Birthday Memo

Every year on my birthday, I record a video memo. Usually 20-30 minutes long. I grab my phone and just talk — walking around outside or pacing my apartment, whatever feels right that day. No cuts. No re-records when I stumble over words. No effort to hold the camera properly. One long, unedited take.

When I finish, I watch last year's memo. Once. Then I never watch it again. Nobody else will ever see any of these.

I started doing this at 24. In retrospect, way too late.

It started out of boredom. But looking back, this is probably the most important habit I've picked up.

The obvious thing is progress - you see yourself making a ridiculous amount of it, especially in the areas where you're convinced you're falling behind. But there's a less obvious thing: you watch yourself change in these incredibly nuanced ways. My voice sounds more deliberate now than it did a few years ago. My posture is better. I'm more genuinely fired up about what I'm working on.

Some years I crush it in some hobbies — mountaineering, climbing, trail running. Other years are all about work: growing a skillset, expanding my circles. There's no pattern to it. And the biggest gains are usually the ones I never saw coming.

There's something quietly powerful about accumulating proof that instinctively pushing forward works. Not blind consistency; intention to commit to something you hope ends up being important is really not it. Consistency makes you comfortable.