Streamlined Solopreneur: Tips to Help Solopreneurs Automate Their Business

Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.

Hello, and Happy New Year. It's the first episode of 2025. And, traditionally, for the last few years, the first episode of the year is me talking about my yearly theme. We're going to continue that tradition. I wrote a beefy blog post about it over on [casabona.org]. You can find that and everything in the show notes for this episode over at [streamlined.fm/453].

Wow. 400 over 450 episodes now. I'm also doing a little bit of an adjustment. So, I guess we'll label this point in the recording as housekeeping. If you don't know, I sunset the streamlined solopreneur accelerated membership. I'm not doing that anymore. As is usually the case when I sunset something, about a week after someone writes and wants it. But it's a good thing. It's no longer available. So if you're clicking that join button, if you come across it, the best thing you can do now is join my free private podcast, Joe's Audio Notes, which you can find at [casabona.org/notes]. Again, all of the links I mentioned here will be at [streamlined.fm/453].

As a result, I also went through and deleted a bunch of the bonus episodes that were only available for Apple Podcast listeners. And as a result, I now have a true episode count for this podcast. And so, from here on out, every episode will have a proper number. I've readjusted how I'm counting bonus episodes, and I don't think that I'll really be doing many bonus episodes of, as I've traditionally, counted them. So from here on out, every episode should have a proper episode number that reflects the actual number of episodes. So that's exciting, and that's all the housekeeping for the beginning of 2025.

Let's get into the yearly theme. So I have written a blog post. So if you're watching the video that's gonna be up on the screen here. Again, just click the link in the show notes if you wanna follow along and you're listening or if you wanna read it fully later, I do start with a story that led me to my yearly theme. But before we do that, let's go ahead and grade the year of control.

If you will recall, The Year of Control was me trying to take control of more of my life and taking more really taking control of what I can control and letting go of or better reacting to the things I can't control. With an aim like the year of control, it feels like there are big expectations, and it could be an epic success or an utter failure.

And I will just come out and say that this yearly theme was an utter failure. I didn't do anything I wanted to accomplish. I basically tried to do too much all at once and I abandoned the four questions that I was going to ask myself regularly.

Now, if you need a refresher on what those four questions are, they are who do I think I was? What needs to happen to make me feel in control? What do I need to let go of? And what distractions are making me lose the control I do have? The first question here is so big and ambiguous that I really like, who did I think I was? I think the thing that I had in mind when I wrote this question was I used to be.

I still speak my mind pretty regularly, but I hold my tongue more. And it's because of the safety of my wife and kids like I'm not going to go mouth off when I'm out in public with my family, because I would never want to put them in danger. And then when I was young and free and whatever, I didn't probably like most 20ish year old men, I didn't have a lot of care for self preservation, at least in that sense. So I think that was the exact use case I had in mind for that question. And therefore every time I went to answer it after I just didn't have an answer because I hadn't really thought about it.

And then, you know for the following three, those were probably questions I should have sought the answer for in Q1 of last year, and I just didn't. And so I can never properly answer them. And so I really set myself up for failure here.

But there were a number of other contributing factors. Right? And so, the first one is that the theme wasn't as well planned out as previous yearly themes. And I didn't really realize this until I went to grade the yearly theme.

So on the blog post, you will see a scorecard for 2023's yearly theme, The Year of Budgets. You'll see that there's a list of actions and goals, and then I was able to score each of those with like, yes, definitely did it. No, definitely didn't do it, or kinda did it. Right? And so I was able to give myself a score. Also, the things on this grade sheet, we'll say, this rubric maybe, are not like high minded open ended questions like, who did I think I was? They're actual things I could do and I didn't have that for The Year of Control. I just kind of had vague instructions like, control my impulses, or improve my health.

And without a strong foundation for my theme to be based on which is a word salad, It was really difficult for me to stay the course and make the improvements I wanted to make, especially when life got in the way, and a lot of that happened in 2024.

So I think the other major factor here is just small kids, aging parents, and life. There are several areas of my life that I don't control right now. That's just the stage I'm in. I have 3 small kids. My oldest is going to be 8. It's 8, 4, 3. So they need a lot of stuff. They need a lot of care. They're just getting into really extracurricular activities.

My oldest is taking cello lessons and does dance after school. My son is gonna start playing baseball most likely. And so I'm just getting into a stage of life where my kids still need a lot of me and they're starting to do things more independently. And that's like a weird you would think that the second half of that would ease the first half, but it doesn't. Like, there's still a lot of reliance. And, again, just the stage of life I'm in. That's the, we are a relatively young couple with small kids.

We are both working to advance our career further. And so I know every stage of life has its difficulties, but we I think we are in a particularly chaotic phase of life right now. Whenever I tell people the age of my kids are like, oh, you're in the thick of it. Like, that's the, that is the reaction.

On top of that, my parents are in their seventies. Right? So I have aging parents. My dad fell at home last summer, and so my brothers and I moved them out of our childhood home. They had to stay in New York, so they couldn't move closer to us. And so my brother Phil is bearing the brunt of the day to day, helping them get healthier and get their life settled, and I appreciate that. He is married but has no kids. We're helping where we can and we're trying to make what is now a 5 hour trip instead of a 2 hour, 3 hour trip, once every few months.

Alright. And so, again, just this, if you've had aging parents or your parents have passed like you know how hard that this part of life is. And a lot of that like really came to a head in 2024 for me.
Outside of family, there were just a lot of frustrating, extenuating factors that made me feel like I was losing control. And some of it was dumb, like the Yankees losing the world series. Right? I was really excited. It would be a really good escape from the bombardment of all the election stuff, and it just wasn't an enjoyable experience for me. And I know that sounds stupid, but baseball, if you have been a listener for more than five minutes, is a really important part of my life. And so that, you know, that felt dumb and annoying. It was out of my control.

The election is obviously out of my control no matter who you voted for. I feel like we all had really strong feelings about who we wanted to win and who we didn't want to win. And and so, like, that whole experience was just stressful for a lot of people.

So the point is, right, it's hard to account for the unknowns in life. And at this point in mine, they seem to be happening more frequently. Small kids, aging parents make a very complete and capricious existence, and knowing and understanding that is crucial. And I didn't understand that at this point last year. I do now. Plus, we just got a dog, a puppy and I got out voted 4 to 1 on that.

And since I work from home, I know that it will have an impact on my work days. And I know if you're a dog, I'll just, like, I don't know how much I've mentioned this on the show. Apparently, everybody knows this. I'm not a dog person. I'm not a pet person. I don't like animals. And so if you're sitting there thinking like, oh, just give it time. You'll learn to love it. Look, I know what I'm about. I'm happy. My kids are happy. I'm happy. My wife is happy. But this, I'm just, this is not something I find enjoyable. And I know it'll have an impact on my workdays.

I just lost like half the audience there. Sorry, everybody. Maybe, maybe more polarizing than if I had given my actual political thoughts. But I know that's gonna have an impact on my work days. Right? He's a puppy. And so like we're potty training and crate training him. And as I get back into work, when my wife's at work and my kids are at school when my kids can't really take care of the dog anyway. You know, it'll be up to me to like make sure it goes out and is fed and stuff like that.

So let's get to the overall grade, right? It's an F. I am a miserable failure. I think for my yearly theme. I didn't do anything that I could reasonably say made me feel more in control. And if anything I feel like I am in less control than I was at this time last year. I don't think that's true. There were a lot of good things that happened last year.

November, for example, was the best year of my business maybe since the pandemic started. And so this is not like a let's dump on the year. This is the year I had, did not align with the year I thought when I set my yearly theme. And it's because the yearly theme was weak and there were a lot of unexpected things that happened.

And so, you know, I say in my blog post I may have well, not have I may have well I may as well have had no yearly theme. And part of it is I didn't adhere to the few rules I did set for myself. Part of it is that I wasn't specific enough in what I was supposed to do. It was all too high level and part of it was the extenuating circumstances.

Now, the yearly theme guys, Mike and Grey, would say, like, your yearly theme is supposed to help you with the extenuating circumstances. And again, it was just a weekly defined theme like a poorly defined not like a week. It was a poorly defined theme and so I didn't put enough in place to help it help me.
Last year when I introduced the Year of Control, I said control was a natural successor to 2023's theme, The Year of Budgets. I wrote, as I reflect on the year of budgets, I can't help but think control is the next logical step. But I didn't realize that there was a prerequisite to control, something to help you understand yourself and be more in the moment and that prerequisite is presence. And the year of being present is my 2025 yearly theme.

So, let me first tell you what the theme is about. I want to focus on mindfulness, intentionality, and living in the moment by reducing distractions, setting boundaries, and addressing issues as they arise.

And I’ll be fully transparent here and that I leaned on ChatGPT, this year. I'll explain more in a minute, but that kind of mission statement of the yearly theme was mostly crafted by ChatGPT. I'm really big on. I'll include this in the show notes, but, disclosures in using AI. I feel like it was my, like manifesto than the very few people cared about. But I'll link that in the show notes in the description.

So concretely, I want to enjoy the moments with my family instead of worrying about work or mindlessly scrolling in the days after Halloween. Right? We'll say, like, since November 1st, my kids were really excited about Christmas and they entirely ignored the Thanksgiving buffer. Like, they don't, I don't think they care for Thanksgiving. Except for that like, they, you know, they get to see family and we get, and we watch the parade. But they were really, really excited about Christmas. And none were more excited than my oldest who would do this in these impressive mental gymnastics to figure out.

Oh, on this day will be this many days and there's this many school days and, oh, there's this many sleeps and we have this event before that until Santa comes to visit. And on the day we got our Christmas tree November 29th, the day after Thanksgiving, I will say we decorated like a little before mid November, but don't judge me whatever. But we get our Christmas tree, our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. She was talking about this and I reminded her I said be present. Christmas is one day, but it's up to us to enjoy the entire season and all the activities we're doing.

But again, my point was I didn't want her to spend the entire Christmas season waiting for Christmas and only looking forward to Christmas day mentally missing out on everything we were doing like cutting down our tree and going to Christmas concerts and baking cookies and visiting family and everything else wonderful about that time of year.

And as I was telling her this or as I was maybe thinking about it later, I realized that I do a pretty bad job of concentrating on the moment. Instead, I worry about the future, all the things that could go wrong and how I might be able to prevent them, or I escape into my phone or my work. I address problems that I worry will happen and I defer solutions to problems I need to address today.

And so I need to follow the advice that I gave my daughter and that is why my theme this year is the year of being present. I don't want to sacrifice the present thinking about the future because, you know, I mentioned in grading the year of control that life is chaotic, but it's fun. My kids want to hang out with me still. I know that, you know, the inevitability of aging parents and I wanna, I don't wanna worry about that. I wanna hang out with them and let them spend as much time with their grandkids as possible. I want to enjoy those moments while I can instead of worrying about the time when I won't be able to. You know.

And something else that I just increasingly found myself doing last year was escaping into my phone. Combine that with a truly detrimental multitasking habit. Like, I don't think there was a single call I took on Zoom last year where I was fully present. I was always looking at the other monitor doing something while somebody else was talking and that's rude.

So here are a few basic goals mostly concrete that I want to accomplish that I feel will make this theme a success.

The first one is reduced screen size, screen time obviously, right? It is when I'm out, I think I'm on my phone less than most people. But when I'm on, when I'm at home, I'm on it far too much. I want to create stronger boundaries.

I used to have a rule that my laptop wasn't allowed upstairs, in like the main area of my house, living room, sunroom, kitchen, dining room, or my bedroom. And the pandemic kind of ruined that because in the winter months, the dining room was the only change of scenery I really had.

So I really want to reset those boundaries. I found that, like, my most frustrating moments upstairs, outside of my office or when I'm like trying to work in the dining room while my kids are playing in the sunroom. That's really not fair to them. And it's because I'm trying to have it both ways. Right? Where I'm like, I'm with my family “but I'm working” and, like, that's like splitting the baby. And so I want those stronger boundaries. When I'm at work, be at work. And when I'm at home, be at home. I mentioned this already, but when I'm on calls, stop doing other stuff. It's rude.

I wanna stop deferring to the future. Right? Usually, I'll say, like, oh, that's a problem for future, Joe. If there's something that I need to improve or as like, a fix I can make now, then I wanna make it now. I wanna always have cash on me.

I'll share this a little bit later like the implementation phase. But having cash is a really simple task that will kind of keep me rooted in the real world, if that makes sense. And I want to be better at managing assumptions. So this is the only, like higher level one, right? I think everything else is pretty concrete, but I always assume the worst and catastrophize, which takes me out of the present and into some future that is more unlikely to happen.

So those are the, that's a small set of goals. I have this in a roadmap document basically in Obsidian I learned, right? I learned with the Year of Control that just a list of goals isn't enough. And so I think lack of planning was probably the biggest reason that my theme failed last year.

And in the 2025 yearly theme episode, for Cortex, Mike and Gray talk about using large language models like ChatGPT and Claude to help them brainstorm. And I really leaned into that with some prompting and context and everything that ChatGPT already knows about me. I asked it to come up with a better definition and roadmap to make this theme as successful as possible. So that coupled with the daily, weekly, and monthly notes that I have in Obsidian.

And I think that I have a really good plan in place to move forward. So Create a list of small nagging tasks, and knock out one per week. So, like, as something comes up, I'll probably have a note in Apple Notes that is just things I can fix now, and then, like, set aside some time to do them.

Quarter 2 will be about solidifying habits. So refine my boundaries and adjust based on what works, focus on single tasking during calls, and then adding no phone. This is the big, like, Quarter 2 thing, adding no phone zones or screen 3 hours to my day.

Quarter 3 is about deepening practices, addressing major friction points in my routines and workflow, strengthening communication, and then again schedule device free time to build stronger connections.

So Quarter 2 is adding screen free hours and no phone zones. Scheduling device free time with my family is kind of the next logical step in that.

Q4 is about reflecting and celebrating review what worked and what didn't. This is the whole thing I do, that I'm doing right now. I really like this tiered approach. It's in stark contrast to last year's, which changed everything starting in January. And so it's a really good plan.

There are also a number of prompts that I've added to my weekly, daily, and monthly notes in Obsidian. So I am in Obsidian every day. It is how I plan my days and I do my startup routine.

And so the weekly reflection questions, I won't read them all verbatim. Check out the blog post. But, you know, questions like, when do I feel most present? What habits or distractions pull me away from being fully engaged? What boundaries do I lack? How can I break the habit of procrastination for small actionable tasks?

I just said I wouldn't read them all, and here I am. And then what, this is a question really like what triggers make me act on assumptions rather than seeking clarity? I think the clearest answer to that is I think I know everything already. I mean, if I'm being totally honest.

And so my assumption is law. I know a lot of people do that, but I don't want to do that. I'd rather learn instead of assuming and then learning later, I guess.

And then monthly check ins, you know, I think, am I spending less time on screens? What boundaries are working well? What small immediate fixes can I tackle this month? That's a good one. So I like these check-in questions.And again, you know, I guess shout out to ChatGPT for that.

Okay. Let's wrap up with, because I've been talking for a very long time now. Let's wrap up with helpful tools. So I've already stated the goals in the roadmaps. There are a few implementation level actions I'd like to take.

And so in the blog post, you have a screenshot of a shortcut I made because I am, my toxic trait is over engineering. Maybe next year's theme will be under engineering.

But, okay. IOS's screen time data only goes back, like, 3 weeks for some insanely frustrating reason, probably because tech companies don't actually want you to understand how much you're using their device. And so like it'll be a flash in the pen that's like, hey, you spent five hours on your phone on average this week.

But I wrote a shortcut that will grab the screen time info and log it in a note each Sunday. Ideally, what what I will do is is move this into Notion or Google Sheets where I can do more Math on it. But this is like a proof of concept right now that I wrote while I was reading the blog post.

The way it works and I would share it with you, but it's not ready for prime time yet. Is it opens the screen time area on your phone, takes a screenshot, and then uses the built in Apple function of extracting texts from a screenshot and then splits the text into new, by new lines.

And then I figured out which line the actual screen time data is on, and I log that in an Apple note right now. So this will really help me right with the Quarter one, goal of where is that, set a baseline. Right? Use apps like screen time to track your device usage for one week. Right? So I wanna get this over time. There are some times where, like, I will just fall asleep to YouTube, and that really blows out my screen time because it'll be on for like an extra hour or 2 every night

And I'm trying to move away from that. I'm trying to have the screen off, but I think if you're like listening to a YouTube video, it still counts as screen time. I'm not sure. This is kind of the exploratory phase of this, but I wrote a shortcut. And so I will get my quarter one average basically at the end of March.

But, like, you can't even get like a monthly average in screen time. So, like, I'll have the January average in a month. Right? I'm also, I've talked about this a bit on my blog in the last few weeks, but I'm also using the brick to limit my phone use. I love this device. You, shout out to my friend Courtney Elmer for telling me about it. You are, for telling me it works because I saw the Instagram ad and I never trust those. But you scan your phone and then it blocks or allows apps. Right?

So there are I have several modes for it right now. The default mode is blocking the most distracting apps that is Slack, all of my mail apps, this game I've been playing a lot called Bellatro, and and a bunch of other apps that I and all social media sites. I don't have social media apps on my phone, but I cheat and go to the website sometimes and the brick blocks the websites too. So that's default. I'll usually scan that when I'm upstairs not at work. Deep work which only allows the most crucial apps.

And this is usually like when I am working. And so like email will be avail well, email won't be available. But like, my to do app or something like that. You know, like the it only allows the things I really need. So it's going to be like messages, phone, stuff like that. And bedtime, which only allows the most crucial apps. And then some apps I'm allowing at bedtime. Overcast and YouTube, are 2 of them.

But like the games or the mindless scrolling, like those are not allowed at bedtime. So I've made a habit of scanning the brick in the mornings, on the weekend and at night before bed. And so I want to be better about getting I I thought maybe I'd get a second one from my office for deep work, but I don't think I really need to do that. I'm also using the Focus app for Mac over at I think it's heyfocus.com, which basically does what the brick does but on the Mac. And so it also allows for multiple modes. And so I'm I'm gonna use this app to basically block everything except Zoom when I'm on a Zoom call, so that I literally can't do anything else. So, tool based actions based on all of this, brick my phone for at least 4 hours a day, not counting bedtime, be in focus mode on my computer for at least 3 hours each workday, and then review screen time and track time each week as part of my startup routine.

Outside of screen time, there are 4 actions I want to take outside of screen time. They are go to the ATM every Monday after school drop off, call my parents every other day, make actual tangible plans with friends once a month, and do more friend trips instead of or in conjunction with work trips. I don't I live far away from all of my friends, and so I don't see them enough. And, I think that if I limit the amount of work travel I do or attack on friend trips to work travel, it'll be a good way to kind of strengthen the relationships and be in the present.

Now, if you are wondering about the cash thing, here's the quick backstory. I used to always have cash on me. I'm a New York Italian. We love greasing palms. I used to always have cash on me. It is important, if something doesn't accept a card or Venmo or check. We like, this is, like, usually, like, small community events. Like, there are church events that we go to, or, like, the, the Knights of Columbus did, like, a pancake breakfast with Santa that was cash only. And I had to leave, like, my left my family there. I went to the closest ATM and I got cash. Like, that took time away from my family for no good reason.

But I also like tipping folks with cash. And since the pandemic, I have had cash on me so infrequently that I've resorted to clumsily tipping with Venmo or not tipping at all, and I hate that. I hate that. It makes me feel like I'm not fully prepared for the events of the day. And then I was pushing off this simple I'll just go to the ATM when it's convenient. I feel like I was, like, pushing that off to future Joe. So like I said, having cash on me at all times is a small simple way to keep me rooted in real world activities. Something I'm not relying on a digital tool for.

Or if I'm like paying, for delivery with cash, First of all, that means I can't use like the DoorDash app, which I hate the DoorDash app. But I'm also seeing that money leave my hand. Right? It's not theoretical anymore. So I've spoken for far too long now in grading my yearly theme from last year and going through the new one. But I'm really excited. This is the most thorough plan I've had for a yearly theme ever. I'm excited to see how it affects my day to day, my reliance on my devices, and then how it affects my relationships. I'm intending to publish updates at some interval, call it public accountability.

What I'm thinking is because I plan on doing more solo episodes, short solo episodes for this show this year. I'll probably reflect on each quarter, and maybe at the end of each month give like a quick update. But this is this is good, right? With the year of control, I forgot the questions and so I just didn't ever think about my theme, Integrating this one more into my daily, weekly, and monthly routine will help me make at least some of these changes because, you know, the Grey and Mike will tell you a yearly theme is not necessarily about specific goals or outcomes. Right? They always say the year of reading. Right? Say you want to read 10 books this year. With the year of reading, if you read 5 and you normally read 1, it's a success. So I'm not saying like reduce my screen time by half. I'm just saying reduce my screen time, and and be more cognizant of how I'm using my my phone and my devices.

So, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions about my yearly theme or want to provide feedback, let me know what yearly theme is. You can go to [streamlinefeedback.com]. You can find all of the show notes in the description below, wherever you're listening to this or over at [streamlined.fm/253].

Thanks so much for listening.

And something else I need to do for this year. I promised myself I would is find a good sign off. I'll get there. But for now, thanks so much for listening. I'll see you out there.