A Fresh Look At 2025

Documenting how I want to spend my time and explore interests during the year.

Jan 02, 2025

Thursday :: January 2nd, 2024 :: Approx. 6 min read

👋 Hi, this is Chris with another issue of The Teardown. In every issue, I cover how we interact with technology that powers our day-to-day lives.

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Here it is. The start of a new year. Happy New Year to you!

I posted about ideas for the year mid-way through January 2024. Those ideas looked suspicious to many of you. Resolutions you said, right? No, I retorted. Ideas.

That post highlighted numerous potential ways to spend my time. Some happened as described or planned. Others didn’t. I’m not here at the beginning of 2025 beating my brain into a pulp over what I did or didn’t do.

I learned and accomplished plenty, enjoyed a summer with my kids free of distractions, and restarted my professional endeavors during early Fall 2024.

So, today’s post is about the year ahead. How do I want to spend my time?

How do you want to spend your time this year? Let me hear your biggest aspirations in the comments.

#1: Launch A Business

In late 2024, I pitched and was hired to provide consulting work to one client. Someone now pays me to be, well, me. They're paying me for my knowledge and experience, too.

But so much of engaging in any setting with anyone boils down to personality fit. Do you and that other person understand each other? Can you break bread? Do you like to speak to that person and do they like to speak to you?

Those are complex questions, but you figure them out at warp speed. First impressions form fast.

The answer is a resounding yes (to all questions) as it relates to my current client. In practice, that alignment produces two positive outcomes: (1) I’m engaging, intellectually, and (2) I’m having fun.

What I now need to decide is whether to boost, maintain, or restrain my momentum. Should I sign more clients? Build a brand, LinkedIn page, and finish my website? Am I ready to be the boss?

Why not?

#2: Keep Building The Teardown

I don’t subscribe to one specific goal when I use the word build.

I wrote much more over the last year than in the past. My subscriber count grew 78% year-over-year. Much of that growth occurred after April 1st 2024, when I was unexpectedly laid off just after vacation with my wife and kids.

Do I like that growth trend? Of course.

But the past 8 months proved again that I like to write, achieve consistent competence in my writing, and enjoy the process.

When people ask what I want to do, I sometimes break the ice with a quip about writing for The New Yorker. A professional writer.

So, I’ll keep posting. And honing my research and topic lists. And the word count underlying my essays and explorations. I posted twice per week in December 2024 and hope to maintain that pace throughout the year.

#3: Improve My Software Skills

I’m proficient in a few languages but don’t think of my platform (tactical skills, knowledge) as aligned to the label professional software engineer.

Instead, I’m someone that hacks lots of stuff together to get through my work.

Lately, I feel an itch to reposition myself as a CTO. Chief Technology Officer. Of what? Well, lots of things.

I see a CTO as someone that understands some or all of:

Software architecture, scaling, modernization, etc.
Workload estimation and prioritization
The business in which they work, be it insurance, banking, health, or otherwise
Business as a skill in negotiation, communication, and leadership
Idea generation and evaluation
People. Hiring. Mentoring. Coaching.

I see some obvious weaknesses in (1) and (2) and feel ok about the others. Not expert, but comfortable with my operating level.

Can I be a CTO with an incomplete set of qualifications? You bet. Is that the right move? I don’t know. Should I do it? Why not.

#4: Nurture My Relationships

My youngest daughter soon turns 3. My older daughter is in 1st grade and turns 7 midway through 2025.

Life in my 20s moved like molasses compared to life with kids. They’re older, wiser, and more autonomous after every blink.

Why wouldn’t I embrace the opportunity to give them everything I can while I have the time?

I don’t mean that I’ll stop working. That’s not for me, at least not without a chest full of dollars too plentiful to spend anytime soon. Summer 2024 proved that I really want intellectual stimulation.

Instead, I need to put the phone down. Be more creative with their interests. Show them more of mine. Open up my brain and my energy to let them learn from anything valuable they find.

And I want to put more energy into my other relationships. Be a more communicative brother and son. Be a more agreeable friend. Say yes when I might have otherwise said no. Work on my jokes and make people laugh because I want to. Reciprocate as best I can while being reasonable about what I can and can’t do.

#5: Keep Tracking, Track More

A lay off provides you with space and time to explore the question underlying this post: how do I want to spend my time?

So, just after calendar Q1 2024, I started tracking every drink with alcohol in it. I use a simple formula: a beer is a drink. A glass of bourbon is a drink. A High Noon is a drink. High Noon’s are gross.

Of course, alcohol-by-volume matters, but I was worried about maintenance. Overcomplicating the process seemed like it would soon halt my momentum.

My tracker now knows every drink consumed since April 1st 2024.

And while I won’t go into the numbers or the motivations so deeply (yet), I did want to highlight one major benefit: routine creation and maintenance.

I gamified my tracking, using behavioral nudges like streaks to reinforce progress and habits. And it worked. I tracked no matter what, no matter where I was, throughout the entire year after April 1.

Then I applied the same tracking mechanisms to other things, starting with writing. I set a goal to write 500 words every day. And, while my upkeep is a work in progress, just setting up the basic tracking helped kickstart regular writing. Gamification hasn’t yet kicked in, but it will.

Tracking works. For me, anyway.

#6: Double Down On Health

I cut my cholesterol and stress over the past year and want to keep both of those items in check. I’m drinking much less alcohol compared to a year ago.

And I put the pieces together (finally) on a problem long disrupting my sleep: acid reflux.

Nothing is so simple of course. But I understand now more than I did that I’m sometimes sleeping poorly because of reflux reactions and symptoms. Mitigating reflux improves my sleep.

But I’m not satisfied to simply solve that problem. I’d like to dig into the research and data around reflux. How disruptive is it? What are the advantages and disadvantages of medication - in isolation and also compared to doing nothing?

Finally, I want to improve my mobility and flexibility - in support of both more running and weight training. I haven’t yet attached tennis balls to the bottom of a walker, but I’m feeling quite inflexible these days.

What I haven’t yet derived is the tracking to measure that flexibility. Getting it right will reinforce habitual stretching and mobility work.

The Teardown