A Letter For Process & Progress

Dec 17, 2024

Week #2 of writing ALF daily is in the books and I here is the high-level of where I’m at:

Thoughts / Ideas / Reflections

Still primarily focused on writing, getting in the daily habit and continuing to get better at it. This is a long-term over the course of years project, but here are more short term goals:
- 30 days in a row - 47% to goal
- 100 days in a row - 15% to goal

Giving myself time every day to reflect and contemplate and write is proving to be beneficial in my everyday life (with friends, neighbors, co-workers, clients, etc.). I believe and trust (spiritually - like oxygen) in the idea that communicating is a meta-skill. That as you improve on it a bunch of other areas in your life will improve along with it. Think of it like fitness - when you get more fit and workout regularly, you sleep better, you eat better, you have more energy - a bunch of other stuff improves. This is not my own thought, this comes from a Lenny’s Newsletter Podcast with Tristan de Montebello. I haven’t yet had time or money to purchase Tristan’s Ultraspeaking course, but I’ve been practicing some of his tactics from the podcast and it’s been meaningful.
Speaking of Lenny Rachitsky, this is what he’s been able to achieve with his newsletter and podcast in just 5 years 🤯
Lenny will be getting a letter from me soon, it’s mostly all written but it’s really long and I want to make sure I give it enough credence. Few other independent creators have been more influential to me than Lenny. He’s just the creme-de-la-creme 🤌
I missed my 3:30pm deadline twice this week and it gave me lots of anxiety, but the urgency and commitment to it got me on track. Sometimes anxiety is a good thing and can be harnessed for good.

It doesn’t get any better than this

I’ve still done very little - mostly just posting on LinkedIn everyday which is the only place I have any semblance of an audience (3300 followers).
Speaking of LinkedIn, it SUCKS right now. I thought my posts would do much better than they have (bad on me for having any expectations). They get very little traction and don’t show up in anyone’s feeds. I’m going to test video starting tomorrow, since that seems to be their main focus. I’m still annoyed at this.
Occasionally I’ll try to post elsewhere, one other spot I’ve found low effort and high reward is on the YC Hacker News. I’ll find a relevant thread that’s got traction, provide a reply, and then roll it into a promo and link to ALF. Need to explore this channel more
My highest engaged post from this week was yesterday’s about Kirk Cousins and Josh McCown’s exchange I found on reddit. I posted it on the r/Vikings sub again and it got 3x views than a typical post with no reddit promo. I need to dig into Reddit and figure out how to write a relevant post in 4-5 subs every day.
Not too concerned about lack of traction this week but need to focus more on this in the new year.

Very modest, only gained 8 new subs since last week and no new paid. Revenue is flat.

This excerpt is from

in her post from last week titled “How To Succeed on Substack”

Nothing else needing to be said on this, perfectly written.

When I send to people a letter I wrote for them and it’s received well, it fills me with joy. Same for people that send me personal notes on a certain post. Here are a few of them: