Tag: fun

Don’t Do Stuff You Hate

don't do stuff you hate

A new book project is almost done!  I’m pretty excited about this one.

Don’t Do Stuff You Hate is not just the title and theme of this book, it’s the philosophy I have striven to live by for the past decade.

Mitchell Earl, someone who has made bold, risky decisions to removed hated stuff from his life, joins me in putting this collection together.  It’s a welcome relief for those who feel overwhelmed by the idea of “following your passion”, finding purpose, or carving out a calling.  Forget all that.  What makes you come alive might be unknown to you and it might not even exist yet.

Instead we argue that the best way to build a great life is to break down a bad one, piece by piece.  What obligations, activities, relationships, and mindsets are draining the sense of life from your daily experience?  How many things do you do that you don’t actually enjoy?  Stop doing those and the rest will come into focus.

The best part about this approach is the mystery.  It’s exciting to think that the best life is one you can’t yet imagine.  You won’t find it by trying to plot a perfect path to some defined point called “success”.  Remove the dross and be surprised every day by the cool stuff that emerges when you make space for it.

Thanks to Julia Patterson for the awesome cover design.

Get a free preview of the book and get updates as soon as it’s up in Kindle and paperback on Amazon.

Try Before You Certify

Most of the time most people get it backwards.

They spend tons of time and money trying to learn about or get certified in something before ever really trying it.  You can’t know what you enjoy, what you’re good at, or whether it even needs study unless and until you go out and play around with it.  Experiment.

Get out of the permission-based, credentialed classroom mindset, and go try some stuff out.

 

In Less Than One Year Get a Startup Job at $40k – No Degree Required

Learn more at Praxis!

The idea that you should spend four years and six figures in classrooms, shielded from the real world of opportunity, and cross your fingers and hope it gets you some kind of job is absurd.It’s time for a new era in education and career.  If you’re good you can prove it in the market without going into debt or dying of boredom.

That’s why we created Praxis, and that’s why we’re making it better every day.

Over at the Praxis blog is a description of current opportunities with business partners in Austin, Atlanta, Charleston, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, and San Francisco where we’re placing participants.  If you get in, you not only get paid to apprentice there, you get a job at $40k+ when you graduate.

From the post:

“Participants accepted into the Praxis program get an intense bootcamp where they gain the skills needed to succeed in their careers.  After the bootcamp they begin a paid apprenticeship with one of our business partners.  These aren’t dull corporate internships.  These are dynamic startups and small businesses where participants get a chance to create real value and do real work.  Entrepreneurship is the most valuable skill in the emerging economy, and there’s no better classroom than alongside entrepreneurs in the real world to learn it.

While apprenticing, participants get weekly coaching, access to a rich resource library, tailored modules to improve hard and soft skills, a world-class network, and a portfolio to showcase their work.

Upon completion of the program, graduates get hired full time with their business partner at a minimum of $40k/year.

That means in less than a year and at zero cost you begin your career.  No debt.  No wasted time.  No blasting out resumes to jobs you’d hate.  No fretting over GPA’s for four years just hoping it results in a job.  You join an amazing team doing meaningful work immediately.

Here are some of our current business partner opportunities, and we’re adding all the time…”

Check out the post to see what kind of companies we’re placing participants with.

A great career won’t come from classrooms or generic resume blasts.  It will come from you taking charge and going out and building the mix of experience, knowledge, network, skills, and confidence that can only come from working with dynamic people in real companies.

Applications are now open.

 

The Best Life Advice I Know of…

Don’t follow your passion.  Not because it’s a bad idea, but because most of the time it’s not possible early in your life.

Instead, arrive at your passion(s) by taking the sculptor approach.  Chisel away everything that you don’t love.  In a sentence:

Don’t do stuff you hate.

Everything else is fair game.

The Ridiculousness of the “I’m Not Impressed” Facebook Comment

Facebook can be a…uh…special place.  People behave in ways I cannot imagine them behaving in the flesh.  I don’t think this is good or bad, it just is.  Still, it makes for some rather odd and entertaining moments.

The other day I shared a quote from a young college opt-out with whom I was emailing:

“I dropped out of university when I was 19. I had lots of friends there. My grades were great. My future was bright. But I was unhappy and restless. Most of all, I was feeling unfulfilled. So instead of taking out student loans and finishing my degree, I quit.

We talk a lot about “living intentionally.” But during my unfulfilling time at uni, I really came to understand what that means. Going to university right out of high school just because “that’s what you’re supposed to do” isn’t living intentionally. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted out of life, and it occurred to me that perhaps I would be just as clueless and lost upon graduation day.

I didn’t have a business idea or plan for what to do when I quit. I didn’t have a job lined up. I quit uni “the wrong way” according to most people. It was “the risky way,” “the stupid way.” But I survived. I made it work. And I’ve loved every second of the adventure so far.

We’re hardwired for thinking that taking risks and making changes will only end in disaster. We like certainty. We like predictability. We like routines. But there’s a certain danger in routine. Those things that we can “do in our sleep” run the risk of luring us into a slumber we may never wake up from. So I’ll take the discomfort of uncertainty over the slumber of routine each chance I get.”

Cool, right?  It seemed pretty self-evident that I shared this because I thought it was inspiring and some of the many other young people I know who are slowly decaying in college but are afraid to buck social and parental pressure might take heart in her story.

It got some likes and shares, and then this comment popped up:

“This sort of thing brings out the grumpy old man in me. She quit college at 19 and now she all of 20 and not dead yet. What an inspiration! Insert sardonic face here. How much of a risk is she taking? I bet she has parents backstopping her. And I’m supposed to be inspired by her and follow her on Twitter and soak up all her wisdom? Give me a break. I’ll change my tune when she actually, you know, does something.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.  So many hilarious thoughts went through my head.  I don’t normally respond to comments, but considering this girl was insulted by a stranger after I shared her story, I thought I’d post something to stick up for her just a bit.  I had a lot of ideas for responses, but opted to keep it simple with this:

“I think you underestimate just how much pressure young people face to unthinkingly go to college whether they gain anything from it or not. I share this not because this young lady has “arrived”, whatever that means, but because it takes a ton of courage to stop and think about your own life and live it on your terms instead of the conveyor belt you’re pressured into.

Anyone who’s not just bobbing in the current deserves respect.”

There was so much more to say about the comment though.  Here are some of the other responses I considered…

Thanks for your comment!  Maybe, just maybe, you aren’t the intended audience. Maybe you don’t need to follow her on Twitter for inspiration. Maybe middle-aged dudes who are not facing challenges similar to a 19-year-old aren’t supposed to be inspired by her.  Maybe somewhere, some other 19-year-old hates school and is scared to death to face the social pressure of doing something more tailored to her.  Or maybe she should be chastised for not doing something impressive to you yet…

Thanks for your comment!  I wonder what “done something” means?  Could you define what activities and achievements this young lady must complete before she is allowed to have a website or talk about her story in her about section?  What challenges are big enough that she should be allowed to talk about them?  To what authorities should she appeal before sharing her journey or posting a Tweet?

Thanks for your comment!  You’re right, no one is really inspiring who hasn’t succeeded.  Then again, what’s the definition of success if not living a fulfilling life with pride in your choices and accomplishments?  If she earned a million dollars and hated her life and felt shame for her choices, would she be inspiring?  She clearly said this was a big challenge for her to overcome, she did it, and now she’s happy.  Is that not success because you think that challenge would have been easy for someone else?

Thanks for your comment!  FWIW, this young lady is working at a business in Poland right now and started her own accent reduction service for non-native English speakers on the side.  But that’s not relevant.  What’s relevant is that you were offended by the fact that her story was not directly inspiring to you.  Sorry about that!  In the future I’ll make sure to ask if what I post is personally inspiring to you, even if you’re not the intended audience.  I’ll also advise this young woman to seek your permission before feeling proud or sharing her story in the future.

Thanks for your comment!  Let me see if I can boil down the heart of it in summary:  You’re upset because something someone posted to Facebook doesn’t inspire you.  Your post could be shortened a bit to, “I’m not impressed.”  Got it.

Thanks for your comment!  Though it does bring out the grumpy young man in me.  So you’re all of middle-aged-something, you shot down a young stranger’s story on Facebook, and you’re not dead yet.  What, you want me to follow you on Twitter now to soak up more of your dismissive derision?  Please.  Call me when you’ve, you know, done something that piques my interest.

I decided not to post any of those.  It seemed like it would have been mean.  Plus, the Facebook inspiration police might have swarmed and pointed out with deep insight and profound erudition that they’re not impressed anyway.  That would have been crushing.

Check out this podcast episode about call-out culture and the dangers of playing the critic:

Episode 2: TK Coleman on Comments, Critics, and Call-Out Culture

 

An Interview Question

A got an email survey recently asking what I thought it was an interesting question.

“If you could ask one question in an interview, what would it be?”

My response (maybe it would change if I thought more about it) below:

“What’s one thing you do better than anyone in the world?”

I think it reveals what level of self-knowledge and confidence a candidate has and whether they are aware not just of generic skills, but truly unique aspects of their personality and experiences, and how those can create value for others.

It’s Much Easier Than You Think to Live the Life You Want

Maybe not “easy”, but entirely possible.

I recently listened to an episode of The World Wanderers Podcast where the host discussed working at a Cafe in a great city that a lot of people would love to live in.  She mentioned how, had she not moved to this cool, exciting city, the job she had would have made her feel like a loser.  In your hometown working retail after getting an expensive degree seems pretty lame.  Up and moving to a destination city and working retail to support the lifestyle seems kind of adventurous.

Back home, she would have dreaded seeing an old friend come in.  “Oh, so you’re working here?”  In the new city when someone she knew came in the question was more like, “Wow, so you’re living here?”

Just a few days ago I talked to a guy who’s biking across the country and loving it.  He spent several months in beautiful Missoula, Montana waiting for the weather to improve so he could continue his journey.  He worked at a grocery store while there and it provided everything he needed to live the lifestyle he wanted and get back on the road in time.  What would his resume look like when, several years out of college, he had “Grocery bagger” listed?  Not great, except when put in the context of, “Spent two years biking across the U.S., paying my way through with odd jobs and blogging about the adventure.”

I thought about this phenomenon more in Mompiche, Ecuador a few weeks ago.  We found a little place with a sign for American-style pancakes.  A welcome breakfast after days of fruit and cereal.  The breakfast nook was run by a twentysomething woman from the Ukraine.  She fried up pancakes on a small griddle and served them with coffee for breakfast and lunch in the tiny Bohemian surfing village.  She lived in a neat little house right above the pancake joint and spent the rest of the day as she pleased.

Imagine this ambitious young woman back home responding to the common, “So, what do you do?” with, “I make pancakes for a living.”  Likely her friends and family would be a little worried and ashamed and think something wrong with her.

Contrast that with the same answer to the same question but with a change in geography.  “I moved across the world to a tropical surfing village in Ecuador where I opened my own business.”  Wow.  What an enviable life, right?

There’s something weird about staying in your hometown.  It severely limits the definitions you accept for what makes you successful.  Oddly, most of the hometown definitions of success have nothing to do with happiness.  They have to do with becoming what everyone in your past expects or desires given who you used to be.  It’s a sort of tether to a past self that no longer exists.

When the expectations of back home no longer apply you can ask better questions and make clearer connections.  What kind of person do you want to be (vs. what job title do you want)?  What kind of people and surroundings do you want to be immersed in (vs. where do you want to work or live)?

Many people would probably love to be the master of their own schedule, be in a beautiful outdoor setting with interesting people from around the world, seriously pursue a hobby with lots of their time, and be challenged in new ways daily.  Yet most of those same people would be horrified at the idea of playing guitar on the street for money, flipping pancakes, or doing freelance odd-jobs online, any of which might be the very means to achieve the life described.

Most people have this idea that you have to work a boring job in a boring house in a boring city for a few decades, and then if you play your cards right and all kinds of things totally out of your control (like the stock market or real estate prices) do the right thing, you can have some kind of two week vacation cruise or retire in a place where you enjoy good weather and leisure.  The weird thing is, all those “someday” goals are available right now with relatively little difficulty.  You can afford to live in a cool bamboo house in a beach town just by making pancakes for lunch and breakfast.  You can (as was one guy I met) travel the length of South America living entirely off the cash you make playing guitar outside of restaurants.

I’m not claiming this kind of life is for everyone.  Not at all.  There is nothing wrong with a 9-5 job and life in the suburbs if that’s what really resonates with you.  There’s nothing inherently noble about traveling or working some low wage odd job.  The point is that it’s too easy to choose things based on an artificially limited option set.  It’s too easy to define your life by stupid things like college majors or giant industry labels or titles that will make Aunt Bessie proud at the family reunion or salary levels.

The last one is especially dangerous.

It’s a weird habit to measure your success in life only by the revenue side of the equation.  Who cares if you bring in $100k a year if it only buys you a crappy apartment that you hate in a city that stresses you out with friends that don’t inspire you and a daily existence you mostly daydream about escaping from?  Your costs exceed your revenues and you’re actually going backward.  You very well could get twice the lifestyle you desire at half the annual income.  Like any business, the health of your personal life should be measured using both revenues and costs.  On the personal level, neither are not just monetary.

Only you can know what kind of life you want.  But getting off the conveyor belt of the education system, getting out of the home town expectations trap, and opening your mind to measures of progress beyond salary will give you a much better chance of crafting a life you love.

Here are a few articles to chew on:

Why You Should Move Away from Your Home Town

Why You Should Get Off the Conveyor Belt

Why “Escapism” Isn’t a Bad Thing

Why It’s So Hard to Exit a Bad Situation

Do You Need to Do Work You Love to Be Happy?

Stop Doing Stuff You Hate

Focus on What You Don’t Want

Do What You Love, or Have it Easy?

 

My Ceaseless Quest to Make Myself Useless

I’m on a ceaseless quest.  This quest it based on a belief about myself and the world:

For everything that I do there is someone somewhere who can do it better.

When I start doing something new my quest is always to find the person who can do it better and hand over the reins as soon as possible.

Where and when I’ve succeeded at that, I’ve succeeded.

I fully believe the maxim that you’ll be most successful when you find and do the things that no one else can do as well – the things that are uniquely you.  But if I always believe there is someone who can do everything I do better, and I’m always trying to find them and hand it off, what does that make me uniquely good at?

I don’t really know.  Here are two possible answers.  One is that at any given time I might be the best person for something.  So that’s what I’ll be doing.  But that time is limited.  In the long run, even though I might be uniquely perfect for something at first, someone else might be better.

The other possible answer is that my most unique and valuable skill is replacing myself.

Maybe I’m best at breaking new ground, getting the basics figured out, identifying nascent talent in someone else, and transitioning things to them so they can blossom in a way no one else – including me – ever could.

Whatever the answer I am totally confident that, given enough time, I can find someone who can do everything I do better.  This doesn’t threaten or bother me.  It fills me with excitement!  Where are they?  How can I find them?  How soon can I get them catapulted to heights I could never reach?  When can I replace myself with someone better?

If you share a similar disposition know you’re not alone.  If you know you’re a jack of many trades but master of none don’t fear.  That’s its own kind of mastery.  At least I hope so.  It’s worked pretty well for me so far and I’m having fun.

As Long As It’s Interesting, It’s Good

I wrote on the Praxis blog about how silly it is for young people to worry and stress about working in or studying a specific industry:

“Many young people think they know what industry or category of job they want.  They’re mostly wrong.

We’re trained by the school and university process to think in terms of big career categories and majors.  Marketing.  Hospitality.  Management.  Financial Services.  But these categories are so generic and ill-defined that they offer almost no value for an individual trying to forge a path to life and career success.

The truth is, you have no idea what industry or job will make you happy.  How could you?  You’ve barely seen any of them up close.  The roles within these industry labels can be more diverse than you can imagine.  Many jobs and entire industries have no label.  Many more will emerge that don’t yet exist.

The good news is that this is good news.  Opportunity abounds, and what major you pick or what label you spit out when someone asks what you want to do are of little importance.  You have massive flexibility and a chance to explore and experiment.  You can even create new roles that no one ever thought of.

Stop stressing about it.  Don’t fret over getting an internship that perfectly aligns with your imagined industry of choice.  As long as you’re not doing something you hate, you’re heading in the right direction.  You don’t know what you’ll discover.  You can’t learn it from a course catalog or guidance counselor.  You’ve got to engage the world and see what you respond to and what responds to you.

Not only that, but it is well documented that ‘outsiders’ are most likely to innovate.  If you go directly from a finance major to an investment banking internship and then job, you’ll have experiences and knowledge identical to nearly everyone you work with.  If you first spend a few years working at a software startup, building a network of owners of financial service businesses, then transition into investment banking, you’ll have a persepctive and paradigm that makes you truly unique.  You’ll have a network that most of your peers lack.  You’ll be able to do that thing which is the holy grail of the creative process, and create a new instersection of separate matrices of thought.

Your theories about what industry or job fits you are like all theories.  They need to be tested.  Go try some stuff.  Anything you don’t dislike is fair game.  You might discover new roles you never thought of.  You might invent and new industry or join it as it emerges.  You might gain a distinct advantage and a unique outlook, network, and experience set by working somewhere unlikely first.

Don’t try to pick your industry yet.  In fact, don’t ever pick one.  Just do interesting stuff.”

I stand by this advice.  If you want to get started doing interesting stuff, apply to Praxis!

Some Great Bucket List Items

Last week I asked for people to send me some bucket list items – things they want to do before they die.

I got some great stuff in response.  Matthew Hartill won the books via the random selection process (my ten-year-old kid picking a number).

Thanks to everyone who played!  Here’s a compilation of submissions.  I’ve anonymizes, slightly edited, and combined similar items.  Maybe you can take inspiration from a few of these…

  • Become fluent in one romance language, and one language with a (very) different alphabet
  • Live in 4 foreign countries for a period of 6 months or more
  • Create, launch, and flip a business from start to finish
  • Create, launch, and maintain a business from start to finish
  • Hike sections of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail
  • Vastly improve my skills and be a ____ bum for my three favorite extreme sports (rock climbing, surfing, and skiing)
  • Get good enough at code and computer programming to keep up with my imagination
  • Make a crucial impact in one or more charitable organizations that I admire
  • Reach a place of spiritual comfort; whether that be through meditation, religious practice, or anything else
  • Travel
  • Fall in love
  • Create a successful business that changes the world.
  • Have a child, and/or adopt a child
  • Meet Bob Dylan
  • Meet Mike Rowe
  • Live in the house of my dreams
  • Be a pilot
  • Participate in Praxis
  • Graduate high school a year early
  • Stay frugal, stay giving, despite income growth
  • Reach 50,000 hits on an article
  • Drop acid with Tim Ferriss
  • Legitimately learn Spanish and maintain fluency
  • Finally write my stand-up comedy sketch and prove to myself that girls can be funny
  • Do a scorpion shot a la James Bond in Skyfall
  • Deadlift twice my body weight
  • Climb Mount Kilimanjaro (and post-Kilimanjaro, complete a Bang Bang Bang in the style of Louis C.K. — three consecutive full meals, consumed all in the same timeframe)
  • Visit Meteora Monasteries
  • Start a ministry in a city that has never heard the Gospel before
  • Visit a country currently listed as “3rd world”, then visit it when it becomes 1st world
  • Write a novel
  • Give a sermon
  • Be a part of a metal band’s album or tour
  • Buy something for my child, in cryptocurrency, from a major department store
  • Win a baking competition
  • Travel to space in a commercial flight
  • Slam dunk a basketball while in my 30s
  • Watch the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team win the Rose Bowl

 

 

 

 

Hanging Out With People Your Age is Overrated

Slow down.  I didn’t say, “worthless”, or, “not really valuable”.  I said overrated.

There are obvious benefits to building a social circle of people in the same age range.  Shared aesthetics and cultural touchstones, similar stages in life that provide better understanding (try explaining to a single 23-year-old that you really do prefer to stay home and watch ‘Air Bud 15’ with your kids on Friday night), and similar energy levels.

Still, a network of age-similar people is overrated.

It’s overrated because almost everyone talks about social life as if it is not only preferable among sage-aged peers, but impossible with anyone else.  People assume that if you move to a city or company or join a church or club without a large population of people your age you will be incapable of building a social life.  This lack of open-mindedness and creativity is disturbing, and you shortchange yourself if you adopt it.

It’s not easy to see beyond your age group because most of us spent the first 20 or more years of life bound exclusively to those within 12 months of our own age, outside a few parents, teachers, and others who were always in “authority” positions and never seen as equals in our network.  I’m amazed how much schooled kids think it’s weird to hang out with someone even just a few years their younger or elder.  I’m amazed at how little adults interact with children or the elderly through the course of everyday life, not just on holidays and special occasions.

It’s not morally bad to associate exclusively with people your age, and you have no duty to do otherwise.  But it’s impractical and limits the value and enjoyment of your network.

My colleague Zak Slayback has written about the limitations in having a predominantly “horizontal network”, the kind you build in school, vs. a deep and multidimensional “vertical network”.  It’s well worth a read and Zak has some nice visualizations.

The ability to build an age diverse social circle is not only for professional network richness, it’s also great for personal happiness.  The kind of person who can comfortably hang out at a cocktail party of people half or twice their age is someone who will be more interesting and interested in life in general.  If your social scene is built around shared excitement, rather than shared station in life – often an artifact of a stodgy, top-down centrally planned education-career conveyor belt – you’ll be ridiculously adaptable and quick to connect wherever you go.

Don’t let yourself succumb to hopelessness or frustration if you move somewhere or work somewhere without a lot of people your age.  See it as an opportunity to connect with fascinating people from all stages and stations in life.  You’ll always be able to (at least superficially) connect with people your age.  It’s an easy fallback and can sometimes make you lazy about building deeper connections.  The chance to create a vibrant social life that’s far more diverse is one you should seize as a challenge and a game with big rewards if you don’t give up.

Invite someone over who’s well outside your age range but who you find fascinating.  Ask yourself if similar people would invite you over just for fun.  If not, get working on it.

Send Me Your Bucket List and Win Some Books

Win these books!
Look at these lonely little critters, just waiting for a good home and a hot meal…

I’ve got some extra books lying around being lazy and generally unproductive and I want to give them to someone.  To make it fun, I want to compile a bunch of really cool items for a mega bucket list.  What things do you want to do before you die?  What are the big goals, far off or right around the corner, you need to achieve before all is said and done?

This contest is for the young’uns, so only those 25 and under are eligible.  If you’re older than 25, find someone who’s not and tell them to do it.

Here’s how to play

Email me the top ten things you want to do before you die.  Rank them in order 1-10, with 1 being the most important to you.  Submit them by January 20.

isaac [at] discoverpraxis [com]

Then what?

Then two things will happen.  First, I’ll compile the lists into one mega-list and publish it to this blog.

Second, I’ll randomly select one person to get a bundle o’ books, pictured above.  It includes Better Off Free, The Future of School, Freedom Without Permission, and, Why Haven’t You Read This Book?

If nothing else, they make great paperweights or kindling.

Join in!

So put together your bucket list and share it with me!  I want to see what kind of cool ideas and ambitions you have.  No holds barred.  What will you wish you did when you’re too old to do it anymore?

Send ’em along.

2015: A Personal Year in Review

Four great reads!

 

Alright, my good friend and Praxis colleague TK Coleman convinced me to share this personal recap in a blog post after I shared it with him in an email.  It feels a little weird or narcissistic, but I guess a little reflection is permitted this time of year.  Besides, I had nothing to write today and I’m not going to miss my daily post!

Praxis is the main driver of my activities and goals, and our continued growth, amazing network of business partners, totally awesome alumni and participants, and expanded offerings (about to be announced!) make me proud of what we’ve done in 2015 and excited about 2016.  Beyond the business, I also have a few personal goals, all still very much related to my mission of freedom and progress.

What was my 2015 like?  Mostly laying groundwork and exploring new ways to create.  Here’s some of the stuff I accomplished that I’m most proud of:

  • Blogged every day.
  • Launched a podcast and released 64 episodes with 40 different guests.
  • Started writing on Medium and gained over 250,000 article views and more than 5,900 followers.
  • Did more than 30 (can’t remember exact number) of interviews on podcasts, news outlets, etc.
  • Gave more than 20 presentations in 15 cities.
  • Published two more books, bringing the total to four.
  • Recorded a song for the first time ever!
  • Read about 30 books.
  • Travelled with the family to Florida and Pittsburgh, and spent a week in Jamaica with my wife.
  • Published in more than 20 different outlets.
  • Launched a monthly newsletter.
  • Gained more than 2,000 new social media followers.
  • Ran a successful KickStarter campaign raising $5,379 for a $4,850 goal.
  • Booked a six-week trip to Ecuador for the family.
  • Ruthlessly removed even more stuff from my life leaving me less stressed and less crunched for time than I’ve ever been.
  • Had a total reach of 491,652 though the podcast, blog, and articles I have data for. (This one gets me.  My goal for the year was 500,000.)*

I certainly had some shortcomings in 2015.  I missed my goal to do one form of exercise a day probably 5% of the time (which is embarrassing when you realize I consider even a few pushups sufficient.)  Though I hit my daily blogging goal, too many days I churned out something less than what I think I could have in terms of quality.  I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to, and almost no fiction, which I planned to read a lot of.

Most of all, I feel like my efforts at being a good, peaceful, calm unschooling dad fell short in everything but theory.  I now know clearly what kind of parent I want to be and why (both huge improvements over the last few years trying to figure it out), but I still struggle every single day to translate that head knowledge into daily habits and behaviors.  Hopefully my kids are as resilient as I suspect they are.

Again in 2016 Praxis is the focus.  Outside of my family, it’s what I live and breathe and I’ll be focusing even more tightly on our goals for the business and everything we stand for.  I do have a few personal goals I’m thinking about for the year ahead as well.  Possibly another book, growing the podcast, perhaps changing up my writing routine to do longer pieces weekly instead of shorter posts daily (still trying to decide on this one), etc.

Regardless, thanks to every single one of you who has read, clicked, liked, shared, listened, commented, loved, critiqued, and even openly hated what I’ve been creating.  I’ve always said I do this for me, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it feels great to connect with people over the ideas I love!

(In case you’re wondering, by far the most popular piece in 2015 was this article on why playing LEGO is better than learning algebra.  The most popular podcast episode was this interview with my son on being unschooled.)

*UPDATE: 12/31/15 – For unknown reasons, a few old posts of mine got picked up again and generated a ton of views right after I wrote this.  Just after noon on December 31, I broke the 500,000 mark.  Here’s to a goal being met!