Wrapping up Season 2

These last couple of months have flown by.

In a post at the end of April, I outlined what you can expect from the 2nd iteration of Growth Meditations. In that email, I committed to focusing on this newsletter consistently for 8 weeks straight.

Despite my energy pulling me in other directions—including a new project / potential business!?—it feels great to deliver on that promise, with this issue being the 9th week in a row sending these emails. ✅ 

At a Glance

• My reflections on the 2nd iteration of this newsletter (the last couple months).

• An update on my experiment to build a habit.

• Next steps: I’ll be back in September with more updates on the future of Growth Mediations.

• In the meantime, please subscribe to Slightly Smarter. I’d love your feedback and perspective to help shape this project!

Reflections on v2

A quick post-mortem on what I said you could expect:

🟢 Shorter articles. I was targeting to keep each issue under 500 words. → Not quite, but better. Despite 3 issues that ended up around the same length as my previous average (1,100 words), the average of the remaining 5 issues in this sprint was 618 words.

🟢 More focused. I attempted to only highlight 3-5 key ideas on a specific topic in each issue. → I did a better job staying on topic (which makes it easier for me to reference old issues on the blog), but I still struggled to stick to 3-5 points each week. In the future, I plan to experiment with constraints / guardrails, or use a consistent structure for the newsletter. I may also consider a multi-week series that connects topics from week-to-week.

🟢 Consistent delivery. I said you’d receive the emails every Wednesday by 7:00 am EDT. → All nine emails arrived on Wednesday mornings, but two of them came after 7am due to other priorities. In the future, I want to build a backlog instead of waiting until the last minute.

🟠 Expanded social presence. I intentionally avoided creating social content for Growth Mediations since I’m not ready to scale it yet. However, I did experiment with creating bite-size pieces of the content for Slightly Smarter (check us out and follow on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X). Tons of learnings from this, so I expect these will improve SIGNIFICANTLY in the future. But here is my favorite post from this sprint:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scott-johnson-nyc_slightly-smarter-strong-vision-loosely-activity-7202699569313300480-_Uak?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

🟠 A podcast: Similar to social, I intentionally didn’t publish a podcast for Growth Meditations, but I did leveled up in this area too. I now have the equipment, and I even practiced recording a few different types of episodes. I need a lot more practice / better production, but it felt good to take the first step. More to come here.

Habits

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post explaining how I’m trying to build a simple daily habit by experimenting with several of James Clear’s concepts from his book Atomic Habits.

Long story short—I failed.

I was doing great for a while, but fell off track while traveling for a weekend, and struggled to get back into a consistent routine.

Few of my learnings (and reminders to myself):

• One at a time. I picked 13 different concepts/tools from Atomic Habits to experiment with, and it was WAY too many for any one of them to stay top of mind. James Clear says to master one habit (rather than tracking multiple at a time), and I recommend you do the same with his tools/techniques (e.g., pick one implementation intention at a specific time of the day to start).

• It must be a priority. No matter how small or easy the habit is to do, if it’s not a habit you REALLY want to build, then you’re ‘swimming upstream’ and it’s going to be difficult when you face obstacles.

• It’s okay to change course. If you’re energy is pulling you towards another habit (or another priority!) that’s also beneficial, go with it. There’s no reason to be so rigid. Follow your energy and ride the wave. Progress is rarely a straight line.

• New environment, new plan. When you’re traveling or coming back from a trip, you probably need a different plan—or at the minimum, to recommit to the plan (e.g., double down until you have momentum).

• Never miss two days. If you’re going to follow any advice from the book, this is where I’d start. It’s a simple way to make sure you don’t lose momentum.

Moving Forward

I’m planning to take the rest of the summer off from Growth Meditations.

I have some upcoming travel, and I’m planning to put all my energy into my other project: Slightly Smarter. We have some momentum building, so I want to give it everything I have!

I’ll be back in September with more updates on the future of Growth Mediations. I have a few different ideas on how this might evolve 😉, so I’m excited to see how Season 3 shapes up.

In the meantime, please subscribe to Slightly Smarter and send me any feedback you have! It’s very, very early days so I expect it will evolve quite a bit, and I’d LOVE your perspective to help shape it.

Thanks again and talk soon!

Scott