This is a now page. Updated March 22, 2023.
Currently Working On
- Work: Rebranding Recommended Systems into Field Report
- Work: Scaling up production for Dragon Blood Balm (opening second production workshop, turning first into an R&D lab).
- Work: Rebuilding design portfolio for career/freelance optionality
- Life: Working my way back up to being a V8/5.13 climber after not climbing for a few years (currently back at V5/5.11c)
- Life: Training to run first marathon in Jan 2024
- Reading/Learning: Preparing for parenthood
- Reading/Learning: Scientific research on extraction techniques and active compounds in plants (for Dragon Blood Balm)
Future Plans / Long Projects
- Work: Growth focus for Field Report
- Work: Launch photos & prints site
- Project: There's a whole site about design research & teardowns I've wanted to launch for forever, called "Fresh Design Club". I have the domain, just need to find time to actually make the site.
- Writing: Series on company archetypes and how to use them for your career
- Writing: Long post on cash flow management
- Writing: Post on Product Management documents
- Writing: Post on how Product, Engineering, and Design can work together.
- Project: Wrap up Error States into a printed book, adding some new essays on AI
Recent Completions, Wins, Milestones
- Work/Life: Celebrated 1 year of self-employment (March, 2023)
- Work: Built and handed off PrincetonWalks.com (February, 2023)
- Work: Rebuilt and handed off VartanianLab.com (February, 2023)
- Life: Moved twice in two months. Phew! (January-February, 2023)
- Work: Wrapped up efforts on a potential new business idea after doing a bunch of customer research because I realized I don't have the time to be a good partner to the cofounder.
- Life: Visited Hawaii, which I've always wanted to go to (December, 2022)
- Work: Dragon Blood Balm hit $10k MRR (November, 2022)
- Work: Built & launched Recommended Systems (August, 2022)
- Writing: Published "When Everything Is Important But Nothing is Getting Done" after three months of writing and rewriting. Went viral and quickly became 80-90% of all of the traffic and subscriptions that comes to this site. (June, 2022)
- Life: Solo 1-month road trip across the US and back (April-May, 2022)
- Work: Quit my job as Director of Product at Pager to focus full time on my own projects (February, 2022)
Media Diet
I've been pruning my "media diet" for years. These are currently my regularly trusted points of interest. Most of these are newsletters and RSS feeds.
Mostly Business
- Studio D Radiodurams Newsletter by Jan Chipchase
- Commoncog by Cedric Chen
- Stratechery by Ben Thompson
- Margins by Ranjan Roy and Can Duruk
- Big (Antitrust) by Matt Stoller
- Bits About Money by Patrick McKenzie
- Greg Kogan's Blog
Mostly Tech
- Dan Luu's Blog
- Ben Khun's Blog
- Charity Major's Blog
- Irrational Exuberance by Will Larson
- Rachel by the Bay by Rachel Kroll
- Web3 Is Going Just Great by Molly White
Design
- Brand New / Under Consideration Newsletter
- Monthly Dispatch by Jarret Fuller
- The Dieline Newsletter
- Die, Workwear! by Derek Guy
General Interest
- Roden & Ridgeline by Craig Mod
- Things That Have Caught My Attention by Dan Hon
- Vaugh Tan's blog
- Scope of Work (formerly The Prepared) about manufacturing and supply chains
Writers
- Antipope by Charlie Stross
- Newsletter by Robin Sloan
- Orbital Operations by Warren Ellis