Hello one and all,

Happy new year! 2024 sounds weird to me at the minute. Maybe once you stop writing it at the top of your page every day in school it starts to take longer to get used to.

Today’s newsletter focuses a bit on what A Work In Progress is all about and self-improvement as a whole. And don’t forget to subscribe if you’re new!

Wtf is self-improvement?

Let’s focus on the latter first - what actually is self-improvement? James Clear has an answer:

Clearly, self-improvement is an active process, and it requires consideration and effort to become better versions of ourselves.

It’s not a hobby. Something to read at night and forget about by the morning, or a podcast to half listen to while cooking.

I mean, it can be your hobby if you really want, but there’s surely much more enjoyment out there than self-improvement podcasts if they aren’t being put to much use (Harry Potter audiobooks, cough).

Self-improvement will be at it’s most effective when it is focused and goal orientated. Focusing on calorie intake to lose weight, reading more widely to learn more, running 3x per week to train for a half marathon - that sort of thing.

Do: use what you learn and consume to become a better version of yourself

Don’t: waste your time consuming self-improvement as a hobby without action. Go and read more interesting stuff!

A way of being or a relentless pursuit?

To some, like me, self-improvement is exciting. It offers the prospect of a better version of yourself - who wouldn’t want that?

But, to others, it’s the ongoing unease of not being quite good enough, not being your full self, not quite being who you want to be.

This is the area I’m really interested in and want to be a focus of A Work In Progress going forward.

We are exactly that: a work in progress. On our own terms, working to our own timeframe, and to our own standard. We won’t ever really be the finished product, and that’s fine.

And by accepting that we probably always will be a work in progress, the focus can then be on enjoying the process, rather than reaching the end goal or becoming the final product.

Take improving at work, for example. I recently read this in The Squiggly Career - it really summarises what A Work in Progress is and should be all about:

It’s less about never being perfect, and more about constantly building on ourselves and adapting to an ever changing environment.

And the truth is, self-improvement means different things to different people.

Learning excel, baking every Friday night, achieving a 5K p.b., learning to swim, fixing a bike, writing a weekly newsletter, putting away your phone at 9pm nightly, journalling every morning, eating less chocolate, eating more chocolate, calling Mum more often, presenting more at work, reading a chapter a day/week, speaking up in the office, starting a new gym routine, saying thank you more often, thinking about something you’re grateful for every night.

It can be big or small, often or less frequent, but ultimately it’s about slowly and methodically becoming a better version of ourselves. What it doesn’t need to be is the relentless pursuit of a million and one irrelevant things that are too difficult, performative, or irrelevant.

Do: enjoy focusing on specific areas/skills/things to improve in a considered, trackable and informed way

Don’t: choose a million and one things, often based on the latest trends online, become overwhelmed, and give up

Do: focus on ourselves, what matters to us, and what we want

Don’t: compare what others are focusing on to what we are focusing on. The only important thing is the improvement from old me to current me, not me vs others. No need to give a shxt what everyone else is doing, they are in their own lane. ‘Left unchecked, comparison can make you miserable.’ Also check out Stoic teaching on comparing ourselves to others

A work in progress is…

…a celebration of useful ways to think about life, ourselves and the slow and gradual improvement that simple and straightforward actions can achieve.

It will also be a way for me to focus on, and share my experience of, becoming a better version of myself through focused and considered reading and watching of all things self-improvement. Hopefully we all learn something along the way!

It’ll also continue to be my way of sharing cool stuff. Most of it will be useful in the sense of being helpful, some of it will just be cool. How’s that?

A note to self:

Do: share interesting and useful things, focus on what’s important and worth sharing, share often and openly

Don’t: worry about what people think, and don’t write if it’s not worth sharing. Our time is important!

Happy 2024, I hope great things are coming to you.

Jake

This week I'm: ⬇️

Some interesting stuff worth sharing.

📖 Finishing off Ultra-Processed People. Believe me when I say this - it’s one of the best books I have ever read and has changed how I view and now consume food (and when I say food I mean actual FOOD rather than E501, hydrolysed proteins, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, etc). It’s a fascinating look into not just the (terrifying) health effects of ultra-processed food, but also the affect UPF is having on the environment (soy bean and oil palm farming), society (obesity) and our money. It’s scary and life changing in equal amounts. The best bit is it’s highly readable - it’s written like a BBC documentary (which makes sense as Chris Van Tulleken has created docs for BBC). Go read it!

🧑🏻‍💻 Sharing this accompanying Guardian article in case you don’t fancy reading the book (which you really, really should)

👏🏼 Enjoying this bit of fancy design that turns a McDonald’s bag into a table for 2

🌎 Watching this video of an underwater earthquake, scary stuff

🦞 And also watching this lobster fisherman who caught a half blue, half red lobster (odds of which are 1 in 50 million) which also happens to be half male, half female. The odds of catching this are basically impossible

📱 Playing GTA: San Andreas on iPhone. What! You can play it free via your Netflix subscription. A great way to pass the time while traveling long distances, and it works really well

📖 Reading The Squiggly Career, which explains how the idea of the career ladder is outdated. People are going from industry to industry and changing roles far more often than previously, so we need to adapt accordingly. I’ve only just started, will report back as I go through it

💻 Also reading 100 tiny habits to start in 2024 - there’s a fair bit of daft stuff in this list which has contributed to it going viral (not an accident), but a lot of it is useful. I’m a big fan of leaving the phone away from the bedside table and using a Lumie light to wake up instead. On the rare times I sleep with my phone next to me, I almost always end up scrolling in the morning before I get up. Such a waste of time

🥄 Eating at least one spoon of kimchi or sauerkraut a day. My pal Mr Gut Health says it’s good for you (feeds your gut microbiome, which produces 95% of the body’s total serotonin and is one of the key focuses for scientists at the moment for its role in our health and wellbeing), and what he says goes. It’s also very nice. What’s to lose?

✍🏻 Updating my CV - sorry, it’s boring. But it’s good practice and probably worth you doing it every Jan

📝 Reading the various end of year lists that circulate the internet, usually a good place to grab a few recommendations. Austin Kleon and Goodreads are two I usually look forward to, Ali Abdaal usually does a good one for books (as of yet not out).

💬 And finally, a quote

David Epstein - Range

Thanks!

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In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and have a look at what I’m reading on Goodreads.

📸 BONUS: Photo of the Week