Today is my birthday. Every year, since I turned 18, I’ve written a blog post with some personal reflections on the previous year and some plans for the future. This year was notable for the conclusion of my twelve-month Foundations project, which I technically finished last month. I decided for logistical reasons to work on […]| Scott H Young
I’m heading into the eleventh month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is organization—getting a handle on your physical stuff to maximize the benefits those things provide while minimizing their ongoing costs in terms of tidying, storage and money spent. Those interested can check out my previous ten months here: fitness, productivity, money, […]| Scott H Young
Learn faster, achieve more| Scott H Young
Today is the first day of the tenth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s theme is focus. Focus is a complement to productivity, the second month, which emphasized creating systems that capture, organize and plan your efforts. But this system-building has an obvious weakness: it doesn’t decide what needs to be done and […]| Scott H Young
I’ve just begun a new month in my year-long Foundations project. This month is focused on reflection, where I’m restarting a daily journaling habit and digging into some of the research on thinking and feeling better. For those interested, you can check out my previous seven months here: Why Journal? The keystone habit for this […]| Scott H Young
I am taking a year to strengthen my own foundations in life, while working with a group of people who want to do the same.| Scott H Young
Having now reached the end of the sixth month of my year-long Foundations project, I’d like to share some reflections on this month’s focus: outreach. In doing the reading for this month, I found myself impressed by the numerous associations between having strong and broad social ties and living well. Being connected isn’t just good […]| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up this month’s focus, reading, in my year-long Foundations project. Normally, I split my final posts into one covering the books I read during the month and one discussing my personal experience and habit changes in the month’s focus area. However, since this month was *about* reading, I decided to merge the two. […]| Scott H Young
Money is the third month of my Foundations project. Read about my plans for improving my personal finances, and how I got to where I am today.| Scott H Young
I’m just beginning the fifth month of my year-long Foundations project. The focus for this month is reading. In case you’re interested, here are the previous months’ content: I picked this focus as one of the twelve because I believe a regular habit of reading, particularly from books, is one of the best foundational habits […]| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up the fourth month in my year-long foundations project. This month, my focus was on food. You can also read my opening update, and my book notes for the month. Previous months centered on fitness, productivity and money. You can also watch my wife’s and my conversation about how this month in the […]| Scott H Young
As I write this, I’m concluding the first month of my year-long foundations project. The first month’s foundation was fitness. You can read my opening update here and my post covering all the books I read this month here. In this essay, I’ll be focusing on how the first month went for me personally, as […]| Scott H Young
Fitness is the first foundation in my year-long project. Here's how I'm getting back into shape.| Scott H Young
Looking to eat better? Here's some books to add to your shelf that helped me!| Scott H Young
I’m writing this on the first day of the fourth month in my year-long foundations project. The focus for this month is on food. See here for my previous months focusing on fitness, productivity and money. What we eat is a central foundation in life. Food provides the energy we use to live. It is […]| Scott H Young
I’m now rounding out the third month in my year-long project to improve my foundations. This month’s focus was money. In particular, the keystone habit I asked students of my course to work on this month was setting up a system to track their expenses and reviewing it at least monthly. Monthly expense tracking has […]| Scott H Young
As might be expected given my renewed focus on productivity, I was pretty productive this month—especially at home, which was a bit of a weakness in my old system.| Scott H Young
Insights from ten classic books on productivity, a continuing series on my year-long Foundations reading project.| Scott H Young
Productivity is the second foundation in my year-long project (and course) to improve the universal elements essential to a good life. As I write this, today is the first day of my month-long productivity challenge, although you’ll probably be reading this in the newsletter around a week later. I didn’t want to publish my month-end […]| Scott H Young