Saturday Stuff: January 11th 2024

Author

Kristian Freeman
January 11, 2025

Happy Saturday! Here’s some stuff I’m checking out this weekend:

#1

Everyone is talking about building AI agents. But how do you actually build one? This video shows how to use a framework - Eliza - to define a new AI agent that can interact with 𝕏, Telegram, and a bunch of other places. Really interesting stuff!

#2

This is the tool I used to review 2024 and plan 2025. I hadn’t heard of the Year Compass booklet before, but this web version worked great. I think it’s still fair game a week or two into 2025 to give it a shot.

The AI integrations are pretty neat: I randomly got one-shotted by the “Your Ideal Day” AI prompt which told a pretty moving story about how my ideal day, spent with my wife, doing fulfilling work, and accomplishing everything I set out to do this year. It got me a bit emotional!

#3

I’ve been doing the sauna at my gym for almost two years, at least 1-2 times a week. It’s great for you, and particularly this year, when I’m trying to lose some weight - it’s a sneaky way to sweat out some of those extra pounds.

This thread - along with the linked Substack article - had some interesting tips and suggestions on saunamaxxing I didn’t know before.

#4

These surveys can be useful to developers to shorten the gap between wanting to learn something new and picking the “right” thing (controversial phrasing 😬).

e.g. “I want to do state management in my React app that is slightly more complex than useState… is Redux still a thing?” → go to State Management section of this survey, see that Zustand may be the way to go.

#5

Misogi 2025

kristianfreeman.com/misogi-2025

I wrote on my blog about a concept I’m liking a lot called the “misogi”, and what I’m doing in 2025:

I ran into the concept of the misogi on the very excellent “How to plan an epic 2025 in 56 minutes” episode of the My First Million podcast. The idea is:

A Misogi is an ancient Japanese ritual around cleansing and purification. We’ve taken the liberty to stretch the true meaning, and to us it represents a unique and challenging event that defines your year. It requires a journey of self-discovery and transformation, pushing one’s physical and mental limits to achieve a seemingly impossible goal. One thing that gives you purpose and cleanses the soul when completed.

It’s pretty cool. Having one overarching goal or event to summarize the year is a cool way to make 2025 impactful.

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