As things get underway in an already-turbulent year, don’t forget to celebrate your wins. 

Welcome back to Productivity, Without Privilege, folks! I’m Alan Henry, author of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized, and author of this humble newsletter. If you already have a copy, consider sending me a tip or subscribing to my Patreon to help ensure I can pay the rent and continue doing this. 

Happy New Year! I thought a lot about this newsletter, considering that 2026 started with an illegal invasion of Venezuela and the murder of an unarmed mother in her own car by the American equivalent of the SS, leading, of course, to the kinds of discussions in media that we’ve been having for years and that people of color are already more than familiar with. (Have we already memory-holed George Floyd?) It’s taken me a few days to crawl out of the post-holiday haze and also battle the sense of helplessness that the beginning of the year brought, so hopefully I can help you do the same. I decided to stick to what I’m good at: helping you get things done so you don’t have to spend time paying any more attention to the horrors than you already do. 

To start the year, I’m going to revisit a tip I discovered years ago in my Lifehacker days that I still adore: Why you should keep a “Done” list. 

You probably already have a to-do list, I mean, everyone does. Whether it’s a notebook or a series of post-it notes, or an app (I prefer Todoist, they don’t pay me to say that, but they could—if you’re reading this, Todoist friends, call me), and that’s great! I’m not going to tell you how to make your to-do list (in this newsletter, anyway). But when you mark something off your to-do list, you immediately move on to the next thing, happy to have one less thing in front of you. 

That’s great, but it does rob you of some of the opportunity to savor the fact that you just accomplished something for yourself that deserves praise. Whether it’s just getting out of bed and showering, making yourself dinner, or just doing something at work you’ve been meaning to do, you did it! Bask in the sense of accomplishment of having shown up for yourself. 

Now, how you do this is up to you and the way you manage your to-dos. However, when you check off the to-dos that you’ve finished, consider moving them to a special “Done” board where you can periodically review them to acknowledge all the things you've accomplished. Maybe you create a new list in your to-do app entirely that’s less “stuff you have to do” and more “stuff you’ve done,” and you can feel good about the number next to it going up instead of going down. If you’re a big fan of Kanban-style apps like Trello, you can even create a “Finished” or “Done” column where you move cards that you’ve finished work on so you can see all of the progress you’ve made toward your goals. 

Yes, part of this is a reminder to slow down and savor your wins, because let’s be honest: we all can use both a) to slow down a little and b) to celebrate our successes, both large and small. But it’s also an opportunity to look at the progress you’re making toward your goals, not as a straight line from here to your destination, but as a growing mountain of blood, sweat, and tears you put into doing the things you’ve always wanted to do. 

You probably know that the best way to tackle big projects and goals is to break them down into smaller, bite-sized tasks that are easier to get your arms around. Yes, this makes them easier to handle and tackle when you have the time to, but instead of finishing them and just making them disappear, putting them into a list of things you can actually look at and admire reminds you that you’re making progress toward even those big goals that take time to get to, like savings or career goals. You know, the ones where instant gratification just isn’t an option, but discipline is required, and accountability is necessary. 

And that’s what this is really about. Keeping yourself accountable and on the right track. I’ve been making a lot of positive changes in my life lately, but keeping myself accountable and leveraging my momentum are the things that help me, for example, work out, cook instead of ordering takeout, or save money so I can ensure the rent is paid. And sometimes, accountability and discipline aren’t just about forcing yourself to go without, but about reminding yourself of how much you actually do and how much you’ve achieved. 

Could Social Media Serve the People Instead of Profits? by Whitney Bauck: Another banger from Atmos, this one musing over what social media could look like if it were established by and for the public in the interest of creating a public forum. After all, many of us treat social media like a third space, a place between work and home where we connect with and socialize with one another. So, what would social media look like if it prioritized healthy conversations and individual safety over algorithmic popularity, ad sales, and enriching the people on the platform's board? It’s an excellent question, one I find myself asking about a lot of services that are largely essential in the modern world, from energy to health care. 

A Bay Area Librarian Is Using Vintage Vinyl to Show Tweens Where Music Comes From, by Soleil Ho: This story at Coyote Media is heartwarming, and probably the antidote you need for the rest of the news lately. The headline tells the tale, but a middle school librarian is doing the lord’s work by searching for old vinyl records to share with her students, and summarily uses the records she’s found to help young listeners not just get a little dose of music history, but also hear the artists that inspired the musicians they already know and love. 

Doctors Catch Cancer-Diagnosing AI Extracting Patients’ Race Data and Being Racist With It, by Joe Wilkins: You’ve probably heard “garbage in, garbage out” when it comes to technology. You all know how I feel about AI already, but nowhere is the statement more true than when it comes to the literal gobble-up-everything-and-vomit-it-back-out-without-credit-to-the-creator machine. When the datasets that your AI tools are built on are prejudicial or lacking in general, the results you get, even when you use those tools for ostensibly useful purposes, are questionable at best. Thankfully, more people are starting to understand this. 

I’ve been making an effort to spend less time on social media lately (mentioned in this newsletter’s Try This), but I also try to ensure that the time I spend on social media serves me well. So, periodically, I go through and clean out accounts that are inactive or have changed their content in a way that I’d rather keep track of through another means. However, that also means I try to follow accounts that create great content that I really enjoy watching.

So, post New Year’s, when many of you may be trying to make some positive changes for your health, allow me to heartily recommend Liam Layton, aka ThePlantSlant. 

I haven’t engaged with his workout content, but I enjoy his cooking and food commentary so much that I’ve found myself saving a number of his videos to experiment with some of his recipes myself. To be fair, some of them may not be his recipes, as he does a great job of finding viral food videos and either elaborating on whether or not they’re actually good or healthy, debunking orthorexic food myths you’ll see all over TikTok or Instagram, or simply suggesting more ways to get protein and fiber into your diet.

I follow him on YouTube, but when digging up links for this newsletter, I decided to follow him on Instagram as well, since I spend a lot of time there. If TikTok is your preferred platform, check him out here.

I’m a little biased here, since I’ve been trying to incorporate more beans and lentils into my diet, and he’s done a great job of offering simple ways of doing so (I think I love beans almost as much as he does), so for me, 2026 will be the year of fibermaxxing, and I’m here for it. 

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That’s all for this edition of Productivity, Without Privilege. As always, if you enjoyed the newsletter, consider supporting me by dropping me a tip or subscribing to my Patreon for early access to this newsletter, as well as some other treats.

Look after yourselves and your loved ones, especially right now, and spare a thought for your communities and the people in them, who are trying to survive on a daily basis while being besieged by those who are ostensibly there to serve or protect them. I’m not saying it’s new, because it’s not, but it does demand vigilance, and it also demands empathy and care. I’ll see you back here soon.