I work on a lot of stuff, but nobody knows about it. That in itself is not an issue (it may even be a feature called privacy). The issue only arises when you want awareness because it serves a purpose.

In my case, I am building products which are still finding their road to market and are in dire need of awareness. That can come in many forms, but at the core is product and brand awareness in the target audience, as well as a kind of ‘creator awareness’ in the larger social sphere.

That stuff I work on, I really have to start telling the interwebs about it.1

I am not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, considering most die a premature death in the first weeks (or days) of the new year. What I do quite enjoy is the Cortex podcast’s theme system, which instead of overly quantifiable (and easily fail-able) goals, anchors on an overarching theme to the year.

A theme can serve as a North Star. It is something to index on, something to provide guidance in all the micro decisions in service of the macro goal.

For 2024, I am this considering my theme to be “work in public”. Work on the stuff, but share what you’re doing.

A Fortnight at a time

Two years ago I wrote about a productivity system I called ‘the Fortnighter’. It was an attempt at making sure I could get things done with the constraints I have: a job at Stripe, a family, as well as everything else that takes place in a life, leave at best 10-ish hours per week for side projects. 10-ish hours chopped up into lots of tiny sessions to fit into a busy schedule result in a ton of “boot-up and orientation time”.

A Fortnighter covers the time span of two weeks (duh), in which I focus on one predefined task, which must be done and shipped in the end. It is supposed to frame the work in that time, and make sure there is always a task at hand I can work on. Less thinking about ‘what should I work on’, less jumping around dozens of tasks. And now, at the end of every Fortnighter, I also have to tell people about it.

Ship and Share. Every two weeks.

So see you (more) in 2024.

  1. What’s interesting about sharing your work online, whatever form it takes, is that people often feel hesitation to publish because they are afraid of a negative reception. The interesting part is that the most common reception to sharing things online is not a negative reception, but no reception at all. It’s a large space, and you’re sharing into the void. ↩