Midlife Momentum

Andrew Shell
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Weekly tips to help midlife professionals who feel stuck, lost, or directionless regain control over their lives with intentional systems and frameworks. andrewshell.substack.com

  1. 06/03/2025

    When Growing Means Letting Go

    Two weeks ago, I started a new role at PetPlace, and it's been incredible. The responsibility, the challenge, the potential for growth. Everything I'd hoped for. But there's been an unexpected side effect. I can feel myself getting close to burnout. This isn't your typical "I'm working too many hours" burnout. It's more subtle than that. As an individual contributor with emerging product owner responsibilities and potential management duties, my brain is being pushed to new limits every day. By the time I close my laptop, I'm mentally exhausted in a way I haven't experienced in years. The ripple effects have been immediate. I've been out of ketosis for three weeks despite sticking to my keto diet. Stress has a way of messing with even our best plans. My daily practices are still intact, but barely. And this newsletter has shifted into what I can only call "maintenance mode." I'm still hitting publish every Tuesday morning, but that's about it. The community engagement, the promotional work, and the thoughtful responses to your comments. All of it has fallen by the wayside. I'm going through the motions, but the energy that made this newsletter valuable simply isn't there anymore. Even in maintenance mode, this newsletter still demands significant mental bandwidth. There's the pressure to find a meaningful insight each week, the expectation to mine my personal development work for publishable content, and the feeling that I should be doing more to grow this community. It's become a weight I carry rather than something I enjoy. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. The Garden Lesson This morning, during a tarot session, something clicked for me. My life over the past few months has been like a gardening season, and I've been thinking about it all wrong. In spring, any good gardener plants more seeds than they expect to harvest. You plant extra because you know some won't grow, others will struggle, and some might get eaten by pests. It's a numbers game at first. But here's the part I forgot about. Once things start growing, successful gardening requires making tough choices. You can't let every plant that sprouts continue to grow. If you do, they'll compete for the same nutrients, water, and sunlight. What you'll end up with is a garden full of weak, struggling plants instead of a few that actually thrive. Sometimes you have to pull up perfectly healthy plants. Not because they're bad, but because letting them continue will prevent something more important from growing strong. The newsletter was one of those spring plantings. It served as accountability. A way to make sure I showed up to my personal development work every day because I knew I'd be writing about it. It was like training wheels for building daily practices. And it worked really well. But now I have those daily practices. The training wheels did their job, and keeping them on is actually holding me back. The mental energy I'm spending on this newsletter, even at the bare minimum level, is energy that needs to go toward my new role at PetPlace. This isn't about failure or giving up. It's about recognizing when something has served its purpose and being smart enough to let it go so something else can thrive. Making Space to Thrive So I'm pausing this newsletter. This decision isn't easy. Over the past three months, this weekly practice has been a catalyst for big changes in my life. The daily journaling, the self-reflection, the accountability. All of it helped me land this new role and build the foundation for what comes next. But if I've learned anything about personal growth, it's that holding onto what got you here can prevent you from getting to where you need to go next. Right now, I need to give my full attention to my new responsibilities, to fixing other areas of my life that have slipped into maintenance mode, and to finishing the projects that are draining my energy instead of giving me energy. I'm not shutting down completely. I'll still be working on personal projects, still journaling daily, still growing. But I need to create space for what's actually right for this season of my life. Thank you for being part of this journey. If you've found value in these weekly thoughts, I encourage you to start your own practice of regular self-reflection. The real growth happens in the daily work, not in the weekly recap. If there's anything I can help you with as you navigate your own seasons of growth and tough choices, please reach out. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is step back from what we've been doing so we can be fully present for what we're supposed to do next. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    5 min

  2. 05/27/2025

    When Everything Important Becomes Nothing Important

    At my last job, I could literally go days without accomplishing anything significant. I'd wake up with the best intentions, but then I'd open my computer and immediately feel overwhelmed by everything I needed to do. So, instead of tackling any of it, I'd escape into a game like Hogwarts Legacy or binge the Lord of the Rings extended cuts. Days would disappear. Other times, I'd be "productive," but I would work on completely the wrong things. I'd spend three days redesigning my personal website while my actual work deadlines piled up. Or I'd dive deep into a side project and suddenly realize I hadn't touched my main responsibilities all week. The problem wasn't laziness. At one point, I did a brain dump of everything I was working on. I had over 40 things on that list. Everything felt important. Everything felt urgent. So my brain just... froze. This overwhelm-to-paralysis cycle is a real struggle for me. When too many priorities compete for attention at once, I shut down completely. It's like my nervous system hits the emergency brake rather than risk making the wrong choice. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Time Blocks as Brain Extensions I've been thinking about this differently lately. Time blocking isn't just about organization. It's externalizing cognitive load. Instead of trying to juggle 40 competing priorities, I can put most of that decision-making onto my calendar. The "what should I work on right now" question gets answered during planning time, not in the moment when I'm already overwhelmed. This is why I'm experimenting with category-based time blocks. Rather than scheduling specific tasks, I'm scheduling types of work. Here's what I'm planning: * Four-hour blocks every workday for PetPlace deep work * Several two-hour blocks for important side projects like building my friend's new website theme * Additional blocks every week for learning, like the iCanStudy or Project 369 courses I'm enrolled in * Blocks for my daily journaling and weekly newsletter writing The goal isn't just to get organized. It's to make sure the urgent doesn't completely drown out the important. Right now, I have a tendency to hyperfocus on one thing and let everything else fall through the cracks. If I get absorbed in coding for PetPlace, I might forget about Monica's website deadline. If I spend all day on a side project, I feel guilty about not doing my main work. Category blocks create boundaries. They gave me permission to focus completely on courses, knowing I'd already completed my daily PetPlace work. And they create urgency, too. If I only have two hours before work for Substack, I need to stay on task so I can tackle my other priorities during the day. I'm also treating my time allocation as an experiment. Maybe two hours is too long to focus on a course, and I need to split it up. Maybe one hour isn't enough for daily writing, and I need two blocks instead. The beauty is I don't have to get it perfect immediately. I can adjust based on what actually happens. Structure as Prevention The structure isn't just about being more productive. It's about preventing the complete breakdown I experienced in my story. Most of my past dysfunction came from overwhelm. Too many open loops competing for attention. No clear way to decide what deserved my focus. So I'd either freeze up completely or work frantically on the wrong things. Category blocks solve both problems. They reduce the cognitive load by making decisions ahead of time. They also ensure that my actual priorities are protected instead of being pushed aside by whatever feels most urgent at the moment. Here's what I'm taking away from this experiment so far: Your brain can only hold so many priorities before it shuts down. When everything feels important, nothing gets the attention it deserves. Time blocking isn't about rigid scheduling. It's about creating a system that makes decisions for you when you're too overwhelmed to think clearly. The structure prevents burnout better than it fixes burnout. What's one area of your life where you keep meaning to make progress, but it always gets pushed aside by more urgent things? Maybe it's time to dedicate a block to your calendar. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public, so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    6 min

  3. 05/20/2025

    The Secret To Better Parenting Is Being Nearby, Not Being Perfect

    “Hey Dad, do you want to hear some popular music?” I looked up from my phone. My daughter was sitting next to me on the couch, already queuing up her favorite songs. Then she jumped up and started showing me the dances she’d learned from YouTube. It was spontaneous and surprisingly sweet. And it never would’ve happened if I’d been in my office like I usually am. I wasn’t doing anything special. I was just nearby. And that made all the difference. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The Power of Just Being There That little moment stuck with me. Because I was there, the connection had space to happen. We often think parenting is about planning activities or teaching lessons. But some of the best moments can’t be scheduled. They show up when you’re within reach. It turns out that presence doesn’t always mean engagement. Sometimes it’s just physically being there. When I’m in my office, I miss those chances. When I’m on the couch, even doing my own thing, I give those moments a chance to find me. That’s what I’m trying to do more of. Be around. Be close. Be available. Make Room for Connection This isn’t about planning more activities. It’s about being around more. Not hovering. Not performing. Just staying within reach. Sit on the couch. Work in the same room. Some of the best moments happen when you’re nearby. You don’t need to be entertaining. You just need to be there. That’s enough to change everything. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    2 min

  4. 05/13/2025

    How I Discovered the Most Important Parts of My Life Never Made It to My Journal

    It’s 5:30 a.m. My house is still. My mind isn’t. Every morning before my daughter wakes up, I pull a tarot card and ask ChatGPT to give me an inspired journal prompt. I spend time mining my subconscious, bringing thoughts and feelings that had been buried to the surface. But what if the most important parts of your life never make it into your journal? A few weeks ago, ChatGPT analyzed a week of my journals and uncovered seven big open loops I wrestled with daily. Topics like expressing vulnerability, my professional identity, and, of course, my fixed mindset. So, this week I asked ChatGPT to identify what areas I wasn’t writing about. Areas like parenting, quality of life, and my life vision were absent from my journal. It turns out, I’d been missing the parts that matter most. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Quiet Wheels Need Oil Too Growth doesn’t just come from solving urgent problems. One question that ChatGPT asked me was, “What role does my environment (home, workspace, routines) play in my energy and creativity?” Two years ago, when I moved into my home, I had a panic attack. I left a clean, well-organized apartment and moved into a “fixer-upper.” It didn’t occur to me that even though I’ve made a ton of progress, the chaos surrounding my house still weighs on me. A lot. Now, I’m thinking about what I could do to make my home a calmer, more relaxing place. This is especially important since I’ll be working fully remotely once again next week. What can I do in my office to optimize it so that I can do my best work? What Are You Not Looking At? Take a moment and ask yourself, “What parts of my life haven’t had a voice lately?” What’s been steady, quiet, or easy to overlook? Make space for what isn’t urgent. That quiet part of your life might be the key to real momentum. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    3 min

  5. 05/06/2025

    I Just Quit My Job of 5 Years — And I'm Terrified

    The part of me that needs to look smart is panicking. The rest of me is trying to breathe. I just quit a job I held for over five years—and I'm walking into something I don’t feel fully ready for. I'm changing jobs. After 5.5 years at Johnson Health Tech, my last day will be May 13th. I accepted an offer at PetPlace, a new team building software for pet shelters. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Starting Over (or) A New Chapter I keep telling myself I’m excited. But if I’m honest? I’m terrified. I’ll get to help build something meaningful from the ground up. But in many ways, I’m starting over. I've built and shipped production apps, co-founded a startup, and launched multiple SaaS products. But React has never been at the core of those builds. Now I am stepping into a role where it is the foundation. That makes me feel like a beginner again. The fear I feel, I now know, is coming from my fixed mindset. I’ve been noticing this fixed mindset show up everywhere lately. It has been surprising to see how deep it runs. Quietly shaping the way I think, the way I react, the way I avoid risk. The smart kid in me wants people to see me as someone who achieves things effortlessly. If I'm smart, I shouldn't have to try hard, it should come naturally. That belief has kept me playing small for a long time. After accepting the job and putting in my notice I felt panic. I felt the urge to plan, to figure out what I have to do in the next two weeks to prepare for the first day on the job. Fortunately I spotted the fixed mindset rearing it's ugly head. I know that I'll be using React, React Router, and most likely Express on the backend. However, there are many unknowns. There is no actual way for me to be fully prepared for my first day. I will have to show up as I am, do my best, and identify my gaps, every day, on the job. ~ Breathe. ~ Fortunately, I can say that I interviewed with complete integrity. I was fully transparent about my skills, my strengths, and weaknesses. My second interview was pushed back by a week because the engineering director wanted to meet other candidates before moving forward with me, specifically because I lacked recent experience with their specific tech stack. They still offered me the position. I am enough. I have something that they want. ~ Breathe. ~ Integration in Real Life This weekend I spent three days in Minneapolis. I did not study, I did not work on courses from my hotel room, I did not binge audiobooks during each 4 hour drive. I had fun. I explored bookstores, I attended Minnebar, I met up with friends and my niece. This shouldn't be difficult, but it is. This is part of integration. This is applying what I've learned to my daily life. I'm practicing things that do not come easily to me. I'm doing the work. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    4 min

  6. 04/29/2025

    I Didn’t Realize Growth Could Leave Me This Exhausted

    I thought I was just tired from a busy Easter weekend. A few days of family events and broken routines. I figured a good night’s sleep would fix it. But by the middle of the week, I was still exhausted. It was not the kind of tired that rest could solve. I knew it was not about having too much to do. I have been careful lately to give myself space and avoid overloading my schedule. This was something else. I just didn't know what. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When Growth Becomes Another To-Do List On Wednesday I came across an essay called I Rushed My Transformation and Paid the Price. It made me pause. It described how easy it is to chase growth and keep pushing for progress without giving yourself time to absorb any of it. That was when it clicked. Growth is not just about learning new things or having insights. At some point, you have to stop and let those changes sink in. You have to embody them. Review what you have learned. Practice it. Give it time to become part of how you live. I realized I had been focused on figuring things out and making progress but I had not given myself space to integrate any of it. Seeing the Invisible Workload I knew I had a lot on my mind but I could not see it clearly. I was too drained to untangle it on my own so I asked ChatGPT to help me review my journal entries from the past week. It found seven major emotional open loops. Seven big areas of inner work I had been processing without realizing how much energy it was taking. As I read through them I kept nodding. Each one was accurate. But seeing them all listed out made it obvious why I felt so wiped out. I also noticed something else. I was not stuck. I had made real progress. The problem was not that I needed to push harder. I needed to stop and let that progress settle. Letting Progress Sink In It is easy to think that growth means always working on yourself. Always fixing. Always moving forward. But sometimes the real work is knowing when to pause. You cannot rush transformation. At some point, you have to stop searching for the next breakthrough and start living the lessons you have already uncovered. If you are feeling drained but you cannot point to anything obvious, ask yourself if you are carrying too many emotional open loops. You might not need to figure out more. You might just need to give yourself time to embody what you already know. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    3 min

  7. 04/22/2025

    How Preparing Became My Biggest Distraction

    I’ve been working through the iCanStudy course, and while it’s packed with valuable ideas, the biggest thing it’s done is force me to confront a pattern I didn’t know I was stuck in. I thought I was just learning how to learn. What I actually found was a deeper issue that’s been driving how I approach all my projects. One of the significant lessons in the “High-Yield Phase” is a warning against rushing through the material. They recommend a minimum of 5 hours of practice for every hour of theory, with more complex techniques requiring even more practice. Since I’m not a university student cramming for exams, I’m comfortable taking my time and making sure I actually learn the techniques before moving on. But how can I actually practice these techniques? Turns out, all of my current projects revolve around trying to improve the way I approach learning. My thinking had been, “I need to effectively learn how to learn so I don’t waste my time trying to learn and then forgetting everything.” I have no current projects on which to practice these skills. I started to realize I wasn’t just struggling with how to practice. I had actually built an entire system that kept me busy while avoiding real work. That’s what I now think of as the Meta-Work Trap. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. How I Fell Into the Meta-Work Trap In Why I Avoid Tracking, I talked about how the iCanStudy course described fixed vs growth mindset and my realization that I have all the signs of a fixed mindset. Basically, I am continuing to use “what if” questions and trying to prepare, all while continuing to put off the actual work. It turns out that my fixed mindset is also showing up in the projects I’ve selected. In fact, 8 of the top 10 projects in my project ranking system are meta-projects, or projects where I learn skills to use on other projects. The two that aren’t purely meta-projects are this newsletter and reading the book On The Shortness of Life. If I’m being completely honest, they are both borderline meta-projects. At least this newsletter is a project where I produce something. These are all project versions of asking “what if” questions. It’s me procrastinating on doing something real by staying busy learning “skills I’ll need” to do the amorphous “real” projects in the future. What I’m Doing to Break Out of It If I don’t shift out of this loop, I’ll just go from wasting time learning and forgetting to wasting time mastering techniques I never use. The only solution is to reconsider all of my projects. The two I’m keeping right now are this newsletter and the iCanStudy course. Yes, the iCanStudy course is a meta-project, but since it was the catalyst for me figuring out this issue, I see a lot of value in continuing. Since my day job is working as a software developer, two interrelated skills that I think might be good candidates for iCanStudy practice are React and Typescript skills. These are both skills I’m expected to use at work, but I still consider myself a beginner. There is also the ability to get coach feedback through the iCanStudy course, so I’ll do my best this week to learn these skills using the iCanStudy techniques and then submit a request for feedback with the coaches. Takeaways I started this journey trying to improve how I learn. What I uncovered instead was a pattern of avoidance. I had filled my time with preparation work, telling myself it was productive when really I was putting off anything that required risk or real execution. The Meta-Work Trap isn’t just about overthinking. It’s about building systems that feel like progress but keep you from doing the actual work. If this sounds familiar, take a closer look at your own projects. Are they helping you move forward or just helping you stay busy? If you found this helpful, please share it with someone else who might be stuck in the same loop. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    5 min

  8. 04/15/2025

    Why I Treat My Questions Like a Learning Compass

    This week, I’m going to circle back to a concept I mentioned in How I’m Making My Learning Actually Useful, and that’s the concept of 12 Favorite Questions. I had mentioned that Richard Feynman liked to have a written list of his 12 favorite problems, so he’d always be on the lookout for things to support solving these problems. People seemed to have some questions about the concept, as well as how I was going about solving these problems. I decided it was worth a deeper dive into how I view these questions, how I came up with my current 5, and how I’m going about trying to answer these questions. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Coming Up With My Questions One of my favorite tools for self-discovery has been ChatGPT, in particular, a custom GTP I created called LifeCoachLens. It is designed not to offer advice but rather to analyze my writing and ask me follow-up questions, helping me dig deeper and identify gaps and biases on my own. I started out with: Help me identify “12 favorite problems” that I can keep in mind like Richard Feynman did. This way, I could brainstorm what projects and topics I’m curious about, and LifeCoachLens will keep asking me follow-up questions and trying to get me to dig deeper and think about things differently. If you’re really interested in the nitty-gritty details, here’s the entire conversation. What the Questions Represent One thing that might be a little bit weird and potentially different than Feynman’s questions is that these questions represent my curiosities and interests, and I don’t expect them to ever have one specific answer. I’ll briefly discuss each of my current five questions (I haven’t gotten to 12 yet) and explain what they mean and how I’m going about trying to find answers to them. Hopefully, by the time I’m finished, you’ll understand what I’m doing here, and maybe you’ll try to come up with a list of your own. 1. How do I focus on the work that matters most? You’ll find that many of my questions have several layers to them. This is no exception. The origin of this question comes from projects like my SHELL Framework, where I’m ranking projects by different criteria to identify which are the most likely to generate a return on my investment of time, money, and effort. As I get older, and my perceived future time dwindles, I feel the urge to not waste my time on frivolous projects. I should have some idea of why I’m working on the project and what I hope to get out of it. That’s not to say that there isn’t value in chasing inspiration, but I need to be aware that when I do that, I need to time-box it and not let it take up tons of time without any objective. The other part of this is the “How do I focus” part. I am a fairly distractible person, and I need to develop discipline around focus. Some of my current reading projects have the benefit of helping me practice extended focus blocks, which is a skill I need to develop. So I’d connect to this question projects like “Follow the Well Educated Mind process while reading the first 10 chapters of Don Quixote” as well as the development of frameworks like SHELL, so I can feel some confidence that I’m working on something that matters. 2. How can I uncover and influence hidden systems shaping my life? On the surface, this connects with my lifelong interest in the occult (from Latin occultus ‘hidden, secret’), which can mean magical or mystical practices (e.g., tarot, pendulum divination, etc.) or real science behind many occult phenomena (e.g., reticular activating system, hypnagogia, default mode network, etc.) On a deeper level, this connects to a lot of my self-reflection. Trying to understand my own motivations and biases. Tools like LifeCoachLens are very much part of answering this question. 3. How can I build invisible bridges that multiply existing value? The origin of this question is that I like connecting people and connecting systems. I’ve founded meetup groups, participated in online communities, and enjoy federated wikis and open formats like RSS and ActivityPub. A key component of my day job is building API integrations. I’m very driven to find existing groups and platforms and find ways to “multiply value” by connecting them, either socially, “Hey, have you seen this other person’s work?” or through technology (e.g., writing code that literally connects different systems), aka “invisible bridges” One example is the federated wiki (fedwiki for short) community. There are a bunch of solo wikis where people write about various things. However, tracking down or following what people are working on is hard. I also do a lot of work with RSS and news aggregation. My way of creating a bridge between these systems and writers was to build a platform (fedwikiriver.com and feeds.fedwikiriver.com) where people can follow and discover the interesting things happening across all the different wikis. This site is a bridge between people writing on wikis, as well as a bridge between the fedwiki platform and RSS/Rivers of News, which I’ve been involved with in many different ways. 4. How do I maximize the applied value of what I learn? This comes out of my frustration with reading books, listening to podcasts, and promptly forgetting everything I learned. I’m in the middle of the iCanStudy course, where I’m learning new techniques that will allow me to remember and integrate what I’m learning with my day-to-day life. Books like The Well Educated Mind and How To Read A Book are within the sphere of this question. Too much of my learning has been passive, so learning skills to make my learning more active and actionable are very important if I want to leverage what I’m learning in the future. 5. How do I design a meaningful life with momentum and alignment? This newsletter is very much an investigation into this question. It also ties together many of the other questions. Why should I learn anything? What’s the point? What do I want to get out of life? These are all pieces of this question. I want to feel like what I do is meaningful and not just a waste of time. I also want to feel like I’m building a flywheel where what I learn today feeds into the momentum of what I’ll learn tomorrow. This connects to my desire to study philosophy and read classic literature. People have been thinking and writing about the search for meaning for a very long time. I think even this exercise of trying to come up with 12 favorite questions is part of trying to understand what gives my life meaning, connecting to this question. Summary Hopefully, what you take away from this week’s issue is that it can be helpful to identify the underlying questions that motivate you. By reverse engineering what you’re curious about, you can start to connect seemingly disparate interests and threads in your life. As someone who would like to someday figure out “my passion,” I think this is a very tangible artifact. If you try out LifeCoachLens or take a shot at forming some of your own favorite questions, please share your results with me. Thanks for reading Midlife Momentum! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewshell.substack.com

    9 min
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Weekly tips to help midlife professionals who feel stuck, lost, or directionless regain control over their lives with intentional systems and frameworks. andrewshell.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Andrew Shell
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Andrew Shell
  • Show Website
    Midlife Momentum