Weekly Mix #254 - Why you need to restructure your life to accomplish your goals

Life Structure, Taking the Leap, Learning Plateaus, Beautiful Design & The Third Reich

​

Happy Monday!

And welcome to 2023.

I hope you managed to relax over the holidays.

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I spent part of the holidays working through my annual review template.

Most of it was similar to previous years; my priorities have changed some, but many of the resulting goals are the same.

But how I'm going about pursuing those goals has changed.

My single biggest learning last year was how much the structure of my life affects the outcome.

This held true not only in my personal life, but in my work life as well.

So the question I'm asking myself this year is: how do I need to restructure my life to accomplish my goals?

Primarily this is focused on two things: my environment and my time.

My environment: How can I make the things I want to accomplish easier? Can I move physically closer to them? Can I change who I spend time with?

My time: What do I need to change in my schedule to accomplish my goals? Do I need to move meetings? Change what times I sleep and wake? Change who I spend time with? Change what I spend time on? What tradeoffs am I making with my time?

Discipline can get you only so far; the structure of your life provides the rest.

Have a great week!

Graham

​

Links

📚 Book: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William L. Shirer - Written by an American journalist who spent time in Berlin during the rise of Nazism, this book focuses on the political and social machinations of the Nazi's rise to power (and eventual demise).

It was recommended by a friend for the parallels in tactics that can be drawn to politics and causes today.

📖 The Intermediate Plateau: What Causes It? How Can We Move Beyond It? - Scott H. Young - This post from the author of Ultralearning explores the difficulty of getting through the "intermediate plateau"—the point in time during learning where your progress slows. All of us are likely experiencing it with something in our lives.

​The intermediate plateau​

📖 The Day You Decided to Take the Leap - More To That - For those of you considering a change in the upcoming year, perhaps this will persuade you to do so. Change is hard, but reading about the accounts of others can often help.

"While you can easily predict the concerns of making any leap, there is no way to predict the numerous rewards that await you on the other side."

🔧 Fabric Cageless Bottles - I'm in the process of building a new bike. Many would say that it's a unnecessary pain to do so, but this is the kind of thing that I love: the ability to choose a very particular product—even if for a mundane purpose—because it's slightly more elegant than the norm.

​Fabric Cageless Bottle system​

10 Tweets

​The story of bootstrapping Zoho to $1B ARR​

​Some of the best tweaks Stripe shipped last year​

​How to create a company with no-code and AI in 5 minutes​

​Some of the best advice received before having a kid​

​