Note to Self
by Gina Trapani

Posts tagged #second-half

The Year I Left Design.  

My former colleague Lisa Woodley recounts her 20-year path from designer to corporate sales leader and back. Like so many who shift their focus in the second half of their career, a health crisis that gave her lots of time to think was her catalyst. Some great, thoughtful guidance here for anyone also on their way back home to their true work.
The Year I Left Design
The Year I Left Design · medium.com
And How I Found My Way Back
#advice #inner-attunement #work #second-half

Halftime

Oct 8, 2025
Halftime
Gina Trapani

A couple of weeks ago I turned 50 years old, which is a sentence my fingers feel strange typing because in my mind I’m still somewhere in my late 20s. Age perception is weird like that. There’s a polite assumption your loved ones (and your financial planner) like to make, which is that you will live to be 100 years old. Actuarial tables tell a more likely story, but I don’t care: I’m going to try to reach centenarian status.

Working back from there, I think of this 50th birthday as halftime—that pause mid-game when players get to run off the field, take a breather, review what’s happened so far, and strategize what’s next (ideally while Shakira and J. Lo do this show).

574 words→

Five for 50.  

On his 50th birthday, Anil Dash shares five ways to treat others, make things, and treat yourself. These five things confirm why Anil is my friend, mentor, and cofounder, whose expertise includes the ability to frame the passage of time in huge terms. Happy half-century, Anil!
Five for 50 - Anil Dash
Five for 50 - Anil Dash · anildash.com
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
#publishing #second-half #retrospect

How to be unproductive.  

When your self-worth is linked to your productivity, you see every activity in your day as either valuable (productive) or not. I have this disease. At some point, the ability to check items off a todo-list stops moving you forward, and instead holds you back. Rick Foerster argues for the value of “unproductive” time without metrics.
How to be unproductive
How to be unproductive · newsletter.thewayofwork.com
Why going nowhere gets you somewhere
#purpose #second-half #productivity-detox

When you experience something in life—and as much as I’ve experienced in the game of basketball—the beautiful part of it for me is to give back. You don’t experience things to keep. You experience it to give it back.

— Basketball great Teresa Weatherspoon on what she brought from her start as a player in the inaugural season of the WNBA to coaching today.

Lately I’ve noticed a clear and consistent pulse of an old feeling I haven’t had for a long time: I want to share more of how I think, what I learn, and what I like online. That is, I want to give it back. But not on cookie-cutter content platforms where we’ve all signed up to work a data entry job feeding an LLM. On my own webpages, on my own domain name, with my own code. Let’s do this.

#writing #second-half #retrospect