10 months in: Lessons learned on agile, data, and writing in 2024, and a sneak peek at 2025
Retrospective on December 2024 and the year: recap on AISW interviews, finding women in AI here, upcoming book, lessons learned, and my plan for January.
I committed in March 2024 to doing (and sharing) a retrospective each month on how I’m doing vs. my writing goals. Here’s what I learned in my 10th full month on Substack, plus a quick look back at 2024 overall, and what I’ll do in January 2025 that will be new and different.
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Some acronyms I use:
AAaB = my Agile Analytics and Beyond newsletter
AI6P = my 6 'P's in AI Pods newsletter
WIP = Work In Progress
TL;DR update
During December, I completed weekly AISW interviews as planned, burned down my WIP backlog on ethics of AI for music, and exceeded my target range for posts. I also:
committed to write a book chapter on data and AI;
wrote a second draft book proposal; and
connected with a strong and growing community of women and nonbinary folks writing about AI, ML, and data here on Substack.
For January, to ensure I have enough time for my newly-committed book chapter, I’m reducing my targets for Substack writing and cutting back on data tracking.
Content Plan
I began formalizing my content plan in June as part of (A12) June-December Lesson: Becoming a better writer. I made 3 changes to my AI6P content plan for this action in August, and kept it during September and beyond. Here’s my current content plan, in priority order.
1: Book chapter
This is new as of December 2024. I committed to collaborate on writing a book for entrepreneurs by contributing a chapter on data and AI. My chapter will be 4000 words (max) with several diagrams. The publication target is summer 2025 and the submission deadline is the end of February. This book chapter is now my #1 priority.
2: “AI, Software, and Wetware” interviews
I’m getting more efficient at audio processing and sharing the weekly interviews more widely. And I’ve connected with more people outside the USA for 2025. Right now I have a healthy queue of new interviews scheduled and a strong flow in planning.
My main concern is coping with the ebbs and flows of scheduling guests - not burning myself out, and not losing guest interest or letting their interviews go stale before I can get the recordings processed and published. High interest is a good problem to have, though!
Overall I’m happy with the AISW interviews. They will be my #2 priority behind my book commitment.
3: Personal Passions
My personal newsletter has become a cherished outlet. If I get fired up about something (like ageism), I’ll make the time to write about it here. If nothing else, writing it out of my brain gets the topic to stop disrupting my sleep 😏.
Most of my passion posts are one-and-done. One exception is the list of women & non-binary folks writing about AI on Substack which I started curating in December. Going forward, some of my time will need to go to upkeep. It won’t count as a ‘new’ Substack article, but it’s important to me as a service to the community. Even though it’s a ‘labor of love’, it’s still labor that I need to include in my workload plan.
4: AI Fundamentals
My second “What Is AI?” article and part 2 of “But I don’t use AI” under AI Fundamentals remain in draft (WIP). They intersect with my book chapter, so they are likely to be publishable in 2025Q1.
5: Ethics of generative AI for music
I did some WIP cleanup in December on company profiles and publishing PART 3 of ethics of generative AI for music. I still have 7 half-finished drafts profiling AI ethics of major companies, and 5 more Parts of the series. This remains my lowest priority, though. I’m putting the Part 4-8 content on hold for Q1.
How It’s Going
In retrospective #9, I set goals for December. Here’s how I did on each element of the STELLAR framework (other than ST, the starting position, which isn’t changing).
E - Progress towards End Goal
Writing Quantity and Length Goals
Table 1 maps my results to my quantity goal ranges in December. Archive links are below in the References1.
12 Substack articles: That’s a lot for me. Here’s how it breaks down.
4 AISW interviews (3 audio, 1 text). My queue of completed interviews stayed at 2. (And my backlog of recorded interviews waiting to be processed grew).
4 AAaB posts (the November retrospective, audio editing tools and tips, a year-in-review analysis, and a surprisingly popular unplanned post on women & nonbinary folks writing about AI here on Substack).
4 AI6P posts (new ethical AI music partnership, a year-end thank you, and two long-in-WIP posts from Part 3 of the series on AI for music)
To support the longer article on 11 minor uncertified companies in the series on ethical AI in music, I also published 6 brief profiles. These were stuck in WIP at 90%+ complete; I just finalized & pushed them out with their last-updated date. I’m not counting these.
I also supported one of my collaborators on an article about AI agents.
did all of the heavy lifting on it, not me, so I’m not counting it in my December stats.
2 non-Substack documents: I wrote a 2nd draft book proposal and a new author bio.
25 Substack Notes posts: I posted 25 total new Notes and restacks with comments. That’s in my target range (24-32). I’m not counting posts on other social media sites, or comments on other people’s Notes.
As of the month 9 retro, I had written and logged 116 posts and 132,021 words. During December, I added 20 more writings, of which I’m measuring 8, for 8,807 words. New measured totals for all of 2024: 124 posts and 140,828 words.
Post Sizes and Distribution Details:
Of the 8 posts I measured, 4 were Short, 3 were Medium, and 1 was Long. My average post length dropped slightly vs. November (1111 to 1101).
Figure 3 shows my post size distributions through December.
Quality Goals
During December, I estimate that I stayed at quality level 6. Post size distribution has stabilized around my 50/50 target, and reading ease metrics are fairly steady.
LL - Lessons and Limits
My recent lessons focused on sustainably executing AISW interviews while keeping my other initiatives (books, AI music series) moving. It’s an ongoing struggle.
I made a big push in December to reduce my AI6P WIP on AI for music. It got some overdue content out there and relieved some pressure and guilt. I can’t keep doing that, though. December’s over-achievement was both productive and exhausting.
For 2025, given my book chapter commitment, I’m setting the music series aside for now. I will reassess my priorities in April, once I see how much writing and research time I have beyond writing the book chapter.
A - Actions
Here are updates on my previous self-assigned actions.
(A9) April-December Lesson 1: Voiceovers - December update
A9-1 Planning and executing audio voiceovers
Substack notified me in mid-December that read-aloud is now enabled on both of my newsletters. So I no longer need to manually record my articles to enable subscribers to enjoy the accessibility and convenience benefits of audio. I’m declaring victory and closing out voiceover planning & execution.
(A14) Improve my audio production proficiency
My mentoring call with on Dec. 3 gave me some good tips on using Audacity (and other tools, such as Auphonic) more efficiently. My Dec. 4 article summarized what I learned. For recording my 2025 interviews, I got a Samson dynamic microphone Steph recommended. In initial tests, it gives better sound for listeners with less editing effort for me. That’s a win! Although there’s always more to learn (I still want to try Ocenaudio), and the tools will keep evolving, I’m calling this one done.
R - Review (Retrospective)
I committed to doing a monthly review at the end of December to see where I stand on my goals and actions. This article is it.
Monthly Reflection
What’s In: Starting with December, I added separate counts for documents I write that don’t get published on Substack (book proposals & chapters). These commitments need to be part of my work plan.
What’s Out: My detailed data on post sizes and readability has been stable for several months. And I’m not running the tools or looking at the data before publishing. So I’m going to stop doing most of that data collection and analysis. I’m only going to track posts and count words. This will let me put more of my energy into my book writing. (I will still run the readability tools on my book chapter, and make adjustments if needed, before submitting it to my publisher, though!)
I’m also not sure that counting my Notes is still of value. I’m spending more time commenting on other people’s Notes than before, so my total activity level in December was probably actually higher than November, but Note comments aren’t easy to count. I think I’ve established my habit of restacking and commenting well enough that I don’t need to track this any more.
Year-End ‘Rewind’
If you’re active on LinkedIn, you may have seen a flurry of posts from people sharing their “LinkedIn Rewind” from a company called Coauthor Studio. I looked into it. It uses generative AI to analyze the content of someone’s posts and comments. Since it required only public access to my LinkedIn account, I let it fly. Here’s a summary of what the tool came up with, and what I think about it.
But there’s so much more to my year than LinkedIn. I owe thanks to so many for helping me launch my new full-time writing career in 2024.
In 2024, I learned about readability, podcasting, social media life after Twitter/X, and much more. I’ve gotten proficient at blocking trolls on Substack and Bluesky, and enjoying the new people I’m finding in both communities. And I discovered the book chapter collaboration opportunity thanks to new people met here on Substack. It’s been a GREAT year.
Looking Ahead
Writing my book chapter in 2025 is going to help me grow in new ways.
1: Book Writing: My target is 4000 words plus 3-4 diagrams. I’ve written Substack articles that long already (e.g. AI Fundamentals #1, 4185 words). Since starting the AISW interviews in Aug. 2024, I’ve written 2-15k words of posts per month. The book chapter will likely take about half of my writing bandwidth in Q1.
But the writing process may take longer than the word count suggests. Substack articles have no length limit. The chapter length is capped, and I have a lot I want to share with entrepreneurs about using ‘just enough’ data and AI!
In my 7-month retro, I noted that I wanted to start working on conciseness. For this book chapter, I’ll need to work on being concise, which will take time.
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” - Henry David Thoreau, 1857
2: Book Publishing: I’m learning about the whole book publishing process, and marketing, and other areas I didn’t focus on as an engineer or technical leader. I’ve already signed up for 2 publisher calls and 4 webinars in January to learn about these things, and I have some webinar replays to digest. And I’ve begun building a book marketing plan. So far, it includes 3 blog/podcast opportunities, identified through personal connections.
3: Web Slinging: I’ve started building my ‘author website’. It’s been 20+ years since I launched my first hand-coded websites, which haven’t evolved much since then. I’m having fun digging back in and getting my hands dirty on new and no-longer-new standard web tech (like using responsive design to make it mobile-friendly). Look for it to launch in Q1. 😊
4: The Unknown: “I don’t yet know what I don’t know.” This is my first book publishing collaboration. So writing the book chapter and working with my publisher & her team will probably take even more time than I’m expecting.
Also, I’m looking to connect in January with more early-stage entrepreneurs (the planned audience for the book). What I learn from them may prompt major revisions or rewrites to better fit the content of my chapter to their needs.
If you’re an early-stage entrepreneur (0-3 years in) or solopreneur, or if you have insights to share about data and AI use from being at that stage of launching your business, I’d love to connect with you - please reply, comment, or DM me:
5: Self-Management: My biggest 2025 risk is burnout. There’s so much I want to do & write, and so many people I’m eager to talk to; but my time is finite & constrained. I need to build more resistance to saying “yes” to everything.
“You got so much to do, and only so many hours in a day … You better cool it off before you burn it out.” - Billy Joel, “Vienna”
New Actions from this December 2024 retro
Aside from working on my book chapter and learning what I need to learn about book publishing, I’m not assigning myself any new actions this month.
New Targets for January 2025 (month 11)
For January, I’m keeping my interview schedule and setting my goals to 6-8 total posts. That allows:
Writing the first draft of my book chapter (in progress).
4 AISW posts (interviews), one per week on Thursdays (2 ready, 2 WIP).
2 AAaB posts - 1 retro (this post) plus 1 short ‘rewind’ post I carved off (done).
0-2 non-interview articles.
My effort budget for January will remain at 6-8 hours/day or 30-40 hours/week. Interviews already scheduled are likely to keep my effort bursty.
What’s Next?
That’s my writing retro for December. I commit to doing another one after the end of January. I will re-evaluate my targets and plan then. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this!
“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” (Confucius)
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References
Archives analyzed in this retrospective
This is great wrap up 🎉 All the best for your 2025 journey ❤️