Category: Debrief

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Posted on by Jerad Hill

“I’m just getting older and better.” —Neal Schon

I turned 45 last week. My only thought about it was that I’m now closer to being a half-century old than having turned 40. For some reason, that seems different. My wife got us a cabin for two nights, and aside from a three-mile hike in the snow, we lounged and ate cheese. It was nice.

2025 Schedule Framework

Earlier this month, I discussed how I am taking the pressure off of January by using it to plan rather than launching a bunch of last-minute goals and resolutions. Starting the year this way has been a change of pace.

The most significant insight I have gained over the past three weeks is the need for a framework to build my schedule. I fed an AI tool as much information as possible about my life and work responsibilities, as well as a few goals, to have it build me a schedule. The AI tool suggested timeboxing, which is not a new concept for me. The only problem is that it did not get granular enough. Even with time-boxed areas for me to work within, I still had to devise a list of tasks and prioritize them appropriately.

That led me to list everything I need and want to do daily so I could schedule everything else around that. I also started listing weekly, monthly, quarterly, and one-time items for 2025. This list contains some goal-related and non-negotiable items I want to ensure are not skipped. Honestly, this has been hard. I have spent too many years of my life fitting things in where they can and responding to needs rather than creating space for them around my life.

Here’s what that looks like:

Daily Framework

Daily items are typically recurring tasks on my schedule.

Weekly Framework

  • Bible Studies
  • Date/Checkin with my wife
  • 1 x Video posted to the tech and camera YouTube channels
  • Write in the journals to my kids

Weekly items are also recurring tasks on my schedule. Some are locked to a specific date and time, while others can be completed when time permits.

Monthly Framework

  • 1 on 1 with each of my kids
  • Breakfast with my father-in-law
  • Go flying at least one time
  • Some sort of photography excursion/adventure

Monthly items get scheduled at the beginning of the month but are more flexible than weekly or daily items.

Quarterly Framework

  • Night away with my wife
  • 24-hour Midbar (Means “wilderness” in Hebrew) Solitude Refuge (Luke 5:16 ESV)
  • Run a half-marathon
  • Ride 50+ miles on my bike in one ride

One Time 2025

  • Run a marathon
  • Family Trip
  • Cohen’s 13th trip
  • ManCamp 2025 (Father-son weekend I host)
  • Ride 100+ miles on my bike in one ride

One-time items are things I want to do or accomplish once in 2025.

You might notice that most items on this list are family or personal. This is intentional. Work will be completed, and there is plenty of time for that. However, my schedule will fill up if I don’t prioritize my family and personal needs.

When I look at the week ahead, I will schedule it around these non-negotiables,, which make up the framework of my schedule.

If you find yourself reacting to a lack of time for the things that matter to you rather than being proactive, try creating a scheduling framework for yourself.

Personal Mission Statement

For years, I have guided clients through the process of developing a mission and vision statement for their business. To effectively market to potential customers, you have to know your values and find people who align with them. I had never considered doing something similar for myself.

My mission statement:

To exercise faithful sovereignty over my life’s key domains – personal character, family relationships, spiritual growth, and meaningful goals – making purposeful choices that create lasting positive impact and honor what’s been entrusted to me.

Three ways to use a personal mission statement:

  1. To measure new requests or opportunities against
    It’s easy to add new things to our lives. Everything sounds good at the moment until reality sets in, and we realize that this new thing doesn’t align with what’s truly important. A personal mission statement gives us something to measure those things against.
  2. To identify with
    There is no shortage of things or causes in this world with which to identify. Whether it be the truck you drive, your job, or something else, we are wired to belong to something. The world wants us to focus on these external things rather than what is internally important to us. Identifying with external things only serves us so long as the external thing continues to work for us. When the external thing breaks down, it causes conflict and forces you to find something else to identify with—identifying with the internal means that the one with room to grow is me, not the external identity.
    My identity is based in Christ, which shapes both my inner life and my outward growth.
  3. To declare direction
    It’s not about ‘what can I accomplish?’ but ‘what do I want to accomplish? (Brené Brown)
    If you want your life to have a purpose, you must declare what you want. A personal mission statement helps you flesh that out. Saying you want to be rich doesn’t get you closer to becoming wealthy. The process of creating a mission statement enables you to identify your primary goals so that you can align yourself with them.

Just as I grow, so will my personal mission statement.

Weekly Debrief

I haven’t been keeping up with my weekly debriefs this year, but I’m getting back into them.

Fitness (YTD)

  • Running: 31.1 mi
  • Cycling: 161.9 mi

Biggest Insight:

I need a framework that prioritizes what matters most to me, allowing me to build my schedule around my core values and goals rather than fitting them into whatever time remains. (See my scheduling framework above)

Biggest Wins:

  • Cabin with my wife for my birthday
  • Emmy’s first basketball game
  • Liam’s basketball team won two games in a row
  • 100-day streak of reading a Bible chapter every day
  • I have been getting more sleep

Biggest Losses:

  • Workout recovery has been slower than usual

This Week:

  • Finish a big client project
  • Film the rest of my Ultimate Apple Productivity Course

</End of Brief>

That’s all for this week. As I continue to adjust the format of my debrief, I’d appreciate your thoughts in the comments below.

Have a great week!

Jerad Hill

Weekly Debrief – 11/24/24

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Fitness:

  • Cycling: 40.5 miles
  • Running: 0
  • Weight Training: 1 hour

I didn’t work out much this week. Since flying to NY for work a few weeks ago, I have been waking up with sinus headaches on the right side of my head.

Goal Status (2024):

  • Running Goal (500 miles): 477.4 miles
  • Cycling Goal (3,000 miles): 2,706.8 miles

Weekly Insight:

Self-doubt often disconnects us from objective reality, but structured reflection and community connection can help restore perspective.

Wins:

  • Productive work week
  • I got a lot of extra sleep

Losses:

  • I didn’t work out much
  • Headaches
  • Didn’t journal much

This Week:

  • Finish client work for BF/CM
  • Family coming to visit for Thanksgiving
  • Relax more!

Quotes from reading this week:

In the conscious state of mind, thoughts and emotions are perceived as feedback, not your master.
”The Art of Focus” – Dan Koe

So our first step in improving our outcomes is to train ourselves to identify the moments when judgement is called for in the first place, and pause to create space to think clearly.
”Clear Thinking” – Shane Parrish

Therapy can hijack our normal processes of resilience, interrupting our psyche’s ability to heal itself, in its own way, at its own time.
”Bad Therapy” – Abigail Shrier

</End of Brief>

That’s all for this week. I’d appreciate your thoughts in the comments below as I continue to adjust the format of my debrief.

Have a great week!

Jerad Hill

Weekly Debrief – 11/18/24

Posted on by Jerad Hill

This was one of those weeks that seemed to disappear into thin air. Thankfully, I have a lot to show for it, and there were some key moments throughout it that I hope to remember for a long time.

In the newsletter, I shared my thoughts on being “just ok” at things and my simple framework for learning.

Weekly Debrief

Fitness

  • Running: 10.4 miles
  • Cycling: 65 miles
  • Weight Training: 1 hour

Weekly Insight

This week’s insight comes from a quote that I read. That quote led me to think about how it applies to my life and the perspective I’m working to have.

“The space between expectation and reality is tension, pain, and suffering. ~Dan Koe

My interpretation and application:

The space between the fairy tales we envision for our family and the beautiful chaos of reality is where we grow into the parents and partners we’re meant to be.

Wins

  • Sharing my story with Jon
  • Cohen’s half-court shot at the buzzer at the end of the second period!
  • Playing drums on the worship team at church.
  • Discussion with my wife about being enough.

Loss

  • I was mentally wiped from sharing my story with Jon and did not recharge afterward.
  • Snacked way too much.

This Week

  • Write more
  • Continue working on tuning the vision and mission for my YouTube channels
  • Finish Black Friday/Cyber Monday client marketing work

Quote of the week

“Are you trying to achieve greatness or avoid disappointment?” ~Brennan Lee Mulligan

</End of Brief>

That’s all for this week. I’d appreciate your thoughts in the comments below as I continue to adjust the format of my debrief.

Have a great week!

Jerad Hill

Weekly Debrief – 11/10/24

Posted on by Jerad Hill

My kids had Friday off from school, which aligned perfectly with the needs of a couple from our church who were moving from an apartment on the third floor to a home on the ground level. If my boys had a choice, they would have preferred to sleep in and play video games, but in good spirits, they helped me and another couple help this family move.

Serving together is essential.

It is what it is

Such is life; that’s how the cookie crumbles; it is what it is; these are common idioms we use to respond to life’s circumstances, and I’m trying to push back against them.

The problem with these responses is that they are positions of resignation. Nobody uses these statements from a place of contentment. While I hear these types of reactions from others more than I use them myself, I want to avoid the fixed mindset that comes from the practice of acknowledging uncomfortable realities without seeking to improve them.

In a post this week, I’ll explore how I’m working to avoid this mindset and improve my response to others when they use defeatist language.

I’m also trying something new with the Weekly Debrief. Rather than splitting it up and making the insight deep dive a members-only section, I will save it for a members-only post. My goal is to write one of these each week. This will also avoid these expositions from getting buried.

Planning using the Reminders App

I’ve tried a variety of methods for structuring my time such as calendar boxing, but it’s never worked well for me. Having too many items in my calendar makes it challenging for me to focus on meetings and appointments. I prefer a layer of separation between my tasks and my meetings. I have also been adding specific workouts and other items as reminders to remove additional decision making. Using a task manager and reminders saves me from having to make decisions which can sometimes lead to procrastination. I’ll dive deeper into how I’m using these tools on my tech YouTube channel and in my tech focused newsletter.

Weekly Debrief

Fitness

  • Cycling: 27.1 miles
  • Running 22.8 miles

Biggest Insight

“It is what it is.” How often am I conforming to rather than attempting to transform the situation? Am I allowing myself to be limited, or am I looking at how I can push back and push through to a new way of seeing things or responding?

Wins

  • Sunday long run 11 miles
  • Moving a family with my boys
  • Emmy and Mal having a nice weekend away.
  • Cohen’s basketball team having their first win
  • Productive week. Mapped out the rest of the months client work.
  • Hard, but good talk with my wife.
  • My wife’s hard work decorating for the school gala fundraiser looked amazing.
  • Mal and I voting together at the polls.

Losses

  • Spent too much time frustrated and a bit selfish over my wife’s time spent working on things outside of the home.
  • Didn’t respond well in a few different situations to my wife and my kids.
  • Hurried through my daily Bible chapter reading a few of the days this week.
  • Not a lot of miles cycled.
  • Woke up with headaches a few times this week

This Week’s Focus Areas

  • Client prep for Black Friday/Cyber Monday promos
  • Practice drums for worship team

Multi-Cam Livestreaming Course Launch

Earlier this year I published a YouTube video on the topic of setting up a multi-camera livestream. That video performed well and recently broke 400,000 views. I have wanted to produce a course on the topic for months. The video was fast paced and didn’t get deep into detail leading to a lot of questions and requests for something more structured. I now have half of that course produced and launched the course for a discounted price while I finish editing the rest of the content.

Check out the course page

Apple Vision Pro 3rd Chance

Diving back into AR/VR and the pros and cons of AI

In a recent post on my tech Substack, I discussed working using the Apple Vision Pro. I also shared a few recent videos on topic of Foldable Phones and iPhone 16 Pro cases. Consider subscribing to my free tech Substack.

Would I follow me if it wasn’t me?

This is a question I have been asking myself about the content I put out on the internet.

My interests vary and my YouTube channels have represented that well. That however has led to challenges with finding an audience on the platform. People follow channels on YouTube for specific type of content or to follow a person they can relate to. My content doesn’t fall into either of those categories, so I decided to step outside of my little world and ask the question, “if I wasn’t me, would I follow these channels?” The answer was, probably not.

After some time thinking I decided that my YouTube channels needed to be more focused and include more personal insights on how I am using tech in my life. Here is what I ended up with:

  • Tech Channel – I am a productivity focused entrepreneur who uses modern technology in his life and business. I am a father of four that desires to raise tech-smart children.
  • Camera Channel – I am a professional photographer with 20 years of experience. Being a photographer has given me the flexibility to craft a lifestyle of flexibility. I desire to help others build and grow their own photography business and encourage lifestyle design.
  • Personal Channel – I have been self-employed since I was 20 years old (25 years ago) which has led to me being able to live a flexible life. I don’t miss my kids school and sporting events, I serve at my local church, I invest in myself and my personal growth and the growth of others as well. I desire to help others escape the 9-5 so they can create the life they want to live.

</End of Brief>

That’s all for this week. I’d appreciate your thoughts on the format change in the comments below.

Have a great week!

Jerad Hill

The Pros & Cons of AI – Weekly Debrief – 11/3/24

Posted on by Jerad Hill

I’ve been thinking about AI a lot this week. Since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene, leading the way for a slew of AI-based tools and services, I have been trying to figure out how to use it in my work and deepen my understanding of things. Companies are looking to disrupt all areas of tech with AI tools, and it’s impossible to keep up with the changes.

When it comes to using AI tools like ChatGPT, I find the most value in using them to get me to the rough draft state of an idea. I have yet to have AI generate something so new and profound that my mind is blown. However, if I feed it enough information and a general concept, it can get me past my typical early point of failure. Sometimes, it’s easier to create something if you can get a head start, even if that head start is wrong.

The catalyst for thought this week came about after watching a news report about an AI chatbot site that convinced a boy to take his life. About four months ago, I blocked the same site from my home network because one of my kids found himself exploring the site.

The problem with the race to develop the best AI tools is that little or no attention is being paid to safety measures. I’m pretty sure this is how we end up with a real-life Skynet. Further research about this chatbot site led me to an article from Futurism, where they tested just how far this chatbot site would go before offering help or support to the user (https://futurism.com/suicide-chatbots-character-ai).

As a parent, I feel strongly about protecting my kids from things that can cause them damage. Keeping our kids safe online can be a full-time job. I want my kids to understand how to traverse this landscape safely, knowing they must guard their hearts and minds.

I want to know how you’ve used AI for work or play. If you care to share, use the comment section below this post. I’m also still trying to dial in my voice here in these posts, so if anything strikes you as interesting, I would appreciate the feedback.

Weekly Debrief

Fitness

  • Cycling: 120 miles
  • Running: 4 miles
  • Weights: 120 minutes

Biggest Insight

I have some notes from this week but nothing I can narrow down into a significant insight. Here are some quotes I thought about this week

No one will teach you how to live your own life. ~Insight from Claude.ai

Action completes the cycle of building up and breaking down thoughts. ~Caroline Leaf

I don’t have to be right all of the time; I just need to be right in a big way a few times a year. ~Jack D. Schwager

A crowded mind leaves no space for a peaceful heart. ~Joseph Nguyen

Wins

  • Lots of miles logged
  • Good conversations at Bible study this week
  • Cohen’s Basketball game (7th grade), major comeback in 4th period
  • Discussion with Josh over coffee
  • Both of my sons having good friend time over the weekend

Losses

  • Didn’t get much reading done
  • Not enough sleep on average

This Week

  • Work on Multi-Cam Live-streaming Course
  • Film daily scripture study reels
  • Client work
  • Mal & Emmy away for birthday weekend

Have a great week!

Jerad Hill

Weekly Debrief – October 27th, 2024

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

The weather is cooling off in Kalispell, MT. Leaves have turned, and everybody seems to be preparing for winter. Earlier this week, I took my wife on a scenic flight around the valley to enjoy it from a different perspective. This weekend, I winterized our travel trailer and cleared out room in the garage so we could park my wife’s car inside.

At the beginning of this year, I set a goal of cycling 3,000 miles and running 500. I got back into cycling late last year, so I set a lofty goal for 2024 as I did with running last year. My goal last year was to run 1,000 miles. If I remember correctly, I ran just over 800 miles last year.

For the last few months, I have been behind my cycling goal about 100 miles. This week, I wanted to make up for it, so I logged the most miles on my bike in months. Falling behind on goals used to derail me, but I’m less of a perfectionist than I used to be.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose. ~Dolly Parton

I heard this quote this weekend. It resonated with me because that is the journey I am on. I’m not having an identity crisis, but I am trying to be intentional and do it with as much authenticity as possible. Part of that process for me is being patient and waiting. It’s easy for me to jump into things and get started, only to dial things back because it wasn’t sustainable.

While I enjoy making YouTube videos about tech and cameras, I want to start making video essays about the topics I have been writing about. I have found myself struggling to get started. I may have to challenge myself to create videos for the sake of getting started and work on dialing in the message once the momentum is going.

Please consider supporting me by subscribing to my Field Notes.

Weekly Debrief

Fitness

  • Cycling: 132.5 miles
  • Running: 4.6 miles

Biggest Insight

We’re more connected than ever before, yet profoundly lonely. We mask our struggles to maintain appearance and avoid burdening others while secretly yearning to be seen. Our fear of vulnerability and shame creates a barrier to experiencing genuine connection, trapping us in a cycle of isolation despite our deep desires for meaningful relationships.

Wins

  • Cleaning some of the basement
  • Hanging out with Jeph
  • Productive days at the office
  • Flying with Mal
  • Lots of miles on the bike
  • Resourced from quotes and book notes, I’ve saved a lot

Loss

  • Still feeling a little sluggish
  • I didn’t read much
  • Too much doom-scrolling

This week

  • Client work
  • Men’s Table starts
  • Accreditation meeting
  • Edit remaining videos

Think more about

  • Writing
  • Video for my personal YouTube channel

Profoundly Lonely

I am interested in the concept of loneliness. Sometimes, I am okay with being alone; other times, it feels like torture. What is it about being alone that often causes pain?

I recognize that we were created for the community. Whether you believe what the Bible says or not, we are tribal people, and it’s always been that way. Last year, the US Surgeon General released an Advisory calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country (Link). I remember reading this and thinking about my experiences with loneliness and how we can experience it even with people around us. How does that happen, especially in a hyperconnected world?

Since then, I have shifted my definition of the word lonely. I used to see loneliness as being alone, but being alone simply means I am with myself. My loneliness was undoubtedly more about not being okay with being with myself than it was merely a distance from others. Once I understood that, I could understand why and work through that. It can’t be minimized to us being introverts or extroverts. The most outgoing extrovert can easily be the most lonely person in the room. To feel less lonely, we become like everyone else, which takes us farther away from who we are (some of these concepts paraphrased from the book, “The Art of Being Alone”).

The implications for a lack of social connection hurt our health, the Surgeon General went on to report:

The physical health consequences of poor or insufficient connection include a 29% increased risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke, and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults. Additionally, lacking social connection increases risk of premature death by more than 60%.

Though we are created to connect, I believe the lack of “sufficient connection,” combined with not being okay with “being with ourselves,” is the core contributor to the health consequences. When I say sufficient connection, I don’t mean having a full calendar of social events; I mean actual time connecting with people where you feel seen and the connection is reciprocal.

The million-dollar question is, how do we fix what we’ve undone?

Quotes from this past week

If you want new beliefs you need new habits.

Nick Wignall

Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Rickard Back & Russell Munson

The need is not necessarily for more information but for the application of it.

Russell Willingham

I’m thankful for you being here,

Jerad

Ps. More photos from our recent flight.

Weekly Debrief – October 20th, 2024

Posted on by Jerad Hill

It’s important to have plans, but even more important is to be flexible and not hold so fast to those plans that you feel ruined if they fall through.

I traveled for work this week and was in the Catskills Mountains of New York for almost five days. Based on the agreed-upon schedule, I knew I would have plenty of time to go on a few runs and perhaps even get a nice meal once or twice. After being sick last week, I was feeling better but still had a cough, which was nothing I couldn’t deal with.

I didn’t know that the schedule would change and that just about everything I assumed based on discovery calls with this client was missing information. That led to long days. I also had 45 minutes of travel between the site and my room. That only left the early morning for workouts, but it was cold and dark outside. I also ended up only having one rushed meal each day. The days were long.

Stuff like this used to ruin the rest of my experience, but I have a lot more bandwidth for unmet expectations than I used to, and I’m thankful for that. I’m grateful that the alternative is not lowering my expectations but simply being ok with how things end up going.

On this trip, I had the opportunity to work with guys with very different religious beliefs from my own. They were some of the nicest and most accommodating people I have ever met. In between the stress of getting everything set up with deadlines approaching, we had great conversations about life, family, and the quality of life choices we have made over the years.

Insight About Past Experience & Connection

I’ve had a lot happen in life and spent years feeling shame and disappointment. I knew that my past experiences would be used in the lives of others at some point. I knew that would require sharing it and being more open. I don’t have a problem with it, but it makes me uncomfortable. I tried to win battles on my own, but that rarely worked. I struggled through those things never finding anyone to commiserate with in my struggling. It was a solo battle that, at the time, was unique enough that nobody I opened up to could relate to. Now, I realize that enduring these things alone built my resilience. I wouldn’t understand as deeply as I do now if it hadn’t gone that way. That is because I always looked for the easy way out. I didn’t have grit.

We live in a time where we are intolerant of anyone with opinions different from ours, but we will make a large purchase decision based on a three-sentence review from a stranger on Google. We don’t like to be told how to think, what to do, or how to do it, but we seek this kind of information from total strangers on the internet. We’ve never been more connected but with less personal connections.

These are things I’m thinking about and have a desire to push back against.

Weekly Debrief

Fitness:

  • Cycling: 26.5 Miles
  • Running: 0 Miles

Biggest Insight:

  • I’ve realized that my life journey of learning through personal experience, often difficult and unnoticed, has build within me grit and endurance, has given me deeper insights, resilience, and emotional intelligence that now allows me to learn from others and apply it to my life.

Wins

  • Work trip to NY went great. Was able to use my camera and tech experience to set up a well designed system for live streaming.
  • Deep personal insights about my past struggles and current successes.
  • Good conversations with others who have vast differences in their religious beliefs.
  • Great workout after 12 days of illness.
  • Using my past to build connections with others.
  • Driving through the Catskills Mountains during autumn.

Losses

  • Was sick most of the week
  • Didn’t get to run while in NY
  • Didn’t journal much

This Week:

  • Catch up on client work
  • Follow up with NY client
  • Cohen’s first basketball games of the season
  • Men’s event at church
  • Winterize travel trailer

Think more about:

  • My story
  • Writing, podcasting, video

Quotes from books I read this week:

  • Clear Thinking – Shane Parrish
    • “Our first step in improving our outcomes is to train ourselves to identify the moments when judgement is called for in the first place, and pause to create space to think clearly.”
    • “Time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone poorly positioned.”
  • The Art of Being Alone – Renuka Gavrani
    • “You’ll stop worrying what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.”
    • “Being alone doesn’t mean you are lonely. Being alone means you are with yourself.”
  • Don’t Believe Everything You Think – Joseph Nguyen
    • “The truth is not something you think, but something that you know and feel deep in your soul.”
    • “Your mind is the greatest salesman and knows exactly what to say to life you back into its vicious cycle of destructive thinking.”

A friend of mine is going through some stuff so I have been searching highlights from past books I have read for insights that can help and encourage him. A while back I started saving highlights to Notion and created a widget to display random quotes on the home screen of my phone.

Custom Book Quotes Widget for iPhone

It’s easy to not only forget what we’re read in the past but more importantly not have a plan to integrate it into our lives. Most books start with lofty promises but they often fail to provide us a plan for making those promises a reality. It’s important to take notes, to highlight items, to distill the body of information into actionable steps.

Had a nice end of the week with family around a warm fire.

I pray you have a fulfilling and productive week!

Blessings,

Jerad

Weekly Debrief – Oct 14th, 2024

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Not the week I intended to have, but still great.

It’s been years since I’ve been sick. With the kids back in school this year (after homeschooling last year), we’ve all been exposed to more than we were used to. That resulted in me having a decent cold and flu this past week, which likely explains why I felt so fatigued during the 10k I ran last weekend.

Though the week was less productive and required more rest, I was able to pull out one significant insight from my experience of being under the weather this week.

Illness is never scheduled; it just happens, and usually when you have other plans for that time. This used to derail me. I would end up discouraged, and by the end of the illness, I was in a rut. It would then take me extra days to get back into my routine, if not weeks or longer. However, this time, it didn’t do that. I accepted the downtime rather than allowing it to get me stuck. It was undoubtedly still frustrating, but a week later, only a cough and a minor headache remained, and I slowly got back into my routine. There is no rut this time.

Weekly Debrief from my journal

One of the reasons I believe I am less susceptible to getting stuck in ruts is that I have been forcing myself to do new and hard things. A few years ago, I started running. I had told myself for decades that I was not a runner and that my body hated it. The truth is, it was my mindset that was holding me back. I also wanted to learn to play the drums and started on that journey earlier this year. Yesterday, I played drums in the worship band at my church for both of our services. The first time I ever played with a live band was Thursday. It wasn’t perfect, but it went well.

First time rehearsing with the worship band.

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Weekly Debrief – Oct 7th, 2024

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Last week, I started strong. I felt well-organized and had an overall restful weekend. As the week progressed, a lack of mental strength slowly chipped away at that early ambition. By the weekend, I was behind the curve and less effective than I wanted.

On Sunday, I ran the Trail Blazer 10K trail race in Whitefish, MT. I ran this race last year and finished in one hour and fifteen minutes 🐢. So far this year, I have run close to 300 miles and feel stronger than last year. I hoped to beat last year’s time. Unfortunately, I finished one minute slower.

I have spent considerable time this week pondering last week’s insight: “Your habits will dictate your routine, and your routine will dictate the quality of your life.” The results are shared below.

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Weekly Debrief – Sept 29th, 2024

Posted on by Jerad Hill

I write about a page each day in my journal. This page contains notes, quotes, scripture, and other insights I might have that day. I have been doing this for over two years now. Journaling has changed my life in many ways.

Lately, I have struggled with the fact that I am writing everything in a paper journal that nobody may ever see. I am not writing for anyone specifically, but I believe that thoughts and ideas should be shared. I plan to start sharing these privately with members of this Substack.

It will be private for a couple of reasons. First, much of it is personal. Perhaps most importantly, it contains insights I have thought about and spent the week distilling them into an idea. I believe there is value in that, and I only want to share it with people who want to hear it.

Weekly Debrief and Coffee at Black Rifle Coffee Company in Kalispell, MT

Weekly Debrief

Fitness:

  • Bike: 89.5 Miles
  • Run 3.1 Miles

Biggest Insight/Idea:

Your habits will dictate your routine, and your routine will dictate the quality of your life.

Weekly Wins:

  • Finished a bunch of youtube videos from a backlog and got many of them posted.
  • Started going through the mess that is my office. My wife is helping me get it cleaned out and organized.
  • Tuesday morning Bible Study discussion was excellent. We discussed how we can be a Timothy (encourager) or an Epaproditis (enforcer) to help keep each other on the right path.
  • Set some goals for October
  • Strong workout on Friday with a hard bike ride and one of my fastest 5k runs on the treadmill ever.

Weekly Loss:

  • Some wasted time procrastinating while avoiding work tasks.
  • Slept in longer than I needed to a couple of days this week.

The week ahead:

  • Film some comparison videos with the new cameras I am testing (Hike in Glacier, go flying, go on a bike ride)
  • Start posting to my Substack!
  • Figure out how I should post the weekly debrief.
  • Start a Bible reading challenge with my Tuesday Morning Guys during October.
  • Get a workout plan started with my daughter and I.
  • Work on my company website.

Ideas to work on:

  • How do I make fast decisions faster? Is my Personal Impact Filter enough or the right tool for that?
  • How do I tell y story and differentiate my brand in a sentence or less?
  • The only thing I have a chance of bringing into heaven is my children.

Future weekly debriefs will only be available to supporting members of this substack. Becoming a supporting member helps buy me a coffee and provide me with extra time to read, think, and process thoughts and ideas.