enter: the full stack / #18

on treating myself like a product (and making it work)

I used to treat my life like a collection of separate projects:

• Workout tracking to improve my personal records

• Time tracking to manage my time

• Meditation for stress

• Budgeting for financial health

• etc, etc

Each one ran independently, like separate apps that occasionally crashed into each other.

The result? I'd nail my workout goals while my relationships suffered because I was too tired from morning gym sessions to hang out at night.

Or I'd optimize my morning routine so perfectly that any disruption would send the entire day spiraling.

I was hitting personal records in one area while quietly imploding in others.

Over the past half a year, I’ve talked to 20+ high performers, over coffees and Google Meets and desserts.

Here’s the pattern I keep seeing: they’re absolutely crushing it in an area, while everything else quietly falls apart in the form of:

• Overthinking but not deciding

• Everything will happen… “one day”

• Killing it at work but life feels scattered

• Making good money but not managing it

• Scrolling instead of connecting with people

And we wonder why life feels off.

The sabbatical was supposed to fix this. Give me space to figure out what I actually wanted instead of just optimizing what I had.

At first, I didn’t know where to start. I’d built so many routines that I mistook for direction, so many systems that masked the deeper question: what was all this effort actually for?

Eventually, I did what I always do when I’m overwhelmed — I started mapping, borrowed from the muscle memory of building frameworks at work, and the hundreds of self-development books over the years.

Eventually, I mapped out what I’m calling the Full Stack:

Strength — your infrastructure
Physical capacity, mental resilience, financial stability. If your core system keeps crashing, it doesn’t matter how good the apps are.

Thinking — your operating system
Mental models, decision frameworks, cognitive architecture. How you parse information and make choices.

Alignment — your strategy
Purpose, values, priorities. What you're building toward and why.

Connection — the human layer
Relationships, community, contribution. How you plug into other people — and build something bigger than you could solo.

Knowledge — your growth engine
Learning, creating, shipping. Turning what you learn, into something that you create.

(Yes, they spell “stack”, and I spent a while trying to make the acronym work.

And no, I will not apologize for loving acronyms in frameworks 🫡)

the full stack

Here's what I'm discovering as I build my own full stack:

• Everything builds on everything else: My writing isn't just a creative outlet (Knowledge) — it's also:

  • helping me process what I'm learning (Thinking)

  • connecting with people who resonate with similar ideas (Connection)

  • building toward work that feels meaningful (Alignment)

  • managing the financial reality of this break (Strength)

• No more single points of failure: When one layer is struggling, the others can support it instead of everything collapsing

• You put out fewer fires: Instead of optimizing individual metrics, I'm gunning for integration

• Life actually scales: The system gets stronger, not just busier

When I felt unmotivated to write, instead of forcing discipline, I asked: which layer needs attention?

Sometimes it was Strength — I was trying to write while exhausted.

Sometimes Thinking — I hadn't clarified what I actually wanted to say.

And sometimes, it’s Alignment — I'd lost track of why this mattered to me, and I can safely scrap the writing in that case.

The fix depended on which layer was misfiring.

But here's the tension I'm still working through:

How do you approach personal development systematically without losing the humanity of it?

How do you design your life intentionally while still leaving room for serendipity, for rest, for the kind of growth that can't be tracked in a spreadsheet?

Some days I nail the integration. Other days I catch myself treating “be present” or “be happy” like a OKR and realize I've missed the point entirely.

The framework isn't about optimizing every moment. It's about building a system robust enough to handle the unoptimized moments.

I'm not saying I've mastered this. My own stack is very much under construction — some layers more stable than others, some (many!) integration points still clunky.

The Strength layer is getting stronger (hello, running training!), but I still struggle with financial anxiety even though the math works out fine.

The Thinking layer has better frameworks, but I still catch myself people-pleasing in ways that contradict my stated values.

Alignment is clearer than it's ever been, but I'm still figuring out how to build Connection while being selectively social.

(Translation: I want meaningful relationships but also please don't make me go to networking events. The struggle is real.)

I'm testing this stuff in real time — some experiments work, others crash spectacularly. But that's the point.

Your most important product is you.

I'm still building my full stack, one layer at a time.

Other things

• Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈

• This week’s experiment: Listening to an audiobook in 1x speed — I’m used to 2.5-3x! It helps that the book is Miranda Hart’s I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, with her narrating in her brand of awkward and authentic humor. Such fun! (I might go rewatch Miranda now…)

Until next time,
Jalyn