Extending my 2024 stats here are some thoughts on 2025.

Content

I did a decent job writing in 2024, but my video production dropped off. For 2025 I’d like to be intentional again about getting videos out on YouTube. While I’ll still cover some software stuff on Obsidian or Calibre I’m going to focus more on books and ideas from books this year.

I admit I’m always sad when I see my most popular content is something I wouldn’t make a point of watching. I’m not watching Obsidian how to videos almost ever. I don’t watch how people use Readwise to read later unless I’m looking at doing a video on the topic. I watch, and read about ideas people have for writing better, reading deeper, and how to be a better human.

After a very short initial burst, spending time looking at how people are using their tools and tweaking your system is avoidance of the work. If you’re a writer, just write. If you’re a YouTuber, make videos. Messing with your system only gets in the way of getting your ideas out there.

In 2025 I want to produce content about ideas and books, with the odd bit of supporting content in there about how to use some software to aid in your thinking an note-taking practice.

I’ve also started a book club to focus more on ideas in books and sharing them.

Side Revenue

I don’t need any of the income from memberships, courses, or YouTube. Sure it’s nice, but if it went away tomorrow it wouldn’t change anything about how our family lives it’s life. That said, I’d like to be more intentional about revenue from doing the work that interests me, outlined above.

The biggest change I can make in this department is getting some more YouTube content out again. Getting more eyes on my content via YouTube will get more eyes towards courses and all the other stuff I do which should increase the revenue earned from my other efforts.

The second biggest thing I could do in 2025 is to put out another course. The leading idea I have is about reading well as it fits in with my focus on books and ideas and I think would bring the most benefit to anyone taking the course.

Fitness

I said in my 2024 stats post that I’d keep the 10,000km distance goal for cycling. My big race of the year is going to be Canadian Gravel Nationals in June. That gives me 6 months to prepare for the race. I’ve got a cycling coach to work on the riding portion but I need to handle the eating portion of the equation.

Yes I burn lots of calories when I ride lots, but it’s easy to grab a few cookies, then some pizza and some chocolate and eat far more calories than I burned. I’m currently 90kg and would like to see myself under 80kg by the June race. By no means am I fat, but if I want to race and see how good I can really do there is a strong correlation between weight and getting up hills fast. Canadian Nationals has about 3000m of hills in it and for every kg of weight I drop I’ll gain 15 – 30 seconds with no extra effort.

That gain adds up and I want to get the free speed.

Plus eating less junk is going to be good for my overall health.

A secondary goal is to put in some work for my upper body as cycling focuses on the legs so much. I’ve been doing assisted ring dips, pull-ups, push-ups, and various core exercises 2 – 3 times a week for a bit now and I can see the benefits. Starting in February I’ll look at getting a family gym membership and heading out there a few days a week. Likely one day focused on legs and core, one on upper body and core, then…I have no idea what I’d do on a third day that would benefit cycling.

I’m not looking to bulk up as weight is weight going up hills, but I’d like to be stronger.

Personal Technology

I’m happy with where I’m at for my personal tech. I have a Framework 13” laptop running Fedora as my main working machine. It’s fast and most importantly it’s outside of Apple’s ecosystem so getting extra storage doesn’t require selling body parts.

I’m writing this on my iPad, which I’m enjoying using again for writing. The single focus of the device is always something I’ve loved. As with any iPad person, there is just something that makes some tasks feel way harder than they need to be if I want to only use my iPad.

I have 2 possible purchases this year. Right now my M1 iPad Pro is used to run the smart trainer my wife and I share. Until a few months ago my wife didn’t use this at all so I took my iPad to the trainer when I wanted to use it and then took it with me for whatever else I wanted. Now I don’t have use of my iPad for a few hours most days of the week. I’d like to be able to use my iPad whenever I want and a new Mac Mini is the cheapest device that will run for years to control a smart trainer and maybe stream my rides.

My second possible purchase would be a Linux based desktop PC. For around $3k I can build myself a monster machine with lots of RAM, 8TB of SSD storage and a huge graphics card. All this for less than an Apple machine with half the stats. Yes Apple’s computers are fast and a great deal, until you upgrade them and while my Framework is a nice laptop, it’s a productivity focused machine and takes a hit when I’m doing longer video work. A desktop would not have those struggles.

Web Technology

All my sites run on WordPress but Matt has been a huge ass this year, really showing his true nature so I’d like to move off WordPress. This started last week with moving my email to Kit (formely Convertkit) which can run all the membership content on my site along with any paid newsletters. I’m going to spend some time converting my WooCommerce/WP based paid content to Kit over the next bit which will make it easier to move to a new CMS.

Outside of this site I have 2 others I need to move off WordPress, but they’re simple content sites so I can pick anything that works and run with it.

Financials

This year we’d like to pay off one of the cars we own, a 2019 Subaru Ascent. It’s entirely possible to do this we simply need to be intentional about where we spend our money for the year. We’d save $600/month by paying this off which could go to kids college funds, or retirement savings, or whatever. We’ll likely put some of it away so that the next car we purchase will be paid for day 1 and some into savings.

The second car we own is a 2012 Mini Cooper owned outright. I do most of the work on it as well, so it doesn’t incur a huge amount of cost to the family, in fact the fuel efficiency is so good it makes the Ascent seem like a gas hog.

On a personal front, I’ve got some credit card debt to pay off this year. I’d love to end the year with the only family debt being the mortgage on the house. Increasing the revenue from my side stuff would help make this happen faster.