New year, new goals
Originally published on Email Octopus.
learn and grow with me ✨
Hi friends,
Welcome to the new year! Hope you had a good start. If January is your "free trial" month, you can definitely start 2022 in February because that's when it's the Lunar New Year :)
New year comes with new goals, or lifelong goals. I'm not here to tell you that you need goals for the new year. In fact, you can take your time to set them and work on them whenever it feels right. I didn't think I'd have a focus already, but here I am with a new set of goals for this year.
Also, welcome and thank you to the new (and current) people who subscribed to my humble newsletter! Feel free to share feedback with me anytime (what I can do better, what you want to see more of etc) by replying to this email or on Twitter.
✨ As a token of appreciation for being early subscribers, I'm gifting you one of my Notion templates to review and plan your year for free. Read on below ✨
Word of the year: Focus
...December filming challenge didn't go too well. I got sick for a full week, so I decided to put it off entirely. I focused on reflecting on the past year, planning for the new year, and spending time with my family instead. (Mostly just taking a break, to be honest). If you're interested to learn more, this is my full Q4 reflection post.
I mentioned it's likely that I'll be sticking to a generalist route by continuing to learn and explore in my last post. However, after much introspection, I've found something that I can work with for the next year. Maybe this is what people mean by letting the niche "find" you instead. Hence, my word of the year is focus.
My main goal for the year is to work on an internet side hustle of $100MRR. It's not a lot, relatively speaking, but there's still the uncertainty that my plan might not work out. I also just accepted a full-time PM (product manager) role in an Edtech startup starting mid next month, so things will get busy.
How I plan to achieve my main goal:
Create systems with Notion and teach others
I'll be creating products around reflecting and (mindful) productivity, at least once a month.
Creating on Notion is already a concentrated space, but I still want to see what I can do. And hopefully to teach and guide others too.
I've also applied to become a Notion Ambassador, in hopes to be become more "credible" when people look to me for Notion products.
I'm learning as much as I can with Notion Mastery. (You can use my link to purchase the course if you're interested. I earn a small commission at no cost to you :))
Grow my newsletters to 1k subscribers by end of the year
I have two: This personal one, and a more niche one.
I want to continue to be consistent with my writing (publish at least once a month), and collaborate with other similar newsletters.
Create a course or two around mindful productivity or self-care
I've never created a course before, but it's exciting to start.
My plan is to create an email course over the course of... ~7 days. Not set in stone yet, so I'll play by ear.
By doing three of these, I'll be writing a lot more and finding ways to optimise and monetise too.
The main challenge is managing my time and energy. Since I'm starting as the first PM of this startup soon, I'm expecting more responsibilities.
The second is not giving up my authenticity while providing "value" and building an "audience". The idea of providing "value" is a means to grow your audience, but a lot of people become less genuine and less interesting by giving out formulaic advice. I'm worried about that. However, I think as long as I'm learning from my creations, the value I share should still remain authentically myself as they're personal learnings from me to my audience. If that makes sense.
I also realised when I'm not creating, I compare myself more frequently with others who are achieving more. In the past, I'd feel bad about myself. Now I'm learning to use this feeling of envy to propel myself forward to create. If I have time to compare myself with others, I have time to work on myself. Or you know, just block myself off from social media for the time being.
As promised, I'm giving away this Notion template to help you review and plan your year for free (use this promo code during checkout: cny2022). I'm feeling festive because it's the Lunar New Year!
It comes in two versions. If you bought it (2021 edition) before, I added a new template (the screenshot above is the 2022 edition, utilising more databases) that I'm currently using for this year to plan and review my day, week, and month.
Consider this a soft launch. I'll do an official launch separately with a blog post detailing how to use it.
If you enjoy it, consider writing a review or sharing it with others! Feel free to share feedback (did you like the template? how can it be better?) :)
Quotes to remember ✨
1) "Stop trying to be liked by everybody. You don’t even like everybody."
Mantra, especially as an artist: pic.twitter.com/DhHDWKUuch
— Octavia Butler knew... (@NotNikyatu) January 23, 2022
2) On developing your own theories on how life works:
life gets much more interesting once you develop your own theories on how it works and why. the status quo is mostly wrong and assumes the thing you spend most of your life doing (work) is not something you care about and just something you do to retire as soon as possible
— Molly Mielke (@mollyfmielke) December 19, 2021
3) The reason we don't assert boundaries to people who matter most. "I found that at the moment of saying “no,” I dissociated a little and withdrew my love for a moment. Which left me with the unspoken impression that in order to protect my needs, I had to withdraw love from the people who matter most to me. It’s no wonder I’ve felt reluctant to enforce my boundaries."
Thought-provoking reflection on boundary-setting in @fortelabs annual review. pic.twitter.com/jJbs49nXZ7
— Jonny Miller (@jonnym1ller) December 29, 2021
Articles and links I'm thinking about ✨
How I attained persistent self-love
Long read. A journey to self-love. But it's not always about self-love, because how can we when we can't accept ourselves first? It's the Deep Okayness that we may want to strive for. Then with time, we can heal and come to love ourselves.
Listen to your emotions
When you have two internal conflicts competing for your attention, it's hard to decide which places more priority. But if you reflect and listen closely, you may see that your different desires come from the same roots.
An artist in crypto
I share the same sentiments about the current state of NFT art. NFT art is a business. Mass creation over creativity. If you really like the art, you'll want to keep it for yourself than trade it off.
Til next time. To those celebrating the upcoming new year, happy Lunar New Year! 🍊
PS: I added two new sections: quotes and articles I'm thinking about. Let me know what you think of it. I'm trying out new formats to see what clicks.
PPS: If you haven't already, you can read more annual reviews for 2021 at the link below. Go on, click it!
Warmest regards,
Yihui Chan
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