I hate the feeling of wondering where the year went.
Twice in my life I resolved to record every day in an app on my phone. I did this in 2011 and 2015 and it is the single best antidote to this feeling. At the end of a week or month, if you ever find yourself wondering where the time went, you just pop open the app and flip through the days and remember each in vivid detail and realize how much has gotten accomplished in the last stretch of time. That feeling of “I-can’t-believe-it’s-already-December” instantly disappears.
I first did this in 2011 when we raised a $6.5M Series A for Next Big Sound. I also decided to do it in 2015, the year we sold Next Big Sound to Pandora. Both were very stressful and transformative years in my life. I love that I can go back and see how I was feeling, what I was doing, where I was on the planet, and what I was excited, hopeful, and worried about as each event unfolded.
It sounds like an easy task to write down 3-5 sentences that describe your day each night but I’m actually looking forward to not having this resolution currently running and I don’t know if I’ll ever do it for a third time.
Perhaps if time starts to speed up again in my life and I find myself wondering where the year went :)