I look forward to writing this post every year, just as I have the past 15 times. So much so, in-fact, that I keep a “favorites” note, which I clear on January 1st, so I don’t fall victim to recency bias.
There year, though, I’m doing two things differently.
Let’s dive in!
Earlier this month I finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and was absolutely enraptured by it. I loved both Recursion and Upgrade, and decided it was time to read the book that put him on the map.
On Bluesky, I shared that immediately following Dark Matter, I decided to read Seth Godin’s This is Strategy, which I can most generously describe as the writing equivalent of snake oil.
It was a stark reminder of the reason I put a moratorium on business books in 2023. Seth Godin is a critically acclaimed author, who has written some number of helpful books. But This is Strategy is recycled 350-word blog posts he tries to convince us is a cohesive story.
But even beyond that, it keys in on something I said almost as a throwaway line 18 months ago:
…any homogenous reading defeats the purpose of reading: to introduce new ideas.
Before Dark Matter, I read The Coming Wave, which was a wellspring of ideas and thoughts (even if the authors are a bit alarmist).
This is Strategy, like many business books, doesn’t advance new ideas. It barely promotes critical thinking at all.
However, fiction, almost by definition, forces us to think of a world unlike ours…at least in some aspect.
Post-apocalyptic. Technology that can never exist. Different plans. Magic. Monsters. An impossible scenario that plays out perfectly.
It’s interesting, energizing, and most importantly, it’s not work. When we read books related to work, it feels like work.
Despite what the hustle culture tells us, our brains need breaks. Fiction is a way to give our brains a break from work, while also delivering a different experience. A different perspective.
Something new to add to our arsenal.
I will be happy to continue reading very, very few — like 3 or fewer — business books in 2025.
Bring on the fiction.
I’m nearly halfway through Podcast Advent and on Day 11’s article, How I Produce a Podcast Completely From my iPhone, I included this at the bottom:
Disclosure: This article was written after I recorded the embedded episode and fed it through ChatGPT. Then I edited it for voice and clarity.
While I was reading The Coming Wave and thinking about how I use AI, I came to this realization: if you use AI to write, record, or produce something, it should be disclosed in the same way affiliate links or paid promotion has to be disclosed.
I’m certainly not the first person to think this. There are books where ChatGPT has an author credit.
It actually reminded me that Andrew Davis said something similar during is talk at CEX earlier this year. It was all about creating a Digital Doppelgänger (he named is Drewdini), and one of the points of the talk was to let people know if and when they’re interacting with an AI version of you.
That if you’re using AI so prominently, you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. I love that idea.
I’ve gone ahead and added disclosures to both this site, and Podcast Workflows.
I love shuffling poker chips at my desk.
It helps me think. It helps me focus. It calms me.
I probably shuffle poker chips 100 times each day.
Did you know it takes 6 perfect shuffles to get your chips back in the original order?
The best way to check is to take 2 piles of different color chips and shuffle them.
Do it perfectly 6 times, and they are neatly organized by color once again.
Shuffling 100x a day means that 16 times per day, I get my chips back in the right order.
But that’s not the case.
It happens maybe 4 times a day unless I’m really focusing.
Sometimes a chip sticks and doesn’t shuffle. Sometimes, I don’t make even stacks of chips.
Sometimes I completely mess up and the chips fall.
Perfection is uncommon. It doesn’t happen every time.
It doesn’t even happen most of the time.
I get perfect shuffles not because I’m the best chip-shuffler.
It’s because I take a lot of shots.
If I were only striving for perfect, I would have given up the first time I tried to shuffle chips.
When you’re creating your podcast, strive for doing. Not for perfect.
Perfection is uncommon. But the more you do something, the more likely it is to happen.
I really wasn’t going to write another, “I’m leaving Twitter/X,” post. I was going to quiet quit. I think announcements that you’re leaving a thing are mostly self aggrandizing, as if life won’t possibly go on once you’re gone.
It feels weird to say that about a platform that I’ve been on for 17 years, 8 months and 5 days. That’s over 45% of my life, after all.
But I’ve greatly disliked Twitter for a long time — even before Elon bought it and renamed it X. I think most social networks straddle this weird middle ground between parasocial and reciprocal relationships, and that’s more unhealthy than healthy.
But that’s neither here nor there. The main reason I’m leaving Twitter is that the posts I made get very little visibility, and I’m aggravated by it most of the time.
It’s an incredible time suck, and I see things I don’t care to see, despite spending 17 years, 8 months and 5 days carefully curating my muted words, follow lists, and block words.
So I’m jumping ship for Bluesky, which currently has the winning combination of enough people I care to interact with + no algorithm. I only see the people and topics I follow, and that’s swell.
Still, I would rather not deactivate my account for 2 reasons:
So how do I make sure those two things stay intact while also ensuring I can never log in again? Here’s what I’m doing.
For years, I thought about doing a “Podcast Advent,” similar to what 24ways.org did for web development until it sadly stopped in 2019.
Last year, I finally took action on November 27th, registering the domain, and coming up with a plan for me to create 24 pieces of content in 24 days.
It worked out super well! SO I decided to do it again this year, with some help.
Instead of writing all of the articles myself, I decided to get some help from my podcasting friends, including:
…and a few more folks!
For Day 4, I published Why You Should Publish More Solo Episodes in 2025.
If you’d like to see all of the articles, and subscribe to my mailing list to get every episode delivered, click the button below!
Around this time last year, I asked, When Do You Burn All of Your Processes Down and Start Over?
On the precipice of actual Black Friday (I say actual because it feels like every year, the sales start earlier and earlier), it feels like a good time to revisit this question.
First, let’s start with my conclusion from last year:
So when do you burn it all down and start over? I think it’s when the frustrations start getting in the way of you working efficiently.
If what you have is working, and you can continue to afford the tools you use, leave them be.
Now, let’s look at the moves I said I was making, and if I stuck to them:
And at the beginning of last year, I also moved from Zapier to Make (I’m now using both).
This is not a great scorecard. Notion is the only one that really stuck.
I found Riverside to be superior to Squadcast, and I am sticking with. I tried Things 3 for a while, but the lack of automation support got frustrating, and I very recently moved back to Todoist.
While I did manage to switch from Calendly, it’s because I found a free alternative that offered everything I got in Calendly and more.
And I’m back using Zapier mostly because I’m prepping for a new course I’m working on. Make.com is still my primary driver for automations.
So what happened, exactly? Chiefly, I didn’t follow my own advice.
In the haste of consolidating and trying to save some money, I rushed to move to several new tools instead of properly evaluating them.
I have a bad habit of just trying things anyway. Plus, I tend to over-engineer. This leads me to collect tools, in an attempt to have options.
But a year later, I’m thinking differently.
Over on Joe’s Audio Notes (my free, private podcast which you can sign up for here), I’ve been thinking a lot about where and how I’m spending my time.
The number of social networks I’m on; the number of places I’m publishing my content too.
The constant barrage of membership and course tools I’m both trying, and promoting (all of which are good, by the way).
It’s easy to get shiny object syndrome when the cost of trying new tools and switching is so low…or seems to be. But the time investment in switching + learning the new tool adds up.
And as we approach Black Friday, you’ll get countless emails about lifetime deals, intro plans, and bonuses.
It reminds me of the guy who sold socks at the flea market.
Growing up, there was a huge flea market about an hour from our house. Every few months, we’d leave early on a Saturday morning and get to it when it opened. We’d spend half of the day there.
It was something we’d do year after year, and I always looked forward to it.
But there was one vendor there that we called sock guy. He had a huge booth set up in the middle aisle, close to the exit. And every time we saw him, he’d be yelling the same thing.
”All the socks are buy one, get two free. I have to get rid of my inventory. This is my last week!”
It was always his last week.
The socks were fine, but not great. So he’d rely on 2 things: a good deal, and false scarcity.
He was trying to get us to collect socks — that is, even if we didn’t need them, he was banking on the fact that 3 for the price of 1 was too good to pass up.
Black Friday deals are the same. App Sumo started theirs last week, putting dozens of already low-priced services on sale, or adding new services for the sale.
They want us to collect apps, services, or stuff that we might need.
But in canvasing all the stuff I’ve purchased from Amazon, App Sumo, or individuals, it’s clear I’ve wasted more money than I’ve saved.
So what do you do? Here’s something I’ve tried that’s worked out.
Make a list of the things I need to buy ahead of Cyber Week. I keep a note called “Stuff I Want.”
When it comes to software, I do the following:
Don’t get me wrong: Cyber Week is a great time to save money and potentially streamline some processes.
And it’s a great way for businesses to make their products and services more accessible. I plan to offer a Black Friday sale (though I’ll only be sending one email on Friday morning).
However, you could also end up wasting time and money if you don’t have a plan. This is my plan — I hope it helps you too!
And now tell me: what are you hoping to get this Cyber Week?
I’ve made it a long-standing tradition on this blog to do a gift guide for those who need to shop for someone like me (developer, solopreneur, podcaster, one who works from home).
This year’s gift guide is packed with ideas for solopreneurs and folks who work from home, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
There’s even an accompanying podcast episode with my friend, Cat.
I’m not sure I’ve written about it explicitly here, but a few months ago I launched a free private podcast called Joe’s Audio Notes.
The episodes are very short (7 minutes or less), where I share my thoughts on being a solopreneur, a podcaster, a parent, and other thoughts related to being a productive member of society.
You can sign up for free here.
In the most recent episode, I share some plans on my content strategy with the impending rebrand. Questions like, “What am I going to do with my various properties?” and “How does my podcast fit into all of this?” have been on my mind.
I’m really enjoying the format, but the growth has been very slow. Though to be fair, I only really post about it when there’s a new episode, and only on social media.
The experiment was to see if I could grow my mailing list using it, and so far it’s not panning out.
But it’s still a great format, and I continuously get compliments from the small but mighty audience it goes out to.
I suspect boosting the signal a bit will yield better results — but if not, I could always release them as bonus episodes on Streamlined Solopreneur.
I think I’m going to give it 6 more weeks — if I don’t see any growth by the new year, I’ll switch things up.
I lived exactly 1/3 of my life in Scranton, PA. I moved there (more or less) in 2003 as a freshman at The University of Scranton. I stay there through undergrad and grad school, then taught there and worked in the IT department.
I moved away from Scranton in 2016. That’s 13 of my 39 years in the Electric City.
There were a lot of things to love about it. I had a strong community there. I did work that I felt made an impact. The cost of living was low. My all-time favorite cigar shop, bar, and rooftop are all there.
But something I don’t miss is the potholes that plague the city.
The problem is so bad that earlier this year, they launched a website for people to report potholes.
Since Scranton is located in the Northeast USA, at the base of mountains, it’s more susceptible to the freeze/thaw cycle. Here’s how The Keystone explains it:
Daily temperatures can fluctuate between freezing and mild during the winter months. After precipitation, either rain or snow, the water seeps into the soil below the roadway. When it gets colder, the precipitation freezes and the ground expands, pushing the road up. Then, as the weather warms, the precipitation melts, and a gap is left between the road and the ground below it. When a vehicle drives over it, the road cracks, falls into the gap, and creates a pothole.
The only thing you can do with a pothole is report it and wait for it to get fixed (or if you’re PENDOT, you can fix it).
I feel like over the last few months, I’ve been going through a freeze/thaw cycle with Streamlined Solopreneur.
Some episodes have done well — but some are very cold.
My download numbers are down. Engagement hasn’t been as good as I hoped it would be.
That’s not to say that things are bad — but I’d like them to be better.
And I understand that competition is stiff in 2024. And that I completely rebranded my show a mere 7 months ago.
Over those 7 months, some potholes have formed. And it’s time for me to fix them.
I was on a call with my friend Carly and we were discussing what we feel is working and not working in podcasting.
Recently, I was on a call with my friend Carly, discussing what we think is working—and not working—in podcasting.
I told her I’m committing to a couple of experiments:
I believe that changing the format—especially when people are eager to learn and there’s an overabundance of interview shows—is crucial for my show’s continued growth.
But that also means upheaval for my processes—and that’s OK.
Sometimes you need to shake things up to improve your show or business, as long as you have a good approach.
My plan is:
My suspicion is that the new formats will be easier, but there are some unknown variables I’ll need to consider.
We’re coming up on the end of the year—a time of reflection and renewal for many. This is how I’m reflecting.
What are you thinking about changing as we move into the new year?
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