writing daily. Humbling indeed and a glimpse of what it takes to be great.

Visuals matter

Other things that resonated with me and drew me in further to his post, is Chris’ informal visuals. His drawings used crayons instilling a sense of play – to illustrate a point of his learning/feedback loop. It illustrated a simple concept in a way that felt childlike in terms of his approach and curiosity. Maybe we all need to tap into the inner child once every so often, to view things differently as we’re approaching problems.

Draw in your reader – headlines that work

What I thought was particularly good was his use of his headline to draw the user in. It seems he had a very clear idea of the audience that he was writing for – those who are technical, programmers, hackers and are looking for “clever hacks” to get to a result easier. The idea of “tricking” yourself definitely tricked and baited me to draw me into his post. Clever use of headlines and putting a good amount of thinking into it, or testing a few variations would be a good practice going forward.

A humble and chill dude

What the best thing about Chris’ post was he told the world about his end result, not in a boastful manner, but in way that was like “Hey, I’m pretty what the end outcome of this experiment was pretty awesome – I think you’d find it awesome too”. I’d probably enjoy having a beer or two with him as well because he seems so humble and chill. I think he did the world a service by writing something that he thought was remarkable. I always refer to his post whenever I’m in a rut or in need of some inspiration. I even share it with friends who I think might benefit from his inspiring post. Maybe you might find his post useful too.

What would happen if you did something for 366 days straight?

Learn or Die – Ship One Thing Publicly Per Week

August 23, 2014 by Will Lam 4 Comments

Recently, I had a frustrating yet illuminating text conversation with a close friend that really got under my skin. While the conversation was not directed at me, but to someone adjacent to us, it had to do with that person being a “doer” and having an utmost respect for doers who ship consistently.

Keep the word “consistently” in the back of your mind for a moment.

For added context, the past little while there were some things happening in my life that took up a good chunk of time and energy in my personal life, I noticed other habits (like continually learning Rails) that I held to so dearly had slipped. While I wasn’t happy about it, it left me struggling and a bit complacent to get back to those habits until recently. Of course the conversation with my friend hit a nerve.

While I’ve “shipped” certain things before, I’d like to change that to be a little more consistent going forward. In life, consistency is everything, especially if you want to do some damage on something you discover you’re passionate about whether it’s learning to code, woodworking, calligraphy, whatever it is just do it.

Analysis By Paralysis

I think we discount what we have to say, which prevents us from sharing what we’re working on. Just putting yourself out there and letting your ideas loose onto the world, even though they might be crappy closes the feedback loop so as long as you reflect, iterate and improve upon what you’ve done before.

Case in point, I have countless blog posts in draft mode because I didn’t think they were good enough, or business ideas that are just lying dormant in an Evernote notebook waiting to be brought to life to see whether it has any legs. Discussing with close friends may alleviate some sort of that anxiety as you’ve let someone else into your head and received a bit of feedback from them (hopefully constructive). How will you ever know your stuff is good enough until you push your unpolished gem into the world?

This led me to the idea of shipping one thing publicly a week – whether tweeting it out, taking a picture of your work Instagram or adding to an open source project. Ship one thing. We all have time to ship just one thing right?

Learn or Die? Isn’t that a little dramatic?

Well, yeah, it kind of is. But it’s the point of having that pressure on yourself to learn and ship something per week. For bigger projects, you can break it down to chunks that are clearly defined that you need to deliver on a week to week basis. If you’re not using that grey matter between your ears on a consistent basis and have something to show for it then what are you really doing with yourself? The default should be to learn and grow.

There are some colleagues and acquaintances out there that are creating simply for the sake of creating and honing their already amazing skillsets, (I’m looking at you Veronica Wong, Gabriel, Grey Thompson, Nima, and Karim ; ), and doing it despite their insanely crazy schedules.

I don’t know how I got to this point of not dreaming big enough or being aggressive. Putting more of myself out there and recording the ways I’m trying to learn, expand, and grow personally as well as professionally should be a net benefit. I have been recording my efforts with Lift, but I haven’t been consistent in any one area outside of CrossFit and learning Ruby on Rails.

What’s your “burning desire”

The greatest achievements of men, were at first, nothing but dreams of the minds of men who knew that dreams are the seedlings of all achievements. A burning desire, to be and to do, is the starting point, from which the dreamer must take off

– Napoleon Hill

As with any habit or muscles that you haven’t used in the past – if you don’t use it, you’ll eventually lose it. It will atrophy and wither away. For myself, it is learning to code coupled with the insatiable desire to learn, reflect, iterate and share what I’ve learned. You should be pushed not only by professional deadlines set in the workplace, but personally, for growth and to expand our capacity to deliver and hone our skills.

In all experiences that have transformed me for the better, it felt as if it was a matter of life or death. You have to want something so bad, to the point of having something similar to what Napeleon Hill in his personal development classic “Think and Grow Rich” calls a “burning desire” to bring something to reality and literally will whatever it is you have in your head into existence.

Ship One Thing Per Week – No Matter How Big or Small

Realistically, you may have to take a hard look at yourself, look at your schedule and hone in on blocks of time that you can carve out to make whatever that “one thing” you want to make significant progress on consistently.

Ship one thing per week. Whether it’s a blog post, installing a WordPress plugin, setting up some software to start improving a process or get “X” result, delivering a small feature, a code commit and then make it public or whatever it is. Just do it!

I shipped one thing this past week, starting with this blog post, and now it’s onto the next thing. Anybody can ship something in a week and the next and the next. Catch my drift?

I’ve got 7 days left. What’s your excuse?

Featured Image credit: Busy Building Things