2022: Process-Driven Year

No Distractions & No Addictions

2021 was a year. It’s over. I may have grown—I don’t know. It was a blur. I made some money, made and lost friends, and got a year older and four pounds fatter.

I started — and sunset — an agency and have advised four more. I could be starting another one. I bought another house. I had a couple of people exit my life.

I was mostly adrift and uncommitted. I wasted a lot of time on many things that didn’t matter. Negotiating hypotheticals. Playing literal and metaphorical poker.

I kept living in a space“a couple of weeks away” from doing my thing. I learned a lot of lessons — and I’ll detail those shortly. I tried and failed at three different things.

I spent 2021 thinking things through. Lying in wait or watching the wheels, you pick.

What’s Different About 2022

This year, I have some renewed focus. I did “odd jobs” in 2021, and one project had me rewriting a book for a friend. I say yes to friends and their projects, and this was a fun little gig. We organized and elevated his content. I felt pretty good about it, and I decided to lean in. I did this without a process, and his publisher helped it go further.

I picked up a few other book clients and then wound up advising a ghostwriting outfit. Again, I got a rush of knowledge—that felt good.

The publishing industry? It’s fun. It’s a slow burn, a few hundred hours work, and it pays off every day. It’s academic, and that sort of life and pace is appealing.

I love long-form content. I love working on something that takes a few hundred hours. I love the pace, the business arrangements, the focus, and the grind. I love writing, and I love being good — but new — at something.

I love the packaging, and the process is the right one for my temperament. . I also love that the people that use ghostwriting services have rich, full lives. Our work together isn’t some type of “make or break” hail mary.

So I’ve found a groove for a few years.

The 4 Things I’m doing in 2022

There are a few things that I have to do to make 2022 a good year. I’m still on the process/results path.

1. Fitness Or Else

This year I have to get fit. There is chaos coming; America as we know it is changing — or being changed — rapidly. Life will be more challenging for everyone, and I’ve kind of let fitness go. But, to be fair, it’s easy to do, and pizza is tasty.

That means 250 workouts with an end in mind. The end is simple: doing a 5k in sub 22 minutes, so my “hardest” run matches the pace of my kid’s “easy” run. It will be hard, and it’ll be fun.

150 workouts with weights (3x week)

100 workouts with cardio.

Running a mile to open or close every workout. (There’s nothing like running for me, I love it, and I’ve lost it).

Stretching with every workout.

5 days a week for sure, and I think I can be at six days a week by year’s end.

2. Food For Focus

This requires the biggest changes from me, and I’m going to “give up” on eating a ton of food that I used to eat without a second thought. I used to say, “someday, I’ll stop eating this crap.” That’s now.

First, absolutely, positively zero fast food.

Not socially, not ever, not one time.

This includes food from Starbucks or any “quick-serve restaurant” and basically anything that is passed through a window. I'm just guessing here, but I had fast food 300 times in 2021. I had more than usual, but not wildly so; I had a few things that triggered me. 9 days in, and I’m doing well here.

It’s all garbage; there are few redeeming qualities to it.

I’m also going “California” gluten & dairy-free. Sometimes, I might have some cream in my coffee, but I have been “almost” dairy-free for a month now, and I feel a ton better.

Finally, I’ll meal plan again. This worked before: eating chicken thighs and broccoli helped me lose weight fast, and now I can do that again.

I want to learn about nutrition and go down a path that works for me.

Fuck Facebook

By Feb 15th, I’m going to get rid of Facebook forever. I made good money using it, but they are bad actors.

It’ll be a fun experiment: it does have some utility, but it surrounds that utility in an envelope of toxicity and poison and makes me, personally, the very worst version of myself.

The only reason I’m not gone now is that I want to figure out how to get everyone to come along. It’ll take me 20 hours or so to “untangle” Facebook from my life.

I’m also making an effort to opt-out of news-type media. I don’t have precise or formal plans here, but the antagonistic nature of news is a non-starter for me.

Publish or Perish

This year, I will reboot my platform and restart the habit that built the businesses and connections that got me to the richest and best parts of my professional life. I’ll keep an audience and have a way to serve them over the long haul.

I have to publish at least 100 articles, and I have to build a personal platform. Again. It’s tedious and lonely to start, but when it gets good, it’s good.

I know this takes 2–3 hours a day and a little more to launch/start.

I have to write and publish daily to ensure that I stay going in the direction. I have screwed around and waited for the perfect external stuff to be done to delay the start.

Enough.

I have to promote what I’m (without Facebook), and that process will be fun. I haven’t learned much about Social Media since I needed it.

I’ll start by teaching folks how to build an agency/service business, and I’ll build a Substack or Youtube Channel with what I know. I will invest 400–500 hours in this project this year, partly to get my writing chops where they need to be. I’m not as good as I used to be and nowhere near as good as I need to be.

The work is ahead, and I’m starting, mostly from scratch.

We’ll check in quarterly to see where we are, so away we go.