Q3 2021 Review
This is my seventh consecutive quarterly review. It's a reflection on my goals for the third quarter of 2021. I plan to conduct these quarterly reviews to track my progress on my ten year plan, which I published at the end of 2019 and suggest you read to get the most out of this article.
I'm posting this publicly as a way to hold myself accountable and so others have a framework to follow if they so choose.
Last quarter, I wrote about my lack of progress. This quarter has seen a similar lack of progress, so it's time for some changes.
And that's a good thing because I have a lot more time on my hands to perfect my habits. In Q2, I left my 8 year career in consulting/banking to join a startup. At the end of Q3, I left that startup with no plan for what's next. I'm giving myself Q4 to figure it out. I'll spend my days reading, writing, exercising, having conversations—doing all the things I like to do—for the first time ever. It's a bit of a scary feeling to not have a clear plan. To not know what's next. To not know what success looks like. But I'm excited to have the time and space to figure it out.
Last quarter I wrote about regret minimization—the idea that you make decisions with your future self in mind. Consider your decisions from the perspective of your 80 year old self and ask, "Will I regret this?"
I would've regretted not joining the startup. I would equally regret not taking this "time off" while I have the means to do it.
I'm learning every decision doesn't need to be optimized for productivity or a tangible outcome. You can optimize for happiness instead, or for minimizing regret. Success, as I've written before, isn't measured by the amount of money in your bank account. It's about living a life you enjoy while being able to meet your financial needs.
What I would consider success at this point in my life is to be able to write professionally. More specifically defined, I would like to write one article per week and earn $1,500 per article. My dream job is basically what Morgan Housel does. He writes a weekly article for a venture capital firm. That's basically his whole job.
Is it realistic for me to do the same? I don't know. It seems unlikely, but I'm going to spend Q4 giving it my best shot. Here's my rough plan of attack, which I'll cover in more detail later:
Reach out to 50 VC firms to pitch my writing idea
Publish something on 70 of the 92 days in Q4 (75%)
Spend at least 180 hours reading
Spend at least 90 hours taking notes
Spend at least 90 hours writing - minimum 1 hour and 200 words per day
I may not achieve my goal of writing one article per week at $1,500 a pop by the end of the year. But if I'm on track to make $1,000 per month by the end of Q4, I'll consider that acceptable progress or "proof of concept", and I'll keep going. If not, I'll re-evaluate and likely change course to something more practical.
I'll also consider taking on a limited number of clients in the meantime for writing related work—ghostwriting, coaching, content strategy, etc. If you're interested in working together, send me an email, and let's explore what that might look like.
An important note about the bullets above: they're all input metrics, meaning they're within my control. These are the actions I think will lead to my desired output metric—being a professional writer. The output metric isn't entirely within my control, but the input metrics are. I've identified what I can control, and I'm going to control it. Regardless of the outcome, I'll be happy with myself if I hit my input metrics. Hitting the output metric is an added bonus.
It seems like I've gotten a little ahead of myself. This is a reflection on my Q3 goals, and I've spent most of the time so far talking about Q4. Let me bring it back around. I fell short on a lot of my Q3 goals. The simple truth is I didn't make them a priority. I focused more on my full time job than my personal pursuits, and this focus is apparent in my lack of personal progress.
I didn't spend Q3 focused on my input metrics. I didn't dedicate time to the tiny consistent pieces that contribute to the overall outcomes. In Q4, I'm going to return to the input metrics that allowed me to make such great progress in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021.
Alright, let's get into the nitty gritty of Q3 2021.
Complete Successes:
These are the goals I nailed.
One investment program analysis.
Much like the last quarter, my investment activity was minimal. Remaining consistent, I continued to dollar cost average into VTSAX and VEMAX every two weeks.
I added a little bit to my NNI position at $73.39, a little more to my PINS position at $58.36, more to my SPOT position at $218.71, a little more to FSLY at $41.48, and I started a small position in RSKD at $26.13 after watching this video.
I'm still holding all 26 small cap stocks I mentioned in previous quarterly reviews. I purchased equal dollar amounts of all 26 companies in May 2020, November of 2020, and May of 2021. Now the plan is to hold for at least four more years and see what happens. As of this writing, the "fund" is up about 43% since inception, down from 60% last quarter.
I made a few cryptocurrency moves this quarter. Throughout July, I added about 20 SOL in the $20s and low $30s. I sold 22 SOL when it ran up to $70, recouping my entire cost basis but still retaining about 30 SOL. Then I took that money and put it back into ETH around $2,900 shortly after The Motley Fool published a buy recommendation.
My plan is to hold steady for the rest of the year. Without a consistent income, I probably won't be doing a lot of investing in Q4, but I do hold some cash on the side in case a great opportunity arises.
Send 13 newsletters.
This one is pretty straight forward. I sent 13 issues of The Lake Street Journal - one each week. This has become an engrained habit - one I enjoy very much.
One workout program analysis.
My exercise approach remained consistent with prior quarters, and Q3 definitely saw an uptick in workouts due to life settling back down after all of Q2's excitement.
I'm still doing three days of weight training per week—one push day, one pull day, and one leg day. I'm also running a couple days and/or playing basketball.
I anticipate my workout routine will remain fairly consistent for the foreseeable future. What I'm doing is working, so I don't see any reason to change it. Although now that I'm not working full time, I'll probably do a lot more walking.
Journal at least twice per week.
I wrote 28 journal entries for a total of 11,981 words, so I'm considering this a success.
However, my entries were not distributed evenly across the quarter, so I could do a little bit better. Ideally I'd like to be journaling at least two times every week to keep a consistent record of my life, not just a brain dump when something happens.
In Q4, I'll try to be more consistent with my journaling frequency, but I'm happy with the total number of entries and substance of those entries.
Partial Successes:
These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either.
Publish six podcasts.
I began the quarter hoping to publish six podcasts, but I changed my mind part way through. I realized that publishing podcasts was taking up a lot of my time—about ten hours per episode. Additionally, I wasn't publishing enough episodes to see much growth, and I didn't feel like I was learning much in the process. Splitting my time between podcasting and writing means I'm not making meaningful progress at either one. I enjoy writing more, and it helps add subscribers far more than podcasting does, so that's the pursuit I chose.
Another thing I'm finally acknowledging about podcasts is that it's kind of a status game. Landing a guest with a big following gave me a little bit of an ego boost. Chasing this dopamine hit is a waste of time.
For those reasons, I changed gears mid quarter and decided to discontinue the podcast—at least for now. Before that point, I published four episodes:
Publish six essays.
My performance here was weak, and it was entirely due to falling off track with my input metrics. I spent less time reading in Q3 than in prior quarters, and I spent very little time working on my notes.
Reading and note taking are the seeds that grow into the flowers of essays. When I neglect to plant seeds, it's no surprise I don't see any flowers.
I have a much more detailed plan for how to achieve my input metrics in Q4, so I expect to publish a lot more essays. All that said, I managed to publish three during Q3:
Complete 36 abdominal workouts.
I completed 27 ab workouts during the quarter: nine in July, ten in August, and eight in September. My goal was to complete three workouts per week in order to build a habit.
Although I missed my goal, I'm thrilled with my progress. This is more consistent ab workouts than I ever remember doing in my life, and I'm noticing a big difference in core strength.
This is a goal I'll continue to track in Q4, hopefully with even better results.
ROMWOD every day.
ROMWOD is a daily stretching routine with video instruction. I highly recommend it.
I'm happy to report a dramatic improvement from my Q2 performance. My estimate for Q2 was that I stretched on half the days in the quarter, or about 45 days.
In Q3, I only missed 13 days, meaning I stretched on 79 of the 92 days in the quarter. This performance isn't quite as good as in past quarters, but it's a huge improvement from the previous quarter, and I'm happy with it. In my Q2 2021 review, I found myself repeatedly saying, "I'll do better next quarter." This is one of the only categories where that was actually true.
I anticipate doing even better in Q4.
Add one interesting person to my contacts (who I speak with 1-2 times per month).
Seems like this should be a black or white, yes or no, success or failure type of goal. Well, I'm putting it in the partial success column for this quarter.
I added one person to my contacts, but we haven't chatted regularly. I'm marking it a partial success though because I think we will continue a relationship.
Last quarter I mentioned most of these connections come from Twitter. This one came from my email list, which is a really cool benefit of sending the weekly newsletter.
Failures:
These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection.
Add 200 newsletter subscribers.
This was a dreadful failure. I began the quarter with 608 total subscribers and ended the quarter with 626.
This represented a 3% quarterly growth rate, which was equal to Q2 but down from 29% in Q1.
Last quarter I explained that my subscriber numbers were down because I wasn't publishing consistently. I identified the issue and knew what I had to do to correct it. Then I didn't take action. No excuse here, I just need to do better.
I have a plan to do better, as I briefly outlined in the introduction and will re-iterate below.
My original goal for 2021 was to have 1,500 subscribers on my email list by the end of the year. At this point, that seems slightly out of reach, but if I bust ass, I think I can hit 1,000.
Conclusions:
As I've said before, writing these reviews is one of my favorite things to do during the quarter. For the second quarter in a row, I'm unhappy with my progress.
As James Clear says, missing one day is a mistake. Missing two is the beginning of a new habit.
One bad quarter is a fluke. Two in a row is the start of something new—in this case, not something good.
But I'm excited about Q4. I'm excited for the opportunity to spend more time reading, thinking, writing, and ultimately publishing my writing. It's time for me to take action on the things I keep talking about but not executing on. There is nobody to blame but myself.
I'm not mad at myself. I'm not even disappointed. The fact that I've slacked on my publishing and subscriber growth is neither good nor bad. It's simply a data point. Luckily, it's an important data point I can act upon.
In Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, I published one piece of content per week, and my subscriber count grew by 29% per quarter. In Q2 and Q3 2021, I barely published at all, and my subscriber count grew by 3% per quarter. So what am I going to do?
I'm going to publish more.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I'm going to publish something on at least 70 of the 92 days in Q4. Let me define this goal more clearly. To be a qualifying publication, it must be one of the following:
An article or curation on my website.
An article on somebody else's website (as long as it has my name).
A screenshot essay on Twitter (see my first one here).
A Twitter thread.
To ensure I have the ideas to publish consistently, I'll also do the following:
Spend at least 180 hours reading
Spend at least 90 hours taking notes
Spend at least 90 hours writing - minimum 1 hour and 200 words per day
Ideally this work will be spread out evenly across the quarter. I intend to spend about two hours reading, one taking notes, and one writing per day. Some days will probably be much more. Other days will be a bit less. The reading fuels the note taking, which, in turn, fuels the writing. I created a tracker to monitor these numbers, so I'll report back with specifics in my next quarterly review.
One hour of writing per day should be plenty to ensure I hit my publishing goals. That's the great thing about writing—you don't have to spend that much time doing it to be prolific. In an hour of focused writing—as long as I'm equipped with my notes—I can easily write between 500 and 1,000 words. My goal is 200 per day. A goal of 200 is approachable. It feels easy to accomplish, and it get's you started. If I get to 200, it's very unlikely I'll stop there. But if my goal is 1,000 per day, it's very unlikely I'll start.
As I concluded last quarter, it's important to work on something you can directly control in service of affecting something slightly outside your control. This exercise is a combination of fun, frustration, challenge, and reward.
I hope this was as helpful to you as it was to me. I'll see you back here next quarter. Thanks for reading.
Q4 2021 Goals:
Reach out to 50 VC firms to pitch my writing idea.
Publish something on 70 of the 92 days in Q4 (75%).
Spend at least 180 hours reading.
Spend at least 90 hours taking notes.
Spend at least 90 hours writing - minimum 1 hour and 200 words per day.
Make $1,000 from freelance/writing work in one month.
One workout program analysis.
Complete 36 abdominal workouts (three sets of four movements).
One investment program analysis.
Send 14 newsletters.
Publish 8-10 articles.
ROMWOD and/or The Ready State every day.
Journal at least twice per week.
Add one interesting person to my contacts who I speak with at least 1-2 times per month.
Reach 1,000 newsletter subscribers
