Holiday Break Homework: 6 easy assignments to get a leg up on 2023 đ
Holiday Break Homework: 6 easy assignments to get a leg up on 2023 đ
My annual tradition of assigning you some simple things to hit the ground RUNNING next year
Hopefully youâre getting some time off in the next couple of weeks, and Iâve created some homework for you in case you have some downtime and want to get a leg up on 2023 â but donât worry! Itâs going to be easy.
I have shared holiday break homework assignments over the last three years and always get a lot of great feedback. I also want to acknowledge this advice is for white-collar knowledge workers who have the privilege of taking some time off. So if thatâs you and you can use your time or means to help others while still taking a well-deserved break, please do so!
Okay, here we goâŚ
Holiday Break Homework 2023:
UNPLUG: Pick at least two days you wonât check your work email. Delete it from your phone if you donât have the willpower not to look. Youâre on PTO. Itâs okay to take TWO DAYS OFF from checking it. Maybe try for five and settle for two. Remember that phrase âyour surge capacity is depletedâ from the early months of the pandemic? Without recharging, you wonât be ready for next year. Unplug to charge up!
READ THIS BOOK: The Metaverse by Matthew Ball. I canât say enough about this book and its helpful history and context of the metaverse past, present, and future. I made Parts 1 and 3 mandatory reading for our leadership team. And now itâs mandatory reading for subscribers here. Youâre welcome.
EXPERIMENT WITH GENERATIVE A.I. CREATIVITY: Read this interactive Washington Post story about it. Join ChatGPT and have it write something for you. Download Draw Things and have it design something for you. Use BedtimeStory.AI to write your kids a bedtime story using your own prompts. Think about how you would use this technology as a tool in your work in 2023. Generative A.I. is not scary or a toy or a fad; itâs a tool. Time to practice using it!
EXPLORE EMERGING AND GROWING SOCIAL NETWORKS: Join BeReal and add me as a friend @gregswan. Sign up for the Post waiting list and add me @gregswan. And hereâs a legacy social plug youâre gonna need in 2023 â> Discord is 10 years old now, but itâs rising in mainstream popularity and is poised to explode next year. Time to get smart. Join here and add me @gregswan#7605, then dig into some communities. Experimenting with emerging social networks is always worth the time.
GEN Z SOCIAL TRENDS CRASH COURSE: If you happen to be around younger people over the holidays, seek them out and ask a couple of questions out of curiosity: What are they into right now? Who are their favorite YouTubers, TikTokkers, and Twitch streamers? How do they use group texts, Discord, and Snapchat with their friends? Donât judge. Donât play the âIâm oldâ card, either. Just ask questions and learn. And if you can, play Roblox, Fortnite, or just spend time doing whatever theyâre interested in with them. Spending time with young people and genuinely showing interest in what they care about is the right thing to do as a human AND ALSO will help you better understand and be prepared for emerging trends in 2023. Double bonus! Let me know what you find out.
GOAL SETTING: Write down 1-3 goals for Q1. Share them with your mentor, or boss, and/or post them online. Accountability goes a long way. Donât worry about planning for the whole year or making them massive stretch goals. Setting some achievable goals for January, February and March is plenty. Resolutions donât stick, but measurable goals do. Be intentional. And if you donât have someone to share them with, send them to me!
And to show some receipts here, I revisited my Holiday Homework assignments for the last three years that proved to be worthy (and I still recommend if you havenât yet tackled these!):
2021: Holiday Homework: 5 easy assignments to get a leg-up on 2022
Install and experience Roblox
Buy a (cheap) NFT to learn how it works
2020: Your Holiday Break Homework âď¸
Install and play Among Us
2019: I'm assigning you holiday break homework
Install and explore TikTok
Whamageddon Update: Iâm Out
I made it to December 10th without hearing âLast Christmasâ by Wham. Hereâs the footage from my security cameras of me losing #Whamageddon in real-time (including my wife gloating). Apologies for your ears.
Whether youâre still in or out of the best unofficial holiday game, hereâs a link to my annual Wham-free Swansong Christmas playlist for you to enjoy with your people next week. Itâs eight hours long and NO WHAM.
Social Signals
The BeReal Recap is the new Instagram Top 9. Hereâs how to get your annual recap: 1) Open BeReal and tap your profile picture in the top-right corner 2. On your profile screen, tap View all my Memories. 3. At the bottom of the Memories page, tap the icon that looks like a computer monitor with sparkles on it. 4. Tap Generate my 2022 video recap. And donât forget to share it!
The success and popularity of TikTok is due to its amazing recommendation engine. And now the social network is introducing a new feature that allows users to see why a particular video was recommended to them in their For You feed. By sharing some of the algorithmic magic, this new feature should help bring more context to content recommended in For You feeds. Reminder: No, your phone isnât listening to you.
Why are all the kids saying âcringeâ these days? My favorite Vox reporter Rebecca Jennings wrote about millennial cringe this week, and itâs a must-read before you hang out with any young people this weekend. Brace yourselves. Even reading this article is âkinda cringe.â
Amazon has a new documentary series called NFTMe on Amazon Prime that features artists, collectors, and industry professionals across the world sharing their experiences with NFTs and how the merger between art and technology has positively affected their daily lives. Watch the trailer here.
Do you ever feel like you lose a sense of time when scrolling social media? Jenny Odell wrote a great op-ed in the NYT called âWhat Twitter Does to Our Sense of Time?â introducing terms like entrainment and zeitgeber. Key quote: âSomething like entrainment seems to be at work in our relationship to Twitter and other forms of social media. The rate of updates and notifications provides a powerful zeitgeber â one that can even override our circadian rhythm, as any nighttime scroller knows.â
The educational system is already figuring out software for detecting if students are using ChatGPT on their assignments. We know soon this level of analysis will come for generative A.I. creative (writing, images, video) that uses unlicensed databases. Lawsuits will follow. That doesnât mean stop experimenting (see above!), but it does mean you must ensure youâre aware of licensure and risk when using this technology for marketing. New year; same mindset.
Hereâs a fun new mobile game to play with your people over the holidays: CineQuote. It was developed by two film lovers who got tired of asking each other "what movie is that from?" so they created a game that asks the question of you. Play here.
Cameo debuted kid-friendly shoutouts from brands like CoComelon, Blippi, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Santa. Cameo was founded in 2017, and it makes a ton of sense theyâre moving into kid content with Cameo Kids.
And Iâll close the final Social Signals of the year with this holiday mashup of some of the most viral trending TikToks for your enjoyment. What a year.
Thanks for being such a great community in 2022. Together we are learning, pushing, stewarding, and shaping the âwhatâs now and whatâs nextâ in our industry. And Iâm grateful for you and cannot wait for what weâll do together in the years to come.
In that spirit, Iâm officialling changing my formal sign-off from See you on the internet! to something more meaningful, ownable, and timeless. Because thereâs optimism and community and culture and everything we want to build together in the future. And weâll get there together. I plan to be there celebrating with you. Happy New Year!
See you in the future!
Greg