I have mixed feelings about my writing this past year.
I was substantially less productive than in 2021, and ended up averaging just two posts per month, a far cry from the 52 emails I planned to send back in January. Even worse, I was wildly inconsistent – I started the year publishing weekly, went silent throughout most of the summer, and have been sporadic during the fall. That’s a bad way to deliver a product.
Why the decline in productivity?
I didn’t spend enough time writing. That’s all.
As Steven Pressfield says, “the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
Sometimes it felt like my brain was a giant block of cement. Other times it seemed I had to fight for each word I put on the page. But at the end of the day, I struggled because I wasn’t giving myself enough time to do the work. My notebook is filled with half-baked ideas that I never developed, and discarded pieces that I tried to rush through.
My challenge for the coming year is to set a schedule for when I write, and to stick to it.
Despite my disappointing productivity, I made great strides elsewhere that I’m proud of.
For one thing, I continued to refine my voice and became more focused as a writer. I spent weeks redesigning my website and rewriting my About Me page, an exercise that forced me to finally identify why I’m doing this in the first place. That turned out to be a valuable use of my time that will pay dividends in the future.
With a clearer sense of purpose, I was able to produce a better product than in years past. My writing was more concise and my posts explored just one topic per week, a move that will hopefully make my work more enduring and relevant to future readers. Judging by feedback from all of you, I also got better at picking subjects that resonate, and have welcomed the shift away from commenting on current events.
Not surprisingly, my own favorite pieces from this year were those I felt the most passionate about:
- Hit the Reset Button was a call for a fresh start in 2022 that I plan to revisit this coming year as well.
- Tiny Nuggets of Gold came on the heels of some positive reader feedback that pushed me to share my work more broadly.
- Things We “Should” Do questioned the default assumption that some activities (i.e. reading) are more virtuous than others.
- The People You Work With was a love letter of sorts to my colleagues and a push to rethink how we evaluate job opportunities.
- Defining Core Values outlined the single most impactful exercise I’ve undertaken as an adult.
Perhaps most important, I finally shared my website with colleagues at work, and proved for myself the Tim Urban saying that “no one really cares that much about what you’re doing.” The criticism and rejection I feared never materialized, and the few words of encouragement emboldened me to continue putting myself out there. Ultimately, the decision paved the way for a TED-style presentation I gave to my team later in the year.
My ambition for 2023 is to simply be patient. One more year has passed with me writing this newsletter, and that’s a lot to be thankful for. As Ryan Holiday says:
“All of us have fallen short in the last year…and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We made the same mistakes again and again… now it’s time to pick ourselves up and try again.”
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
Real Life Does Not Fit the Narrative – Amanda Fortini, The Free Press
“If you live in the West, as I do, you are well versed in the ways that commonly held stories are often untrue. Your neighbors are not all bigots, and most people who drive pickup trucks are not brutes gunning to run over toddlers—many are just farmers or ranchers with equipment to haul, or regular drivers who must travel rough dirt roads.”
America For Me – Henry Van Dyke (poem, 1909)
So it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!
What I’m Listening To:
Jonathan Haidt: The Coddling of the American Mind, How to Become Intellectually Antifragile, and How to Lose Anger by Studying Morality – The Tim Ferriss Show
Stratechery (with Ben Thompson) – Acquired Podcast