273 Things
Originally posted to my old personal blog on March 2, 2012.
Five years ago (actually 273 weeks), I got serious about designing a better and more interesting life. The key, and hardest part, was finding work that felt meaningful to me. But there are plenty of other components: family, friends, exercise, entertainment, travel, education.
Since making the commitment to live better I’ve also been doing yearly retrospectives to see how I’m doing. I shoot for picking out one highlight per week. It’s been 56 weeks since my last list, so there are 56 items on this list. See also my lists from 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.
This has ended up being one of my favorite life practices. Every year I think that I had a stressful year dominated by the ups and downs of work. And then every year, I review the list and see how much got done in every aspect.
Writing/Speaking.
1. MC of Ignite: Lean Startup.
2. Advice for a Young Entrepreneur. Far and away the most popular thing I’ve ever written.
3. Done,Done & Ready, Ready.
4. Experiments in Human Potential.
5. Awesome Mornings.
6. Product, Conversion, Scale.
7. Writing Rails Engines #1 (just to prove I can still write something technical).
8. Conference Website Basics #2.
9. Odeo reunion panel at Web 2.0.
10. Spoke to an entrepreneurship class at Carnegie Mellon.
Adventure
11. Led an Urban Hike through the Ice Cream Triangle.
12. Great Saunter- 32 miles around Manhattan.
13. Burning Man with my brother.
14. LA Trip. Saw Accomplice, the Griffith Observatory, my sister.
15. Hawaii.
16. Five months in NYC as a resident.
17. Went to my first Bat(or bar) mitzvah.
18. Rented a house on Tamales Bay.
19. A week in Boston.
Food
20. Two good #pizzaquest stops: Vitos Pizza in LA (casual, friendly) and Pepe’s in New Haven (classic).
21. Two #donutquests in NYC with the Hedlunds. Best: Dough.
Education
22. Great NYTimes piece on decision fatigue.
23. Anita Hill at Herbst.
24. IDEO Tour. Huge appreciation for iteration.
25. LUXr Residency.
26. Three Habit Design meetups. Great energy.
27. BJ Fogg bootcamp.
28: Great books on entrepreneurship: Steve Jobs, The Lean Startup, Decoded.
29. Great books on behavior design: Switch, Four Hour Body, Checklist Manifesto.
Entertainment
30. Sleep No More, a highly stylized interactive moving play that has nothing to do with Macbeth.
31. Played Skyrim.
32. Introduced even more friends to Supercross.
33. Attended two more Popup Magazines, including an ESPN themed one.
34. Book of Mormon.
35. Agony & Ecstacy of Steve Jobs. That Dailey controversy? Yep, we saw the show live.
36. All five seasons of The Wire.
37. Watched the first season of Game of Thrones but didn’t get into the books.
38. Held a NYC Marathon party and watched the runners go right in front of our house.
39. Great movies: Bridesmaids, Highlander, Annie Hall, Crazy Stupid Love, The Artist, Senna, The Guard, 127 Hours.
40. Learned to tie a bowtie for a Roaring 20s Party.
41. Enjoyed the Hunger Games series and BossyPants.
Work
42. Stopped working at home and started working in offices.
43. Spent the summer in the swanky, joy-filled Kapor offices in exchange for doing some light weight advising.
44. 694 code commits over 11 repositories.
45. Standardized, published, and streamlined all CrowdVine processes and promoted Andrew (CV’s employee #2) to general manager. Super proud that I built self-sustaining business.
46. Performed a wedding. This is my fourth–so I qualify as a professional now.
47. For the first time, successfully printed and scanned something without screwing up. Then switched to Hellofax.
48. Started Lift with a bunch of friends.
Used Lift
49. Turned into a flosser. My dentist (and also a friend from high school) will be proud.
50. Did pushups every day for 100 days.
51. Went vegan for 94 days.
52. Swam 33 times.
New tools and gadgets
53. Went totally Apple: switched from Android to iPhone, from Linux to Macbook Air, from Kindle to iPad.
54. Favorite new website: Stellar.
55. Roku plus Netflix, NBA League Pass, Amazon Video, Pandora, TED talks.
56. Built a treadmill desk for Sarah.
Bonus: My partner, Sarah, has been my bonus highlight for each of these lists. This year we celebrated seven years together. She played a huge role in helping me unwind from CrowdVine and get into work that I loved even more. But her biggest impact was moving us to NYC. I love that city and I love seeing it through her eyes. I’m looking forward to another exciting and interesting year together.
