The 6 Most Important Lessons From 2023

I used to think when people said life can change in a year they were totally full of it. They’d obviously just come off the back of a heavy stint of reading too many self-help books, nothing can change in a year — so I thought.

But as I start to take the foot off the pedal for the Christmas holidays and reflect on this year, I realize that everything has changed for me this year — almost everything.

Most importantly, my mindset has shifted dramatically in the last 12 months and as I look over this last year, there have been some monumental shifts in my thinking that have led to the changes.

Here are the 6 most important lessons I’ve learned this year, hopefully, they will help you go into 2024 with more clarity than ever. This will be a little longer than usual, so grab a cup of hot chocolate, and let’s dive in.

1. You don’t need a 180, you need 5 degrees

When you make the stark realization that life isn’t quite how you want it to be, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need a full life change.

Like a cleaning frenzy, you go into overdrive. You write a list as long as you can fathom and you decide that everything needs a deep clean. The oven, the floors, the washing machine. Everything needs intense disinfection.

Overnight you’ve decided you need a new morning routine, a new night-time routine, to read 17 books this week, and to reinvent your diet. It feels good to get your life in order, doesn’t it?

Accept you’re not.

I fell into this trap, time and time again.

When I felt like things were going wrong, I’d rewrite my entire life. But time and time again I overwhelmed myself. Time and time again it was wayyyy too much to handle.

What would happen was the following:

• The realization that life was going off track
• Total rewrite of everything I did
• Frantic for 5 days
• Burnout

The reality is, the mind can’t take such blunt changes to the system. Too much, too soon leads to overwhelm and burnout — it reminds me of that 1 in 60 rule.

Rewriting your entire life when you realize it’s going a little off course is the equivalent of landing the plane, redesigning it, and going back up in the air once you’ve finished.

You don’t need a complete life rewrite, you just need to adjust a few things. The trick is finding those ‘few’ things and focusing on them. It’s a constant battle with your mind, but honestly, you probably need to adjust the course 5 degrees. You don’t need a 180.

Convincing yourself every day of that, now that’s the challenge. And that leads me to the dictator vs. the coach.

2. Dictator vs. Coach

I spent 26 years of my life not realizing that I could change the voice in my head. I never thought to question it.

Until one cold night in October 2019 when things got on top of me. I’d been miserable for a while. I was in the wrong job, commuting back and forth for hours at a time, convincing myself each day that I was completely wasting my life.

Months of beating myself up. My confidence was at an all-time low, nothing was going right and I’d all but given up. I was never going to make something of my life (I don’t know who tells you you’re mid-20s are fun but they are a cocktail of mismanaged expectations and disappointment in my experience).

It was in a cycle of realizing my life was a mess, reorganizing every element of it, and failing miserably. The voice in my head was one of a dictator.

“You need to get up at 5 am on the dot.”

“You have to work on your business.”

And when I inevitably failed, missed a day, or didn’t achieve what I wanted to:

“You say you want all these things but you’re just lazy, you’re never going to get there.”

The voice in my head was rotten. It wasn’t until that night in October, after months of negativity, I stopped myself. I simply asked myself whether I thought beating myself up every day was ever going to help me get to where I was going — the answer was no.

Slowly, over 3 years I built myself up. My default was kindness with an edge of forward focus. I wanted to be successful, of course, but I didn’t want to be miserable in the pursuit.

So when I missed a day, failed, or didn’t achieve what I wanted, I reflected instead of reacting. I asked myself ‘What happened today that meant things went wrong?’ and ‘How can I readjust for tomorrow?’

It’s been a life-changing shift. And it goes hand in hand with giving up short-term wins.

3. Giving up short-term wins for long-term ones

I used to write two newsletters.

One was this one you are reading and one called ‘Internet Experiments’ — I’d run an experiment every week and write about the results.

Science is my background, experimentation has always been close to my heart and I love testing new hypotheses. It was a bunch of fun to run that newsletter, just one problem though, it took up hours.

In the beginning, things were seamless, I’d write ahead of time, post consistently, and write to the standard I wanted to. The feedback was great. But then I took on more ‘stuff’ and (to my surprise) didn’t have more time.

Each week things things slipped. It got to the point where I was waking up at 5 am the morning it was meant to be sent out and writing the thing in a hurry. After a few weeks like that, I knew things had to change.

That newsletter made me $250/month but I decided to pause it. A few months later, I had my first $19,000 month. Because I alleviated my time from that newsletter, I was able to reinvest my time in the stuff that actually moved the needle.

This year I’ve learned that the difference between someone making $1,000 a month on the internet and someone making $10,000 and beyond is often where they spend their time.

And part of that comes down to commitment, let’s talk about that.

4. It’s not more, it’s less but better

I’ve always had a problem with commitment.

I find it hard to put all my energy into one thing because I’m worried it’ll leave me exposed. Focusing solely on one thing has always got my mind asking ‘what if?’ and that question (more than any other) steals my time.

This year I decided to release my first paid product. I’d been writing on the internet for 3 years before building any product to sell and I’d decided that February 2023 was the best time to build something.

That course made $8,000 in its first weekend.

It was a Friday. I’d just got in from a site visit, sat on the edge of my bed, and refreshed my dashboard: ‘$900’. I refreshed it again in disbelief. Before the thing had even officially launched, I’d made $900.

I’ve never felt anything like it. I’ll never forget that moment.

In that moment, my life changed. Over the coming months, the sales kept coming. I was overjoyed with the success of the course and it got me thinking about the next thing I wanted to release.

Over the next 3 months I spent hours pouring into a course I’d been dreaming up. It was magical to see it all coming together.

But then I read something that stuck with me: “Don’t sell another product until your first one makes $100,000.”

I think a lot about that now, as the Medium Blueprint approaches that number, I think about what a powerful move it was to pause on anything new until I’d learned the systems for consistent sales.

So much of building something is in the packaging, the processes, the systems and the ‘surroundings’ of the product. Instead of making a new course, I upgraded the Medium Blueprint — I changed platforms, I tidied things up, I added a bunch of new lessons, and I spoke about new things I was learning.

The result? More sales.

I’ve learned this year that building is a game of pace. Sometimes sprinting is good, but sometimes slowing things down is good too. And that leads me to some thoughts on ambition.

5. Contentment, ambition, and everything in between

By far the best question I’ve ever asked myself is this:

“Let’s say you ‘make it’. You’ve just hit the NYT-bestseller list, you’re making millions every year and you’re well respected in your field. How would you spend your days?”

The answer surprised me: I would wake up, write on the internet, and walk my dogs.

And when I think about that for a second, I come to a surprising realization, I get to do all of that today. I wake up almost every morning and write on the internet. I walk my dogs every day.

AKA I’m doing it. Nothing about my life would change, okay maybe I’d jack in the day job and write full-time, but that’s about it. And that’s a matter of volume, I still get to write today, just not as much. But 2–3 hours a day writing is plenty for me, at the minute.

I realized a while ago that ambition is good, and striving to be better is great. But it shouldn’t replace contentment. The two can (and should) co-exist. Because if you are constantly chasing without appreciating where you are you’ll live a life of never-ending ambition. Which leads me to the biggest lesson of 2023.

6. The sun after the storm

June 24th, diary entry: ‘I’m really not happy with progress, attitude or trajectory of this month, I feel like my growth is stagnating and my unique angle isn’t clear. Also, I’m not sure my monetization makes sense anymore’

The following month I made $16,699. The second biggest month of the year. I’ve seen this play out time and time again. It happens on a macro and micro level.

Daily (the micro), it happens when writing — every time I start slow, the writing is difficult and I’m talking absolute nonsense, if I stay with it long enough I’ll write my best stuff. This newsletter is a perfect example. It’s 8 am on a Saturday, the morning started off painfully slow. I started writing 4 different versions of this newsletter until I settled on this angle. I planned several other editions before sitting down to write. It’s taken me 2 hours to get this far. But it’s been one of my favorite editions this year.

Every month (the macro), it happens — I’ll get frustrated, feel like things aren’t moving, something will flick a switch in my brain and get me worked up. But then, after a few days or weeks, the tide changes. Things start to look up again and things feel positive.

What I’ve learned is that every time I’m feeling down or frustrated, likely, just around the corner is something good. So in the middle of that frustration, I can hold onto the idea that it’s just a signal that something good is coming. And if nothing else, it makes the now feel less painful.

That's all for today.