This time of year I see “most popular on my blog this year” posts flying around. I can’t share those because I stopped doing any kind of analytics half a decade ago and haven’t looked back. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever for my writing, and I commend it to you. In lieu of a “most read” posts (which you’re just reinforcing by doing that anyway!)

Instead, here are the top five best or most important posts I wrote this year, in my opinion.

1. Tweet Less, Blog More: An uncomplicated game plan for writing this year. (January 2, ~500 words)

   Writing tweet storms can be immediately gratifying, but blogging is way better long-term. I hope you’ll consider it for 2019!

2. Stop Saying “What Capitalism Does” (March 9, ~1,000 words)

   Written after reading the influential essay “The Californian Ideology,” because the phrase “what __ does” makes such a mess of the complicated relationship between people and systems.

3. Building Things: A meander on leadership roles and the kinds of contributions we make. (August 6, ~1,000 words)

   I had cause to reflect a lot this year on the shape of leadership in technical contexts; here I tried to thread some needles.

4. Dealing With Burnout In Public: Because if I’m going to go through this, it might as well be a help to others. (August 20, ~850 words)

   My attempt to provide a Christian frame for my approach to burnout—and why I blogged about it at such length.

5. Assumed Audiences: ‘The Internet’ is far too broad an audience for, well, basically any post I write. (October 18, ~700 words)

   A new practice for myself, and an attempt to incept it into the world-at-large—because global audiences break everything.

And, as a bonus, a number of other things I think are interesting:

• all my Zettelkasten posts
• all my burnout posts
• Scales of Feedback Time in Software Development—my most important technical post this year
• Free Speech—on outsourcing all of our public discourse to social media
• How I Write a Talk