Every December I write a long letter to friends and family with the same three sections: what went well, what could have gone better, and what I'm focusing on next year. The full letters stay with the people they're written for. These are short public excerpts.
Pending your approval: these are Claude's default picks (2023-B, 2024-A, 2025-A). Swap any of them from the candidates page in Notion.
My job requires me to mentally live in the future — anticipating risks, planning what we'll build next, preparing for when my engineers free up, and constantly tracking whether we're on pace to hit our goals. I'm good at that kind of thinking, but it doesn't turn off easily, and it's started bleeding into the rest of my life making it harder to be present for the ordinary, fleeting moments of raising a child who only lives in the now.
In 2026, I want to hold work more lightly — not by disengaging, but by limiting how much I engage. Showing up fully during the day, then letting it recede instead of mentally carrying it with me at all times. As my good friend David likes to say, I need to treat work a little more like Severance: be "on" while I'm there, then mentally clock out when the day ends. Practically, this means clearer boundaries, fewer self-imposed commitments, and a more tempered relationship with ambition — stay engaged, do good work, but don't grind for promotion at the expense of energy, presence, and family life.
In October, Claire and I traveled with my parents to visit the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. It was the first time any of us (except Claire) had seen the Grand Canyon and the first time in Vegas for my parents. What made this trip particularly special for me, aside from the fact that it was the first time Claire and I had taken a trip with my parents, was that Claire and I largely planned the entire trip and were able to give my parents an experience they might not have found otherwise. From choosing to stay inside the park in the Grand Canyon and enjoy spectacular sunsets and the Milky Way at night, to a "best of the best" experience in Vegas that included a close up magic show, front and center tickets to "O" Cirque du Soleil's famed water show, to the Bacchanal Brunch at Caesar's which features over 250 dishes (and unlimited crab legs). It was truly a trip that I'll never forget.
I have a former teammate who moved back to Spain last year after spending a few years in the US with his family. He always lamented the culture around making plans weeks in advance. Compared to Spain, where he might run into a few friends on his way to a wine bar and convince them to join, social hangs in the US are never spontaneous. There's a lot to unpack there, but the idea that there are probably more unplanned things we can do together deeply resonated.
Given that almost all activities are better with friends, I want to try to make a concerted effort this year to invite friends to more casual hangs:
- Going for a run? Want to run together?
- Drink coffee? Let's meet at a coffee shop.
- Hungry? Come on over and we'll cook for a low-key dinner.
- I'm going to walk Sully in Wash Park, want to walk with me?
This is going to be a bit of an experiment and it may not work for certain activities ("want to come over and read in silence together?!"), but I am excited to try and spend more time together with friends. [Note to Denver friends: you will not hurt my feelings if you decline an invitation to run an errand with me at Costco. You will just be hurting yourself by not getting access to the free samples.]