Happy New Year!
This is The Deliberate and I'm Sam. For many of you, this is the first issue you've ever received. If so, welcome! If not, you may still need a bit of a refresher as to who I am and what this is because I haven't exactly been a paragon of consistency over the past year. So, here's your reminder: this newsletter is vaguely oriented around the intersection of organization design, personal development, and the deliberate use of attention. Basically, it's my public journal of what I'm finding interesting and my own path of trying to make sense of everything.
As always, please don't hesitate to unsubscribe if this isn't your cup of tea any longer. I don't look at the data of who unsubscribes, so you're guaranteed to not hurt my feelings.
Enough preamble -- onward!
Despite my paltry writing output in 2022, I did manage to publish two articles in December that I'd like to highlight here.
The first was a year-in-review article specifically focused on the software I use to run my work and life. I'm in the fortunate position of not having the majority of my software stack mandated by others, so I've put a lot of thought and experimentation into finding the tools that support my idiosyncratic preferences. I guarantee you'll find a tool or two in this list that you've never heard of before and might enjoy. At the very least, I hope it encourages you to look at your current tool landscape and ask yourself if it's giving you what you need.
The second article is also a year-in-review article, but more holistic than the previous one. I do my best to analyze my work, my life, my creative output, my entertainment input, and generally how I spent my time over the last 365 days. What went well this year? What will make 2022 stand out when I look back at it? What was disappointing? I think it's always a valuable exercise of self-reflection to try to take the massive pile of information that is a year of life and refine it into a somewhat readable and cohesive narrative.
Other than my own pieces of writing over the last little while, here's a handful of other pieces that have landed in my Favorites folder in Matter:
Keeping with the theme of year-in-review articles, here's a bunch I enjoyed from various folks I follow: Tim Casasola, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and Fernando Gros.
"Best of 2022" articles are a subset of year-in-review articles that I also enjoy: Ryan Holiday's best books of 2022, Maria Popova's favorite books of 2022, and Jason Snell's favorites of 2022.
Lastly, I thought this article about the challenges of behavior change from Steve Schlafman was particularly good. I read it almost against my will because I'm so steeped in the topic but I could tell it was something Steve put a lot of time and attention into. I'm inclined to give people the benefit of at least a cursory read through when it's obvious they put some real sweat equity into it. I'm glad I did.
This is the point where I make some promises about writing and publishing this newsletter more consistently in 2023, right?
Talk is cheap and actions speak so let’s just leave it at that.
Thanks for hanging around and as always I love when people hit the reply button and spin up a conversation, use the Substack commenting feature, or venture over to Twitter to say hello (my DMs are always open).
Here's to a new year of living Deliberately!