Merry Christmas from my sofa. I’ve been ill and can’t stand the cold, so working from bed most mornings with my hot water bottle and blankie. I may stay here till March!

This is my last newsletter of the year so I wish you some well-deserved downtime. Cheers to health, happiness and prosperity in 2023!

Here’s to us all earning more and “a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocative projects." Tom Peters - The Brand Called You.

I wrote a piece on how to raise your online profile for The Portfolio Collective this month. “Thanks, lots to unpack here”, says Pete Domican, and there is. Personal branding is a massive topic and I’ll be focusing more on this and web3 and writing in 2023, starting with post.news, Sudowrite and Mirror.xyz - pushing the boundaries of writing online.

I’ve been playing with OpenAI tools ChatGPT and DALLE-E. Wow! This is a big deal - sooooo many people are talking about this, and it’s interesting how the word-based app has taken off more than the images - they take some practice. Super impressed and it’s very addictive.

So in the spirit of all the 2022 roundup posts I’ve been enjoying, here are my 12 Things of 2023 - my top links and worth a revisit 👀

1. Your free standout self-assessment workbook (Dorie Clark)

2. It takes this freelance writer just a few minutes to make her every client pitch 100% personalized (Authory)

3. So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Cal Newport)

4. Systems can set you free (Mark McGuinness)

5. European freelancers & where to find them (Robert Vlach)

6. Why we love (async) voice memos (Growmotely)

7. The async toolkit (Twist)

8. Free ebook: The Practical Magic of the 5-Hour Workday (Trevor G Blake)

9. Learning how to learn (Ness Labs)

10. A stunning second act! Meet the people who changed course in midlife - and loved it (The Guardian)

11. How to think for yourself (Paul Graham)

12. Why you might want to switch to a four-day work week (Creative Boom)

2022 word of the year

For the first time in history, Oxford Dictionaries allowed the public to vote on its ‘22 word of the year, and the winner was Goblin Mode.

A type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy, typically in a way that rejects societal norms or expectations.

Other contenders were ‘Metaverse’ and ‘IStandWith’, but ‘Goblin Mode’ won by a mile.

Goblin Mode speaks to the times and the zeitgeist - ongoing strikes, four-day workweek trials, the great resignation, quiet quitting, karoshi, involution and tang ping - ‘lie still’.

We don’t want to go back to normal life, the 9-5 and pushback against unrealistic social media lifestyles.

My 2023 word of the year is ‘Portable’ - web3 and writing, NFT tokens, new locations to live/work and a lighter laptop than this relic.

What’s yours?

See you on the other side!

Nika

A shoutout to Nige Cook, my first Founding Member and a long-time supporter of my work. It means a lot and is much appreciated - thank you 🙏

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