And happy New Year. I hope you got a chance to celebrate in some form, though I know for many it was much quieter than usual.

I had a quiet holiday—I tested positive for COVID on Christmas morning, and spent the rest of the holidays in isolation. If you're curious, I detailed my symptoms and WHOOP data here.​

Thankfully my family were very accommodating, and it went by quickly. I got a lot more reading done that I would have otherwise, and had plenty of time to think and prepare for the year.

One of my aims in 2022 is to write more—something I've tried to do for years and generally failed at—but this newsletter will continue to be a big part of that, so I'm excited to see what it brings.

This week's newsletter again has an annual review/reflection kind of theme—if you haven't written anything down about your year, I'd encourage you to do so—but next week we'll be back to regular programming.

Have a great first week of 2022!

Graham

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Links

📚 Book Notes: Lucifer's Banker: The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy - Brad Birkenfeld - This was a spur-of-the-moment read, but turned out to be highly entertaining. Brad Birkenfeld exposed thousands of illegal Swiss bank accounts (and illegal activity by Swiss banks), went to prison for it, and then got the highest whistleblower reward ever from the IRS: $105M! He's larger-than-life and there are lots of lessons. A great way to start my 2022 reading.

📖 21 Lessons Learned in 2021 - Sahil Bloom - Sahil had a big year personally, and there's a lot in here to motivate you going into 2022.

📖 52 Snippets from 2021 - Snippet - This list of 52 interesting things is full of gems:

• "Cornelius Vanderbilt, at one point, commanded one in every nine dollars in the United States."
• "80% of users in India only have a mobile phone to access the internet."

📖 Tiago's 2021 Year in Review - Tiago Forte - Tiago Forte is known for his Building a Second Brain framework, which is something I've used for years. His 2021 review contains a bunch of great lessons, and is a good example if you're looking to do your own.

📖 My Favorite Things from 2021 - Trevor McKendrick - Books, podcasts, articles, this list has all kinds of things you might have missed in 2021.

​10 Tweets

• ​Sahil Bloom's goal-setting guide​
• ​​Mocktail orders for those trying dry January​
• ​A list of superpowers from Shane Parrish​
• ​52 pieces of writing you might have missed in 2021​
• ​How to build product in 2022​
• ​Tim Urban's 21 thoughts to take into 2022​

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It means so much that you let me be part of your inbox, and I love building a community of like-minded people with you.

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