A decade never to be forgotten
Update: read Building an App I will use Daily
I’m working on a project where I am focusing on long-term change. It was inspired by a talk given by Elder Gary E. Stevenson in the October 2024 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As he was giving that talk, I felt that familiar prick of the spirit saying I needed to do something. I’ve learned that all learning is spiritual and this is an opportunity to do something with that knowledge.
This project has two parts:
- A 10 year journal. Join us!
- A podcast where I interview the same 12 people for the next ten years. Subscribe!
It’s pretty amazing. Here’s how I made this project.
First, I pondered about what categories would be most meaningful. I settled on these:
| Symbol | Category Name |
|---|---|
| ✝︎ | Live the Gospel of Jesus Christ |
| ⚕︎ | Care for those in need |
| ✉︎ | Invite all to receive the gospel |
| ⚭ | Unite families for eternity |
| ❦ | Faith exploration |
| ☐ | Favorite things |
| ✦ | Miracles |
| ✪ | Gratitude |
| ⚘ | Self-care ADNTBF |
| ❉ | Hopes for the future |
| ⌛︎ | Past |
| ⚯ | Friends |
| ⚽︎ | Activities and hobbies |
The first four categories were directly from Elder Stevenson’s talk. Over ten years, these are the things that are going to change, and yet still be consistent in our lives.
The others were topics that I thought would be beneficial to think about.
The Journal
The journal is housed in a Skool Community. Skool is a new-ish content creator network, and I chose it for a couple reasons.
- It had a fairly wide adoption and is “hot” right now.
- It has a method that will work well for what I want to do.
Each day, I post a journaling prompt that people can either answer in the comments for that day, or they can write in their own journal.
That day’s prompt is pinned to the top, and then people can engage with it easily and find it easily, too. For the first year, I’ll need to post something in there daily. For the following 9 years, I’ll need to pin and unpin the day’s question. Participants will be able to see how they are answering compared to a previous year.
I debated about a lot of different formats for this, and ultimately went with Skool for the simplicity of what I wanted to do. I don’t need it to be fancy, just easy for people to use, and it is quite easy for people to get started with.
It will cost me $10,000 to run this thing in there for the next ten years, assuming the price doesn’t increase, but it probably will.
I’m still working on creating a physical 10 year journal with all these prompts, which will be really cool. Let me know if you want to help with that!
The Podcast
The podcast is really exciting to me. Once per month, I’ll interview one of the 12 selected people. So far, Courtney and my wife (and me) are the first two episodes.
In November next year (and each year for the next decade), I’ll release Courtney’s yearly interview. December will be Staci’s month, and so on for our other guests.
I’m also looking for 8 more people to be guests on this podcast. I’m hoping to find people who fall into some of the following categories:
- Newly wed
- Nearly dead (seriously, these people have great wisdom and I want to help preserve it before they leave this mortal life)
- Fresh off a mission
- New empty nesters
- Recently retired
- About 10 years from retirement (so they’ll finish this right when they do retire)
- Long time retired
- Older and not married
- And just about any demographic
Since I’ve already created successful podcasts, and even tried to create something to document our time here on earth, I’m really excited about this project.