The real question isn’t “What do I want to change this year?”

It’s “What patterns am I willing to practice, test, and refine -- again and again -- until change becomes the default rather than the exception?”

From treating change less like a rollout and more like a series of small, deliberate experiments that teach you how this system actually works.

Lasting change, whether personal or organizational, rarely comes from declarations. It comes from designing environments, routines, and feedback loops that make better behavior easier and worse behavior harder.

They both assume change is a one-time event rather than an ongoing practice. Set the goal, announce the plan, apply a bit of pressure, and hope willpower carries you across the finish line. Sometimes it does -- for a while.

3. “The Burnout Society” by Byung-Chul Han + “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki: The pathology of self-optimization vs. the discipline of non-striving.

4. “The Wars of the Roses” by Dan Jones + “Rules” by Lorraine Daston: When the breakdown of shared rules turns power into violence.

2. “The Sirens’ Call” by Chris Hayes + “The Extinction of Experience” by Christine Rosen: What happens to human meaning when mediation replaces presence.

This year in video games was dominated by finishing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth early in the year, and then getting absolutely absorbed by Hollow Knight and Silksong. It’s not every year that you replace two of your top five all-time favorite games in the same year, but HK and SS did that this year.

Actually, early in 2025 I was working through the Rest Is History backlog before I decided that was a project I did NOT need to commit myself to.

All the usual suspects in my top podcasts, by listen time. This category is interesting because it’s mostly a function of publishing schedule/length of episode rather than pure enjoyment. Didn’t really do any backlog listening this year so no huge outlier.

Movies were even more sparse than usual. Nuremberg got us going on a bit of a Russell Crowe groove with Gladiator and Master and Commander. Watched Rogue One (rewatch) immediately after Andor S2 which added a new dimension to the movie. Loving the expanding Tim Robinson universe (Friendship).

TV was somewhat minimal, as is typical for me. Still trying to get caught up on Drive to Survive. Andor, Slow Horses, Foundation, Severance, Shrinking, and The Last of Us were all memorable. Really liked Murderbot and Pluribus, too.

I split my time between Spotify (first couple months of the year) and Apple Music (the rest of the year) this year, but I think my Apple Music summary is most representative. No surprises here, with Petey & Coheed taking the top 2 positions (like the past couple years).

Only two books I read this year were re-reads, which I’m pretty sure is much lower than usual. 28% of the books I read this year were fiction (but the pages percentage must be much higher because most of the longest books I read were fiction).

A few of my favorites: The Sirens’ Call by Hayes, The Calculation of Volume #1 and #2 by Balle, Anathem by Stephenson, Apple in China by McGee, and The Etched City by Bishop.

A few books I’d consider part of my “attention project” (i.e. I chose to them because they have a reputation of being long/difficult): Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, The History of Sexuality by Foucault, The Human Condition by Arendt.

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