I'm being indulgent with this week's newsletter. But since it's the closing of the holiday season, I think it's a good time to lift our noses from the grindstone. For example, my family has a tradition to start the year with fondue. Nothing says, "new beginning" like a vat of melted cheese. With the fondue devoured, this week sees school starting again and everyone getting back to work.

To set myself up for a good 2026, I've been drafting my goals. I'm sharing them in the newsletter for a couple of reasons. The first reason is to co-opt you all into being my accountability buddies. Sharing your goals makes you more likely to accomplish them. We naturally don't want to let people down. Knowing that someone else is keeping tabs helps keep you on track. The only cost is having to talk to and connect with people, something we all probably want to do a bit more anyway.

The second reason for writing down goals is to build community. Most of my life I haven't been particularly intentional about what I want to accomplish. I've been lucky and I don't think it's affected me much, but I wish I had set more explicit goals earlier. The years at Amazon when I wrote down and pursued my own targets were some of the most productive and enjoyable of my career. They provided structure in an often ambiguous environment and they helped me to say "yes" to opportunities I might not have otherwise pursued. By tracking and paying attention to my goals, I also made sure I wasn't spending too much time in any one area. There are lots of things we have to do in life, but it can be easy to focus on one area to the exclusion of others. Tracking progress towards goals makes sure you aren't over-indexing in any one area and that you're spending your time and resources wisely. If it worked for me at Amazon, it should work for me outside of Amazon, too.

I don't want this goal sharing to be one-sided. I’m a little self-conscious about having roped you into being my accountability partners. As penance, I want to return the favor. If you have goals that you're trying to hit this year, I want to hear about them. I want to know how I can help. You can find me on the socials listed at my website but the best way to reach me for this kind of thing is LinkedIn. This is a sincere offer and I hope you'll take me up on it.

The newsletter a couple of weeks ago talked about New Year's goals versus resolutions. I explained why I think goals are the better choice. You can go back for more detail, but here are the five rules I have for writing good goals.

I don't expect to meet all my 2026 goals. If I did, it would mean I wasn't being ambitious enough and I should have aimed higher. Here are my goals for 2026. Each one has specific numbers associated with it to make them measurable. If any of them seem silly to you, that's OK. The world is big enough for us all to have our own goals. What are yours?

There are a lot of ways I can satisfy this goal. I want to publish some books, get back into making video games, and do more writing in general. The added bonus of this goal is that publishing projects will look good on my resume when I do eventually look for regular employment. I'm not tying this goal to the next one about making money because the projects are likely to be more personal in nature and I don't need them to be commercially successful. These projects matter because they will get me back into doing work that will expand my skills and spur me to collaborate with others.

Last year I was laid off from Amazon and I've chosen not to immediately find new employment. I may be out of work but I still have bills to pay. I want to supplement my savings with consulting and contract work, the proceeds from the products I create (see above), and any other side work or gig jobs that I find. The number here isn't arbitrary. The federal poverty line for a three-person family is $26,650. So a little bit of this goal is an experiment to see how difficult it would be for me to achieve the bare minimum. All Things Considered on NPR has a great breakdown of why the current way we set the poverty line isn't a good one. Still, I chose this number since it seemed more concrete than just picking a number out of thin air.

From Warhammer to Dungeons & Dragons and Gundam model kits, I've been painting plastic toys and playing games with them for 30 years. It's an activity that allows me to relax and unwind, something I'll still need in the middle of everything else going on. In recent years I've avoided taking the time to sit down and paint. My daughter enjoys painting, too, but I haven't carved out the time for us to paint together, and I should. The most miniatures I've ever painted in a year is 68, so this is an ambitious goal for me.

I have two groups I play role-playing games with each week. I love those games and cherish the time I get to spend rolling dice with friends. But I didn't host many games last year. I've also not played any tabletop wargames in many years. I want to get back to some of the games that I miss and expand my gaming group. I want to run a Dungeons & Dragons game for my daughter and her friends. I want to understand the mechanics of games I've never played before.

Travel has always been a big part of our family's life. My relationship with my (now) wife really took shape when we took a six month world trip together. Spending that much time on the road together was a good test for our "compatibility." We've continued our travels, even after our daughter came along. But I think we're in a little bit of a rut. We tend to repeatedly visit our same favorite places. The action this goal drives is to expand our list of favorite places by traveling to a dozen places we haven't been before.

Those are my five goals for 2026. I've also got a house remodel that I'm working on, but I'm afraid to write down any specific milestones for that project. There are too many potential delays and other problems that are just outside my control. I've gotten the goals written down, shared with people, and I've made a spreadsheet to track my progress (spreadsheets make me happy). I can already see that I'm behind on a few of the goals. Time for me to get cracking.

What are you going to accomplish this year? I'd love to hear about your goals and how we can help each other hit our targets. Find your favorite way to reach me at the social media links at the bottom and tell me about one goal you aren't sure you can meet in 2026.

For more on the unfulfilled promise of AI check out the links below

The Chupigcobra was created by Bramblewick Thornroot, an unhinged druid who believed the spread of farmland was a mortal sin against the wild. Desperate to halt the axes and plows destroying his forest, Thornroot stitched together beast, serpent, and forest spirit in a rite meant to birth a resolute guardian. The monster fulfilled its purpose all too well, but Thornroot fatally misjudged its loyalty. One night, the chupigcobra struck, venom paralyzing him before its fangs struck and drank deeply, draining him of blood. Now the druid’s bones lie somewhere beneath an overgrown meadow, while his creation continues its grim vigil.

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