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By Root 600 0

a personal inventory of moments is beyond me. (I’ll beat myself up about that later, when you’re gone.) After reading the previous section, I’m sure you tripped over your animals and family rushing to your computer to set up your simple color-coded calendar. This will be the log of your accomplishments. In fact, you can even create a specific color and calendar for “accomplishments” or “I’m rads” or whatever your internal dialect dictates. After you take any moment of victory, put it on the calendar at the time and day it happened. Sometimes jobs themselves are victories, so you don’t need to make a redundant entry. December 31 or thereabouts, go ahead and make your “greatest hits of the year” list. If you don’t like the album analogy, think of it as a growth chart, or those pencil notches your parents made on the wall as you got taller each year. It might feel a little weird, especially if you are uneasy accepting praise or aren’t totally cool with blabbing about yourself, but don’t worry—you don’t have to show it to anyone and it’s an important exercise in the paradigm shift of your relationship with yourself. Unless you write a book about it. #WhatHaveIDone

Here was mine from 2010:

TV

• Web Soup: 16 episodes

• Attack of the Show: 64 episodes

• TV pilots: 5

• Talk show appearances: 23

• TV stand-up appearances: 4

• Did voice on new Scooby Doo where I got to say “I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids.” (A lifelong dream! True story!)

Hard ’n Phirm

• Sold animated pilot to IFC

• Wrote Benson Interruption theme

• Did comedy show on Canadian TV

• Recorded with Weird Al (grade school me is still freaking out about it)

• Commercial campaigns: 2

Live Shows

• Comedy clubs: 11

• Other out-of-town shows: 5

• L.A. shows: 25

• Festivals: 6

• TOTAL SHOWS: 129

• Annual audience attendance improvement: ~200%

Nerdist Industries

Started Nerdist podcast!

• Episodes: 51

• Average downloads per episode by end of year: 100,000

• Had terrific guests (like the friggin’ Muppets!)

Nerdist.com

• Traffic growth from previous year: 5 times

• Brought on contributors

• Hired Perry the editor

• Started Node social network

Publications

• Articles written for Wired: 2

• Smarmy self-help books sold to Penguin: 1

SIDE NOTE: There was some personal accomplishment stuff on here involving patience and relationships and the like, but I have to keep SOME things private. I encourage you to give your non-work-related milestones equal attention and weight. Did you lose your temper less? Were you caring to people at times? Selfless even? Note it.

Before I wrote this stuff down, I had thought 2010 was just an OK year, but I was reminded that I did actually get some stuff done. Sure, there was a bunch of stuff that didn’t work out, but I don’t focus on that beyond what I could learn from it. As you write, you will relive bits of those moments as you purge the forgotten triumphs from the recesses of your mental attic. It will feel good. The added bonus is that you may start trying to accomplish more in your life simply to be able to increase the list size, à la “RPG Your Life,” so grab your Character Tome and get to work! The list should be proud, almost braggy. Like, it should feel slightly uncomfortable to show anyone—they’ll think you have a penis on your back because you’re patting yourself so much there. Kind of like how I feel right now . . .

CHARACTERCIZE

Make your greatest hits list!

Like yourself more.

HOLESPOTTING!

As you develop your specific point of view, it’s a good idea to get a bird’s-eye view of the landscape of your chosen field. Who’s doing what? Can you do it better? How could you do it differently? Look for the holes. When I started Nerdist a few years ago, I had this idea that there were comedy sites and there were tech sites but there wasn’t really a composite of both. At least, not one that had my point of view.