I have a very long list of topics I want to write about and I almost always dive right into one of them when I start a new issue on Monday. I typically have no trouble choosing a topic, coming up with three things (often I start with more and pare it down), and drafting the first one. But it took a lot longer this time. I sat and reflected for quite a while before I began writing, which is quite rare. One hundred is a pretty big number and I want to honor the milestone, however arbitrary (base ten ftw). It’s also been two years since I began writing here.
I thought about writing the obvious: a meta topic exploring the history of Three Things, how it’s going, what’s going well, and what I’d like to change. Then I realized I wrote exactly that a year ago and that I don’t have anything too different to say on the topic this year (short version: I’m still considering mixing things up going forward but I haven’t made up my mind yet and in the short term I think I’ll keep doing what’s working). I thought about writing about new year’s resolutions and things I plan to do differently in the new year, whether related to writing or not, but that feels preliminary: I need to start by reviewing the past year.
The best way to do that, and the theme I kept coming back to, is gratitude. Here are three things I’m grateful for.
Thing #1: Consistency 🗓️
I read a few years ago about the Jerry Seinfeld method of practice. It couldn’t be simpler: it involves setting a daily goal, putting an “X” on the calendar each day that you achieve your goal, and trying to line up as many contiguous X’s as you can. It’s idiotically simple, focused as it is on continuous and consistent inputs rather than on results, but if you’re anything like me—if you’re a perfectionist and have OCD like I do—it can be extraordinarily effective.
I’ve been using the method in order to achieve some pretty big challenges each year for the past few years. These have included no alcohol for a year (2020), no added sugar for a year (2021), writing every day for a year (2022), and exercising every day for a year (2023). While total abstention from alcohol was hard, and abstaining from sugar was even harder, I found the positive goals the past two years to be much more productive and constructive than the negative goals. I enjoyed writing every day last year so much that I decided to continue it this year.
Writing every day is hard. It’s hard on a typical day when I get no chance to write until after dinner, at which point I’m usually already exhausted and ready for bed. It’s impossibly hard when I’m on the road: I’m often jetlagged and short on sleep, and sometimes I come back late from a dinner or an event feeling tipsy and ready to collapse into bed, barely able to keep my eyes open. Even in these situations I still force myself to write. The things I write in this situation are usually garbage (you can usually tell which issues were written while on the road) but I can generally manage to shape it into something presentable by the end of the week.
But writing every day is also a really incredible thing to do, and I don’t mind at all if it means writing the occasional word salad. After writing every day for two years (and most days for the two years prior to that), and after publishing around 150 articles, I’ve found that I have an unexpected superpower. If you give me a topic and a quiet hour to myself I can almost always bang out a decent piece about that topic. Sometimes it comes even faster than that—sometimes I can bang out a draft in a mere 10-20 minutes, especially if it’s a topic that I’m particularly interested in. I didn’t understand what a superpower this is until comparing notes with friends who told me that doing the same thing takes them hours and that they often feel totally unable to write. It actually kind of amazes me how easy writing has become, and on the rare occasion when it’s really hard I’m always surprised and caught off guard.
They say that you should ignore the first 100 things a person creates. For an artist this means their first 100 pieces are going to be pretty bad. For a podcaster it means the first 100 episodes probably aren’t worth listening to. And for a writer it means the first 100 articles probably aren’t worth reading. With a tiny number of exceptions, I think the first 100 issues of Three Things mostly aren’t worth reading, but I also think this consistency in writing has gotten me to a place where I can write more readable things and I expect and plan to do more of this in the future. I’m consistently shocked by the number of people I meet face to face around the world who tell me they read this newsletter and enjoy it. (For the record it’s not so much that I think my writing is bad, per se, it’s more that it doesn’t have a single theme, or rather, it has too many themes to hold the interest of most people!) I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to commit to writing and that my writing has improved to this point—with the recognition that I still have a lot to improve as a writer!
The other thing I’ve done as consistently is running. Like writing, running used to be something I struggled with. As recently as a year or two ago, even after running for over a decade, I still felt anxious before runs and in many cases dreaded lacing up and heading out the door, especially if it was cold outside or I was tired or sore or had any of the 1,000 other excuses that would cause me to miss a run.
This is the beauty of consistency: there are no excuses. It’s that simple. I pre-committed to running every single day for one calendar year. I made the decision already so there’s no consider or hesitate before lacing up and heading out. The only occasions when I didn’t run this past year were the ones where it felt absolutely impossible: when I was seriously ill, and when I was stuck in the mud at Burning Man. That was about a week in total: I ran the other 358 days.
And guess what happened? Running has also become second nature. I thought of myself as a runner long before this year and before I took on this new challenge, but running every day regardless of conditions, location, or mood has made me feel like much more of a runner than I ever was before! Even when I’m on the road, when I’m jet lagged or tired or sore or hungover or feeling a little under the weather like I am this week, once I get moving I’m totally fine and I always feel better after a run. As with writing it consistently amazes me how crappy I can be feeling just before I start, and how that feeling vanishes when I start moving and doesn’t come back after. And that’s all down to consistency.
I’m grateful for having the sort of will power to commit to and stick with these challenges even when they feel very difficult, and I’m grateful that my life is structured in such a way as to make this possible, even with what feel like big challenges including an intense job, a ton of travel and having a toddler at home. I’m grateful to the people in my life, especially my wife, for putting up with these daily practices.
Like running my first 10k or my first marathon, running every day for a year has shown me that I’m capable of things I didn’t think possible. I strongly encourage you to do one thing at the start of every day that challenges and inspires you. Do the hard thing first, and the rest of each day will feel easy.
I look forward to extending this consistency and productivity to other healthy areas of my life including work and meditation in coming years. I know I’m also capable of being significantly more productive in work. That’s a bigger challenge and in some ways much more important but I feel up for it next year.
Thing #2: Family 👨👩👦
I’ve written about family a lot lately, most recently just last week. I don’t tend to write about the same topic too often (other than Spacemesh) but I’ll make an exception this time because family is both an incredibly important topic and also one that tends to be underappreciated. I have a lot to say about it and I hope to continue to explore it here.
I know it’s stereotypical to say that you’re grateful for your family, but most people who say that don’t actually go further and say why they’re grateful for family or what exactly they’re grateful for. In my case I’m grateful to a few different family members for different reasons: to my parents for what they gave me, to my wife for what she taught me about the world, and to my son for what he taught me about myself.
My parents are both gone but I’m grateful to them both for very different reasons. I’m grateful to my mother for constantly challenging me: both intentionally, by having very high expectations and high standards, and unintentionally, by being a crap mother, which forced me to grow up and become independent quite early. It was difficult at the time but I see today all of the positive ways it’s made me who I am. My mother showed me the power and importance of gregariousness and social graces. My father taught me conscientiousness, frugality, focus, and intellectually curiosity. I feel incredibly grateful for the gifts my parents gave me: their positive qualities and characteristics and, yes, some of their flaws too.
Family is unique in the sense that you can’t choose part of it, the family you’re born into, but you do get to choose the family you marry into and the family you create. I’m deeply fortunate and deeply grateful for the latter as well as the former.
I’m grateful to my wife for her patience and perseverance and for putting up with me during all of the years when I wasn’t yet mature enough to commit (to marriage, to living together and buying a home, to having children). I’m grateful for the different perspectives that she and her family have shown me: how to see the world through design rather than through code and engineering, the experience of growing up on the opposite side of the country, and what it’s like being a first generation immigrant from a very different culture. I’m especially grateful for her challenging me and keeping me honest.
Most of all I’m grateful for my son. I’m grateful that we decided to have a child and were able. I’m grateful for the joy and novelty that he brings into our life every day. Having a child is truly like experiencing the entire world all over again from zero with no previous understanding, no preconceptions, and no expectations. As I wrote a few months ago it’s an extraordinarily refreshing, healthy experience. He’s so amazed and intrigued by such simple things: animals, cars, dinosaurs, toys and machines. Seeing his curiosity and fascination helps me channel the same sense of wonder and awe at the world we live in. It’s so easy to become jaded and take for granted all of these wonders. Seeing the way simple things bring him endless delight helps me channel a sense of delight, too.
Becoming a parent has made me a better person in a thousand ways. I’m much more focused and my work has a much greater sense of purpose and urgency than before. I’m definitely more productive now than I was before becoming a parent. I work harder so I can spend more quality time with my son after work. I’m grateful for every moment of this experience, and also for the way that becoming parents together has highlighted and exacerbated differences in my wife’s and my parenting styles and personality. It’s a healthy, productive form of conflict that’s also opened my eyes and made me consider a different perspective.
I became a parent last year, but it was too new and my son was too small to interact very much. This year was my first full year of parenthood and it’s the first year that I really got to know my son and watch his personality develop. I’ve grown as a person alongside him, and I’ve fallen even more deeply in love with him as I’ve gotten to know him as a person this year. I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world, and I’m deeply grateful for the experience, opportunity, and privilege of being a parent to an amazing little son.
If you’ve ever considered becoming a parent I strongly urge you to consider doing it now. We’re not getting any younger and the biological reality of having kids doesn’t get any easier as we age. If you don’t feel ready, consider that you probably never will, at least until the moment you meet your child for the first time. Then you’ll feel absolutely ready because it’s a latent ability we all have. If you’re uncertain or feel on the fence, reach out (my DMs are open). I’m happy to listen—and to tell you about all of the wonderful reasons you, too, should become a parent, sooner rather than later! I hope you get to experience the same sense of awe, fortuity, joy, and gratitude.
Thing #3: Work 👔
Paul Graham famously wrote that very few people are able to find work that they love:
“How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.” - Paul Graham, How to Do What You Love
Maybe this sounds about right to most people, but I found the idea surprising. It took me until well into my thirties before I found work that checks all of the important boxes: lets me build, challenging but not too challenging, meaningful and socially constructive, pays the bills, allows for constant learning and exploration, gives me some freedom, and is something that I’m both good at and enjoy doing. And I consider myself extremely fortunate for having found it! On some level I think I was aware that most people, in fact the vast majority of people, don’t particularly enjoy their work and don’t find it particularly meaningful. For most people work is a means to an end. It puts food on the table and lets them support their families. It isn’t necessarily a career, which has a long-term trajectory and long-term goals, and it isn’t necessarily a calling, which is something else entirely. I feel extremely fortunate to have a calling. (Just don’t ask me to describe what I do. It isn’t easy to describe and doesn’t fit neatly into any existing boxes that I’m aware of.)
In my case it was a weird set of circumstances that led me to this career path and to the work that I do today. Partly I have my parents to thank, especially my father who, as I mentioned above, taught me the importance of focus and hard work. Partly it was studying hard, getting good grades, going to good schools, and building my career and skill set over decades. Partly it was dumb luck: I picked a field (computer science) which wasn’t especially popular at the time (over 20 years ago) out of curiosity and interest, but which turned out to be extremely lucrative and has more or less guaranteed me gainful employment. And all of that combined is just the first part of my career. It was also the decision to step off the career track and found my first startup ten years ago, and then changing gears and joining a totally different industry seven years ago. I’m grateful for every step in this long process. Looking back, none of these decisions was an obvious one at the time.
Family, friends, community, fitness, spirituality, reading and writing all bring a great deal of meaning and purpose into my life, but my work—in combination with my family and in particular with the calling to build a better world for my son and his generation—gives me by far the deepest sense of meaning, purpose, and calling of all of these. I can genuinely say that I’m excited to get out of bed every day and start work.
But as I always say, everything is a tradeoff and there’s a downside to being as invested in work as I am. I struggle to separate work from the rest of my life and I sort of always want to be working. If I allow it to, work has a tendency to take over every corner of my life. That was kind of okay when I was twenty-something, lived alone, and had very few commitments or obligations outside of work. It’s not so okay at age 40 with a spouse, a child, and tons of personal and professional obligations. My wife in particular hates that I can’t turn work off on the weekend or during a so-called holiday. But it’s the price I pay for passion and in my opinion it’s a price worth paying.
I think it’s possible to be even more invested in what I do. There are several successive potential stages to work, as I outlined above—a job, a career, a calling. But there’s another related but somewhat orthogonal dimension, the pinnacle of which is a craft. A craft is something we do out of sheer joy. Engaging in it puts us into a flow state. It’s the kind of thing we do during nights and weekends outside of work time. It’s something we do even if we don’t have to, even if it would be better not to, even if it distracts us from our “real” job or doesn’t pay the bills—even if costs us a lot!
For a long time I’ve had a dream of taking up a real craft: writing fantastically useful open source software, creating something like the next Linux, out of sheer love and curiosity, not for any financial or status reason. I don’t think I’m quite there yet for a number of reasons—mainly that I need to get much more efficient and focused at my work and other tasks—but it gives me something to work towards. I’m grateful to have a calling. And I’m grateful to have something else ambitious to aspire to.
I encourage you to consider the trajectory of your work over the span of your working life. Which stage are you at: job, career, or calling? What could you change to get to the next level? Is that what you want for yourself? If you had all the time and money in the world, what would you spend your time doing? How can you restructure your life and career to achieve that goal today, or in the near future?
As with things one and two above, I encourage you to seriously consider making hard choices sooner rather than later. In work it’s definitely the case that you sometimes have to take one painful, scary step backwards in order to take two big steps forwards.
Thank you for reading. I wish you and your loved ones all the best in the new year: health, happiness, and prosperity. As the Chinese say, may ten thousand things proceed according to your wishes. Most of all, here’s to a year full of friendship and building amazing things together. I love you all.