One thing you should know about me is I love tinkering. I always have a side-project or two on the go, and an office littered with kickstarted gadgets, half-completed projects and the various detritus of a jumbled mind.
However, everything reaches a tipping point, and in 2025 I think I was teetering on the edge of a proper burnout moment. I think I managed to just about dance-between-the-raindrops enough not to completely toast myself…but I got close a few times!
So when 2026 rolled around, in that brief lull and New Year introspection, I made a commitment: Let’s do some legwork to avoid me having to sheepishly write another navel-gazing blogpost in 2027 where I wonder where the year’s gone…
Environmental Scaffolding
Let’s start with some foundational ideas:
- Avoid Overthinking
- Build in External Accountability
- If in doubt, do the minimum you need to do to Do The Damn Thing
So with that in mind, here’s my first post of 2026. Boom, one deadline down.
The Stakes
For my next trick, I’m making the following public commitment with a specific deadline:
I will blog 3 more times before the end of February
I’m going to share this post on LinkedIn so I have external accountability.
And to make things a bit more interesting…
If I fail to hit the end-of-February deadline, I have to post a clearly GenAI Hustleslop LinkedIn Status about my failure to hit the first accountability deadline of 2026
I really don’t want to do that, so let’s get out there and DO THE DAMN THING
