I Took a Long Rest. Now It’s Time to Respawn.
A note to my readers on where Min-Max Life is headed and why I’m more fired up than ever.
If you’ve been subscribed to this newsletter for a while, you might have noticed something: I up and vanished.
No dramatic farewell post. No “taking a break” announcement. I just… stopped showing up. One week became two, two became a month, and a month became, well, a lot longer than I’d like to admit.
In gamer terms, I didn’t die. I had just AFK’ed. (For everyone else, I was away from my keyboard.)
So before we go too much further, I think I owe you an honest explanation of what happened and more importantly, where we’re going from here.
Why I Started This
I launched Min-Max Life because I’ve always believed that life, at its core, works like a great role-playing game (RPG).
You start with a basic skill set. You take on quests and, if you’re anything like me, you spend waaaaay too much time on the side quests.
You grind.
You fail.
You grind again.
You level up.
And with each new level, the game gets harder and more rewarding. The whole point isn’t to reach the end. It’s to become someone capable of handling whatever the game throws at you next.
I started writing because I wanted to share that framework with people who, like me, are trying to build something meaningful in their careers, their lives, and eventually, on their own terms.
That felt true when I started and it still rings true today.
Why I Stopped
Here’s the honest version: I ran out of steam.
I’d been consistent for a few months showing up every week and putting real effort into each post. Then life intervened (a long vacation, some personal stuff), and when I came back, poof the momentum was gone. The subscriber numbers weren’t where I hoped they’d be. And without a clear sense of who I was writing for, every blank page felt like a boss fight I wasn’t equipped for.
So I did what any reasonable gamer does when a dungeon gets too hard too fast.
I went and did some side quests.
The problem is I never came back to the main story.
Why I’m Back… And Why It’s Different This Time
Something shifted for me recently. I’ve spent over two decades in the tech industry, working my way up to a Director of Technical Program Management. I’m excellent at what I do. I’ve led complex, cross-functional programs, designed processes that made entire product development organizations run smoother, and helped a lot of people along the way.
But somewhere in there I realized: I’ve been pouring my best skills into someone else’s game.
That’s not a complaint; it’s an observation. And it lit a fire under me that I haven’t felt in a long time. I’ve had an entrepreneurial itch for years, but I just never had a clear enough vision of what to build.
Now I do.
What Min-Max Life Is Becoming
Starting now, Min-Max Life has a sharper focus: helping aspiring and early-career Technical Program Managers level up. Faster. Smarter. And with a helluva lot less of the trial and error I had to go through.
If you’re trying to break into the TPM field, just landed your first role, or are a few years in and wondering how to get to the next level, this newsletter is for you.
Every issue will give you something concrete: a framework, a lesson from the field, a career move worth considering, or an honest look at what this job actually demands (and rewards). And because I’ve been a gamer since the NES era — we’re talking the Final Fantasy series, the Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, the works — I’ll be using the language I know best to make it all stick.
Think skill trees, not org charts. Think quests, not OKRs. Think leveling up, not “career development planning.”
Same ideas. Way more fun.
What I’m Asking From You
If this new direction resonates with you, I’d love for you to stick around. Tell a friend who’s trying to break into tech. Hit reply and let me know what you’re struggling with. Your questions will literally shape what I write next.
And if the new focus isn’t what you signed up for, no hard feelings. Unsubscribing is always an option. I’d rather have a small group of people who are genuinely excited than a large list of people who aren’t.
The main quest has restarted. The party is assembling.
Ready up.