Happy New Year—a week out is probably the cutoff date for that particular greeting so better make the most of it.
I'm finishing up this newsletter while sipping a homemade shake made from Oatly ice cream, ice, Reece's Pieces cereal and light coconut milk. I know it sounds weird but it tasted great.
Maybe a shake will be just the thing to go with the self-paced annual review process I've shared in this week's newsletter. Let me know what you make yours with!
—Jason
🤔 Announcements
- 📅 Being Human in the Age of Generative AI - Jan 18 - In this live discussion, we're going to talk about how ChatGPT and other AI tools make certain human qualities and attributes more scarce and thus valuable. Come join the convo!
🧠 Doing an Annual Review
Last week I held a live workshop on New Year's Day for 5 brave souls who took me up on my offer to do a guided reflection exercise. I've been running a version of this Annual Review since at least 2015 and it's been a wonderful way to look back at the past year and set intentions for the next one.
Doing it live was so much fun that I want to host more events like this in the future. In the meantime, I had the crazy idea to create a self-paced version of program (which has 3 sections, with 3 prompts in each section).
So I made a 91 minute video and put it on YouTube. I explain each prompt and give you 8 minutes to actually work through it.
In the world of 22 second Reels and TikToks, that is an ungodly long video and yeah, the watch rate is about what you think. But if even one of you decides to block out some time to actually work through the exercise, I'll be pretty pleased.
Here's a link to the template 👇
Jason Shen
👉 Links & Recs
⚡️ Ben Kuhn on learning how to have conviction:
"Having mentors can help you quickly go from okay to great. But to get from great to exceptional, you’ll need to make good decisions when the stakes are higher and the consequences are longer-term. For that, you need a kind of conviction that you can’t learn from mentors—only from your own mistakes."
🏋 Sweating with Tunde: If you have a Peloton or access to one, I've been really enjoying the 30 mins bootcamp rides—I love splitting up the biking with core or some strength. Feels like a full body workout and you never get bored. A reminder that if you're tired of your physical movement routine, try mixing it up.
🤖 Novelty > AI: An insightful comment from an HN thread about OpenAI's new round of funding:
"Novelty and humanity drive fashion, music, film, literature… basically all art. It needs to innovate, needs to be extremely personal. [ChatGPT/DALLE] not going to disrupt any of them, not even close. But it will be used in the loop."
🧠 ADHD 2.0: Unpacked some of my favorite findings from two leading psychiatrists and ADHD specialists (YouTube)
🫶 Lockdown Fellowship: A review of two books that reflect on the alternate world of connection, possibility, and freedom" that emerged in New York during the first COVID wave (NPR)
- 👁️ A list of big accomplishments achieved by small teams (e.g. Instagram, Minecraft, etc)
Recent Issues
Jason Shen
Jason Shen
Jason Shen
