2010 Lessons Learned

Feed: Smarterware

2010 Lessons Learned

Lose weight. Save money. Start exercising. Rather than make arbitrary and predictable New Year's resolutions this January 1st, it can be more useful to look back at 2010, think about what lessons you learned from real-world experiences, and resolve to take those with you into 2011. I loved how Felicia Day did this in her year-end blog post, Five Things of 2010. (Read it: #2 and #5 especially spoke to me.) Posts like that make me truly miss personal blogging, and inspire me to do more of it—so that's exactly what I'm going to do here.

2010 was a great year for me and my family, and there are a few things I will take away from the last 12 months as we all start in on 2011. In no particular order:

Doing the right thing now pays back later. This year I got to reap the benefits of decisions made years ago, financially, professionally, and personally. Grandpa is the best example I have for this one.

Five years ago when we moved to San Diego, where my wife's 89-year-old grandfather lived, she said to me, "I feel bad that I haven't had a close relationship with Grandpa, so I'd like to spend more time with him and help him out." After that, every Sunday when his regular caregiver was off, we went to his home to visit, eat a meal, watch 60 Minutes, and help him take care of his wife who was suffering stage 7 Alzheimer's. Sometimes the visits involved serious unpleasantries, like changing adult diapers and cleaning up after Grandpa's dogs. (His sense of smell was pretty dull at that point, so the dogs would have left all sorts of "gifts" around the house by the time we arrived.) I'll admit it: here were a LOT of Sundays I dreaded the visit. I would have much rather stayed home than sit with a 90-something-year-old for 3 hours.

Grandpa passed away this past February at 94 years old. It was terrible losing him. But in retrospect, that time we decided to make for him each Sunday was so precious and important. When he died we were at peace knowing that we got to know him and support him during his last and most difficult years on this earth.

That's probably the biggest "I'm so glad we did that" lesson learned in 2010, but all year there were unexpected people, projects, and revelations that grew out of earlier work and interactions. Doing the right thing matters, more than you realize in the moment when you'd really rather not. I'm going to remember that every time I grumble about doing the right thing when it feels like an inconvenience in 2011.

Don't waste your time on stuff that doesn't matter. I learn and re-learn this lesson every single year, and I swear the universe will continue to flog me about the head and shoulders with it till I get it right. In 2010 I spent time on more than a few things for the wrong reasons: because I thought I "should," because of the money, because I was being polite, because I was worried about what other people thought of me. In 2011 I will not spend time on meaningless projects, email, meetings, contracts, speaking gigs, chats, or, dare I say it, reality television.

Surround yourself with people who are more skilled than you are. My racquetball coach always told me the only way to get better at the game was to "play up", or play opponents who are better than you. It's humiliating getting your ass handed to you by someone who is more skilled both on the racquetball court and off, but it's also the easiest way to see shots you didn't imagine were possible and expect more of yourself. This year I did a LOT of playing up. Leo Laporte, Anil Dash, Andy Baio, and Mark Wilkie are all co-workers of mine who are way more skilled than I am at their craft, not to mention my wife, who shows me every day how to be a better human. I never want to be the "star" in my group of associates; I always want to be surrounded by stars who outshine me, humble me, and help me aspire to be better than I am.

Set yourself up for unexpected success. Sometimes things just don't turn out the way you expect. In 2010, I wrote a book about a product which essentially got killed. That really sucked. In the process I got to try a whole new method of book publishing, and that platform helped someone else publish another book about a product which is thriving. That's really fantastic.

In 2009, I started to build an open-source webapp for my own use, with zero plans for it. In 2010, that project became my full-time dream job. Sometimes success doesn't happen the way you expect it to, but if you just do stuff you feel inspired to do, you set yourself up for good things to happen.

One thing that I often feel inspired to do but don't make the time to do it is write more from the heart on this site. I resolve to do more of that in 2011.

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.

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