My Second Term Plan

Like many Americans, I woke up to a different world than I was expecting this morning. While I initially compared this feeling to 2016, it felt a lot more like 2004 for me. In 2004, Bush was reelected – a vote for his politics and brand of governorship that America wanted more of – even though I couldn’t stand him.

I spent over 12 hours watching the news, reading Reddit, and watching TikTok yesterday. It was the most I’ve doom-scrolled in quite a while, and it’s not something I’d like to make a habit of.

This comes immediately after my wife and I got back last week from a 16-day trip to Barcelona, Spain, and a cruise (Barcelona, Spain → Lisbon, Portugal → Porto, Portugal → Tangier, Morocco → Cadiz, Spain → Barcelona, Spain). During the cruise, I was utterly disconnected from the internet. I couldn’t remember the last days I had zero internet use.

Whenever I get back from a trip, I try to change my routine immediately. Fortunately, it coincides with when I want to turn off the news.

I’ve found the best times to change are when I have no clear routine in the first place. When I got back from my two-week Korea trip earlier this year, I started working with an online personal trainer, which was an incredibly beneficial change.

During the trip, I started brainstorming changes I wanted to make in my day-to-day life. Here’s what I came up with:

Redefine My Relationship with News and Social Media

For me, this means Reddit and TikTok. Both are platforms I can scroll on for hours. It’s unhealthy even in the best times. Now, in the time after the election, I know it’s going to be rough.

The time leading up to the 2016 election, and pretty much his entire first term, was a slow boil to see how much news and information I could take in. I’m following Kamala’s advice and not going back to that.

The goal of this would be:

– Completely stop using Reddit, TikTok and The New York Times (Only use TikTok for Hardcover).
+ More time reading books. I’m excited about this one! I read 2.5 books during my vacation and already feel my ability to focus for long stretches increasing.
+ More time writing blog posts
+ More time in general for other things

I’m not sure how I’ll keep myself informed about the news in a healthy way (any recommendations for that). I aim to spend more time on other social media (Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, Threads). I suspect I’ll hear enough about what’s happening through those without relying on Reddit/NY Times.

Continue Learning Japanese

I fell out of this habit sometime last year, partly because I lacked a clear goal. I no longer wanted to live there or pass the NL1 proficiency test, which left me without a clear motivation.

After some reflection on this, and after watching Perfect Days, I came up with a goal (still very new, I’ll see if it sticks 😅): In 2026, work from Japan for a month to celebrate Hardcover’s 5-year anniversary. That’s still a year and a half away, which gives me a lot of time to learn and anticipate this. It also checks about 4 of my goals.

The goal of this would be:
+ Learn how to read Japanese at a basic level
+ Learn basic conversational Japanese, focusing on what would be needed to survive there for a month
+ Prepare to live in Japan for a month!

Right now my plan includes WaniKani (for learning kanji), Pimsleur’s Japanese course (for speaking) and Japanese the Manga Way (for grammar and structure).

If you have something that worked for you to learn Japanese, I’d love to hear about it!

Change to Maintenance Mode for Health and Fitness

In the last six months, I have focused a lot on my health. I tracked all of my calories (using LoseIt), went to the gym three times a week, and did cardio three times a week (usually Peloton or a run). I rarely had any alcohol. I minimized my desserts and didn’t eat out much. I targeted 1900 calories a day.

I lost 17 pounds (171 lbs → 154 lbs) while putting on 5 pounds of muscle (!).

At no time during this did it feel like I was depriving myself, but by the end it felt like I was spending too much time focused on tracking every calorie rather than just enjoying food.

I want to switch to a more relaxed approach to health while maintaining my current weight. This will mean less time focusing on the how and more time enjoying food and my current fitness level.

The goal of this would be:

– Stop tracking my foods
+ Continue with daily weigh-ins. Those will help verify if my exercise === calories in a similar way as tracking.
+ Switch from 6 exercise days a week down to 5.
+ Focus on getting 6k steps daily on weight training and Peloton days and 10k steps on all other days. (exceptions allowed if it’s rainy/snowy).
+ Whenever I go grocery shopping (about every other week), make a plan to get ingredients for a new recipe

Do a Weekly Review

I’ve written about weekly reviews before. I’ve tried weekly task organization too. This is a chance to check in with myself and see how I’m doing.

Lately, I’ve let these reviews swing entirely too much toward productivity and away from overall happiness. I want to switch more in that direction – using these as a chance to see if what I’m doing is making me happy or not.

The goal of this would be:

+ Conduct a weekly personal review. I do these in Notion in a folder for personal > reviews > 2024.
+ Focus on personal happiness and my relationship, not productivity.

Aggressively Say No

I was reading Slow Productivity by Cal Newport during my vacation and a number of things stuck with me. The TLDR of the book is this on page 8:

A philosphy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful mannerm based on the following three principles:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.

My weekly review is a chance to verify I’m doing #2. I tend to obsess over speed more than quality while also taking on more than I often should.

The solution to this is to get better at saying no. That can mean saying no to working on a new Hardcover feature. Saying no to myself when I say, “I should build <insert new idea here>.” It can mean saying no when I say, “This barely works, but it’s good enough,” and instead write some damn tests (or, more likely, let Claude write them 😂).

The goal of this would be:

+ Be happy with whatever my output is – both in scope and depth
+ Create a sustainable pace for knowledge work

Focus on What You Can Change

The theme of all these is taking a step away from the news and distracting myself from *gestures broadly* everything.

I want to miss out on a constant barrage of destructive decisions by politicians, grifts to extract money, agencies gutted, courts packed, and everything else that will surely happen over the next 4 years.

Being able to tune this out daily and instead only look at the news occasionally is a privilege. I fully understand that. I still plan to support all the same politicians and politicians as before. I’ll be out holding signs at rallies protesting against whatever new right is being taken away. And who knows what else.

But what I won’t do is let myself drift into a doom-scrolling cycle that lasts a presidential term.