2024 was a big year and there was a lot to learn! (There always is, right?) I often do these kinds of reflections around my birthday but this year, it felt more like a year-end kind of thing.
This is a list of things I spent hours thinking about or writing about in 2024. Some of them are brand new lessons and others are old lessons that bubbled up this year, for whatever reason. I have hours to say about each of the things on this list, so give me a call and we can talk about them. I want to know what you learned this year, too!
Many blessings to all for 2025!
- Facts are good news. To solve a problem, you need to know what it is. This may require going down some rabbit holes you’d rather not. That said, you can’t slay the dragon if you don’t know how big he is, where he lives, or what it takes to kill him.
- You can leave. Just stand up, turn around, and walk right on out of there.
- To create the future you desire, start acting like Future You acts. Say yes only to the opportunities she says yes to. Respond to emails the way she does. Operate out of the principles that got her to where she is because that’s how she got there. Scary how much this works.
- The Peter Principle is something I didn’t know about until this year and now a whole lot of things make sense that didn’t before.
- The smartest person in the room can explain the thing to you in a way you’ll understand. If he can’t, he’s not actually the smartest person in the room. If nobody in the room can explain it to you in a way you can understand, see #2.
- The funniest person in the room is probably also the smartest.
- It’s really hard to find good Colombian coffee in Colombia. The fresh juices are amazing, though.
- Speaking of Colombia, Colombia is spelled with two o’s. It’s not one o and one u, Columbia is a university and a clothing brand, Colombia is the country. The reason North Americans spell it with the second u is because of the schwa sound (aka the lazy vowel.)
- Related: eliminate the schwa from your Spanish if you want it to sound like a native speaker’s.
- Things usually look significantly better in the morning, after you sleep. If they don’t look even a little better, you might be in trouble and you should reach out for help right away.
- In business: succinctly state your idea, request, or answer and then stop talking. The more you prattle on, the more you sound like you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Ask me how I know.
- You don’t have to answer the question right away. You can say nothing or “I’ll get back to you,” or “I’m not sure.”
- Costco is the best place to get… everything. The business is amazing, too. They do everything differently. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, listen to the three-hour Acquired episode.
- The essentials are pesto, coffee, half and half, sourdough, San Pellegrino, paper towels, and toilet paper. It’s way better to have extra than to run out, so when you go to Costco, throw those in the cart, even if you’re not sure about the exact quantity at home.
- Do not underestimate the power of restraint. It can give you much of what you want.
- Many (most?) labels are incomplete, unnecessary, and constrain. Consider what your problem would be like if it had a different name or no name at all.
- Women can fix things and manage money. (It’s true!)
- Expensive/extravagant gifts can be impressive and thoughtful, or they can be lazy and unoriginal.
- Meditation has changed my life and it can change yours too. Pick a method and stick to it. Your mind kept wandering off? That’s meditating. Returning is the practice. Keep going.
- On power: “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” Margaret Thatcher
- The very best people are way off the grid.
- You don’t have to take it just because it’s free.
- Get clear about the relationship between time and money. Time is not a renewable resource.
- Celebrity of any kind is not what you think it is and there are a lot of illusions involved.
- Regarding problems you want to solve: There’s the thing and then there’s the “thing behind the thing” and then there’s the thing behind that thing, and so on, sometimes four or five layers deep. To solve the problem, you have to be willing to keep peeling back the layers until you uncover what the actual problem is. (See #1) Take it all the way down to the subfloor and the studs. Then you’ll be getting somewhere.
- Your inner voice knows things you don’t. To find out what they are, try this: sit in a quiet room. Take a deep breath or two. Write the words “Dear Inner Voice, what do you want me to know about _____?” Then start writing exactly what your inner voice tells you. Caveat: this doesn’t mean it’s true.
- The ability to make connections other people do not make is a superpower. It’s also… whatever the opposite of a superpower is.
- Bilingualism is a spectrum, not a binary. There are shades.
- In all things: show, don’t tell.
- Sometimes people come into your life to open up a portal to another world, like tour guides from the great beyond. You want to keep them forever, but you can’t. Whether you get them back or not isn’t up to you.
- Supernovas are devastating and beautiful. They shine so bright and so big that they light up absolutely everything. Then they collapse and turn into a bunch of disparate things, including a black hole.
- A French Press is the best way to get good coffee inexpensively and without the drama.
- Throughout 2024 I’ve been cultivating a list called “high vibration” — this is what’s on it so far:
- Showing gratitude
- Meditating
- Cleaning up
- Going for a walk
- Being outside and in nature
- Hugs
- Rest when needed
- Fresh flowers
- Water
- Getting ready
- Getting started
- Indian food
- Five-minute journal
- Sunlight
- Fruits and veggies
- Doing something kind for someone else
- Making a list
- Lighting a candle
- Sparkling water
- Learn what inspired action means and then take some.
- Writers write. They’re always writing, even when they’re not writing. I write to communicate, sure, but I usually write to think. I’ve written thousands of words about some of the ideas on this list.
- Sankofa is a hard-to-translate idea about returning to something that is lost or broken. It is not bad to return. Go back and get it.
- Write a letter to money and write money’s response to you. Game changer.
- Play very long games.
- Fundamentalism of all kinds is destroying everything.
- You might wish you didn’t judge a book by its cover but you absolutely do.
- Level up your network and you’ll level up your life.
- Let’s talk about plausible deniability for a second. You know what? Nevermind.
- On tact: “Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” — Winston Churchill
- Five stars is great, but if you are with the right people, you only need one.
- On the other hand, toilet paper should always be five star. Never single-ply. Never.
- San Pellegrino in big glass bottles forever and ever amen. I won’t be taking further questions at this time.
- The quality of crowdsourcing advice in most Facebook or other online forums is usually B- quality at best, and it’s probably more like D+ quality. (There are a few exceptions to this, but this is the rule). This is because the people giving the advice, 1. Don’t know you or your situation personally and don’t care very much about you 2. People who hang around facebook forums a lot are often chronic BSers and will give you their best guess, even when they’re not sure. 3. Most people paint with a really broad brush 4. About a million other reasons. If you need advice, ask a mentor, or a therapist, or a friend, or someone in your family, or your boss (or someone else’s boss) to help you. If you don’t have any of those people in your life, go ahead and post your question in the forum but let it be a warning to you. You need real people to give you real advice. Four hundred people giving you their 4-sentence hot take is not nourishing advice.
- I recently got contacts and I absolutely love them. The only problem I’ve had with them so far is trusting that it’s true how I can see without something on my face, fogging up and slipping down my nose. It feels too good to be true. Every once in awhile I panic and think “How is it that I can see this clearly right now?” Sometimes, when things feel too good to be true, it’s because it’s an illusion, the other shoe will drop, and some stuff is about to go down. Other times, though, it’s just really that good.
- F around and find out. This means “fool around and find out.” And let me tell you, the more you fool around, the more you’re gonna find out. Conversely, if you never fool around, you’ll never find out. I learned this from life experience and also an Instagram reel.
- Free weekly newsletters you might consider reading: James Clear / Tim Ferriss.
Copyright Traci Smith, 2024. I wrote this, not AI.