The Year of Clarity
Morning Coffee 90: January 1st, 2024. My wife wants this to be my only job, so pay what you want, purchase my books on Amazon, or join my Music Program.
Good morning. I’m writing you while walking towards the coffee shop, to donate some books, and to grab a vanilla cappuccino for the walk back. Listening to Medium Build, Never Learned to Dance on repeat. Over and over. My days have been focused on getting my system ready for the new year (as you’ll read below). But I’ve also been focused on retro gaming. A Link to the Past Redux and Ocarina of Time: Ship of Harkinian. I’ve been fascinated by how easy and fun retro gaming is now. It’s lightweight enough, with just enough tinkering, to satisfy the gamer and the builder in me. Do yourself a favor and get a Miyoo Mini, and follow the instructions I wrote here. Just the creation of MinUI is something I’m fascinated with. As always, I hope this letter finds you well.
Table of Contents
- The Year of Clarity
- Startup Routine
- Rapid Logging
- Shutdown Routine
- Alchemy Collection
- Reading Kindle
The Year of Clarity
With each start of a new year, I like to set a theme for myself going forward. This gives me a trajectory to point towards. This year will be The Year of Clarity. This theme is set to crystallize each area of my life, and to take all the tools and skills at my disposal and get everything down to the essentials.
Startup Routine
A simple startup routine that consists of writing Morning Pages, reviewing Things to see what’s on the agenda for that day, and then going for a morning walk/run.
Rapid Logging
Rapid Logging is what I’ll be spending the rest of the day doing, until it’s time to shutdown. In a Field Notes, on my Kindle Scribe, or in a bigger notebook. The tool doesn’t matter. As long as I’m rapid logging as much as possible.
Shutdown Routine
A simple shutdown routine to close any open loops from that day. I’ll be using two things:
My Homework For Life system has three things: date, two sentences about the day, and a 1-5 score on my mood for the day.
The Theme System will be where I dive deeper into all areas of my life. What went well, what didn’t, things I’m thankful for, habit tracking (good and bad), etc.
Alchemy Collection
After editing a dozen different drafts that Amazon printed out and sent to me, the two books that I spent December working on are now published.
My plan now is to release all the other Alchemy books throughout this new year (there will be over a dozen of them). And after I release all of those books, my plan is to turn those little books into one big hardcover book, simply titled Alchemy. I spent most of December building out this system, so the process should be straightforward.
Reading Kindle
The last focus for the year is to read as much as possible. There’s so much wisdom out there in these books. But instead, we mindlessly scroll through things that won’t matter five minutes from now.
My plan is to always keep a book near me. I traded an Xbox for a Kindle Scribe. That seemed like a good trade to invest in the theme for this year. And I already owned a Kindle Paperwhite. So the Scribe will live on my desk, where a book is always open for me to read through a page or two, and the Paperwhite is pocketable, and easy to travel with. The combination of these two devices and the focus of The Year of Clarity should make for my best reading year ever.
The Kindle is the perfect example of what I’m looking for with The Year of Clarity. Putting the phone away before bed, and reading alone or with my wife until we fall asleep, is much more valuable than anything I can possibly do on my phone.
