january 2025

Wow!!! 2025!!! 🥳

The calendar from last month is for sale! Check it out at gridcalendar.ca.

circles

My life consists of five different circles:

1. Health
2. Friends
3. Family/Relationship
4. Work
5. Passions/Hobbies

Lately, it’s felt like the work circle has been encroaching on my other circles. Not so much in terms of hours, but in terms of energy.

This is the second instance of an emerging pattern - last January, I also felt overwhelmed about work.

That said, lack of energy is a common theme in January. In fact, I got sick the last week of January - almost exactly how it happened two years ago. So that might have something to do with it.

But let’s talk about work!

planning

I’ve been reflecting on project management, mostly because I’ve been leading a project at work since mid November.

Every project exists on a spectrum between planning and adapting.

You can either plan for everything (and risk over-engineering) or plan nothing (and risk wasting time).

For most of my personal projects, I’m on the adaptive end. I don’t really plan, I just do things. So when I encounter something unexpected like:

• this command didn’t work
• i have to pay for this
• this broke something

I have to adapt in the moment. Which is fun, but not the most efficient (I usually get distracted).

With work projects, I’m on the other end of the spectrum.

I make a plan, figure out the steps, document the assumptions, etc. This is usually how people at Shopify like to do it (probably for external visibility).

That said, it’s impossible to plan for everything. I’m not going to plan for the internet going down or the US invading Greenland, even though these things would certainly affect the outcome.

It’s not just that these events are out of my control—they’re so unlikely to happen that planning for them would be a waste of time.

But not everything is so obvious. Some events sit in a gray area where predicting outcomes is difficult. And that’s the key:

Effective planning is about anticipating which unlikely things are likely to happen. Almost like predicting the future.

I’ve come to understand that this is something learned through experience.

That said, no matter how accurately you predict the future, there’s still a chance you get things wrong. And when that happens, you’re forced to the other end of the spectrum - you need to adapt to keep moving.

And unfortunately, adapting takes time! So when conditions change that you haven’t planned for, the timeline changes too.

That’s why hard deadlines are tough - the timeline can’t change. So more work gets stuffed into the same amount of time and the work starts ~ encroaching~.

resolutions

Let’s go through my 2024 resolutions and see how I did. I’ll rate each resolution out of 10 in terms of how “completed” it was.

always be sore (from training), unless injured or sick

8/10 - I stuck to this for the most part. I’d have to slightly amend to “unless injured, sick or traveling ”, since working out while abroad is tough.

maintain a caloric deficit for some amount of time

0/10 - I didn’t do this. At least not consciously. I’d probably amend this to “maintain a caloric deficit for two weeks” to make it more specific.

take Spanish lessons

3/10 - I attempted to do this. I downloaded Pimsleur and took a couple lessons.

organize group trips

0/10 - I did not do this.

volunteer once a week at least five times

0/10 - I did not do this.

fill the watercolour notebook I got for christmas

0/10 - Nope.

hold a handstand for one minute

5/10 - I did get better at my handstand. I think I’m close to 30 seconds. I would amend this to “hold a handstand for 30 seconds”. A whole minute is crazy.

do a standing backflip

10/10 - I did this.

go sailing in the summer

6/10 - Not really sure what this means. I did go sailing, but only because I took lessons. I’d amend this to “go sailing with friends this summer”.

So! I succeeded in only one resolution - to do a standing backflip. But that one has been a long time coming so it counts for more.

These 2025 resolutions are plagiarized from my notes on turning 26 + my amended ones:

• drive to Mexico
• do one muscle up
• do a backflip on grass
• 50 consecutive push-ups
• 30 second handstand
• play piano in front of people
• 2 hours of volunteering
• do the 5040 hike
• go sailing with friends this summer
• track calories for two weeks
• always be sore (from training), unless injured, sick or traveling

newsletter stats

Last month marked the two year anniversary of this newsletter!

Like I did in 2023, I thought I’d compile some stats from this past year.

length

In 2024, I wrote an average of 662 words per newsletter. This is about 100 words less than in 2023. I take this as a good sign.

This chart overlays each post’s length in 2024 vs 2023:

Two things I noticed:

1. I tend to write a lot less in September!
2. In 2023, I wrote longer posts at the start of the year then ended with shorter posts. Whereas in 2024, I wrote my longer posts at the end of the year.

lateness

It turns out I was a bit better at publishing newsletters on time this year. I averaged 15 days late in 2024, compared to 16 in 2023.

This chart overlays which day of the month each post was published in 2024 vs 2023:

I don’t notice any trends in this one - it just looks all over the place.

most common topics

Here were my most frequently mentioned topics in 2024:

1. europe: 9
2. jerry seinfeld: 6
3. ashley: 5
4. daylight savings: 5
5. victoria: 5
6. vancouver: 4
7. toronto: 4
8. iran.: 4
9. canada: 4
10. youtube: 3

most referenced domains

1. en.wikipedia.org: 8
2. www.youtube.com: 8
3. kahvipatel.com: 7
4. www.goodreads.com: 7
5. www.newsletter.kahvipatel.com: 5

most used emojis

1. 🤞: 1
2. 👽: 1
3. 🥵: 1
4. 🥰: 1
5. 😮: 1
6. 🥴: 1

^ Most of this data was generated using this cool Javascript library.

end

I’ll mention it again - the calendar is for sale here!!

See you in March!

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