Practice "Wrapped"
Celebrating a half year of making (and Practice)
It’s the end of the year, which means that, among many other things: it’s Spotify Wrapped season. Spotify first started tabulating people’s listening habits and packaging them into shareable visuals in 2016, and ever since it’s been a much-awaited moment and big deal for a lot of people. This year, however, awkwardly integrated AI features and seemingly “inaccurate results” led to some scathing reviews and took away some of its glow. (I know that I was annoyed that a few listens to Chappell Roan were enough to define my entire July as a “Pink Pilates Princess Vogue Pop” era. Turns out, I’m not alone.)
Despite this year’s missteps, Spotify Wrapped has had a great run—and it’s inspired a sea of copycats. Everyone’s doing it: other music platforms, Goodreads, and even Asana (pardon me while I gag at how that epitomizes the insidious glorification of hustle culture). And sometimes, the imitators create something insightful and inspiring.
Take Strava’s Year in Sports, which was generally described as excellent this year. Not that I’m an athlete AT ALL, but Ben is—and his stats are wild.
I got a more-my-speed and surprisingly delightful "year in review" from Glowforge, the company that makes my laser cutter. It turns out I cut 117 projects, my laser head traveled 6,641 meters, and I ran my laser for 28 hours this year!
Practice joins the party
At Practice, we want to be thoughtful innovators, not copycats. But we do want to elevate craft and “time spent making” into something worth celebrating.
It’s obviously impressive that Ben rode 1,488 miles on his bike this year. But we were curious: how many hours did he spend at his cutting mat, finding peace, well-being, and joy as he assembled and painted tiny robots? What cool stuff did he make? What did he learn? How did his skills evolve over time?
While Practice isn’t live (yet), Ben and I have been tracking most of our making since June 18 via a beloved Google Form. We’ve been uploading photos, describing and rating our sessions, and otherwise collecting this data for 6 months.
So, guess what? IT’S TIME FOR PRACTICE WRAPPED! (Don’t sue us, Spotify.)
Or, as we’ve decided to call it, Your (Half) Year of Practice. Let’s go!
Ben’s (Half) Year of Practice 2024
🕰 Total time spent Practicing: 17h 46m (about as long as one of the world’s longest nonstop flights, from Heathrow to Perth)
📅 Number of tracked sessions: 22
⏳ Session length (median/min/max): 50m / 20m / 1h 29m
🎨 Largest project: "RG Force Impulse Gundam (Spec 2)" with 9 sessions and 9h 42m of practice
⚖️ Average Challenge score (1 = too easy, 5 = too hard): 3.10 (“just right” territory)
🕒 Practice patterns: Ben tends to practice on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, usually starting around 7:15 PM.
🧰 Stuff he made: Some seriously awesome Gundam builds!
Erica’s (half) Year of Practice 2024
🕰 Total time spent Practicing: 200h 3m (that's 8.33 solid days of making—or about as long as it takes to fly to the moon and back with 2 extra days to spare). Or, if you'd prefer a TV metaphor: that’s the time it would take to watch The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Twin Peaks back-to-back.
📅 Number of tracked sessions: 61
⏳ Session length (median/min/max): 2h 15m / 23m / 16h 25m (Listen, I had a deadline, OK?)
🎨 Largest project: Bar Pinto, my miniature bar and restaurant—26 sessions and 101h 23m of practice
⚖️ Average Challenge score (1 = too easy, 5 = too hard): 3.15 (solid Goldilocks zone)
🕒 Practice patterns: I tend to work on Thursday afternoons, usually starting around 2:00 PM (gotta love that consultant life).
🧰 Stuff I made: A living room scene, a miniature bar/restaurant, so much tiny furniture, and countless joyful moments.
That’s a wrap
Reflecting on my 200 hours of making, I felt awe and joy. And you know what? I felt proud. I felt grateful that, despite a full workload building a startup, taking on consulting projects, and life in general, I’d made space for 61 sessions of creative practice over the past 6 months. And, honestly? I have to believe that my life was made better by those 200 hours of making.
And all I had was a form’s output in a Google Sheet and a Drive folder of images. Imagine what it’ll be like when Practice is live. With richer data, we’ll be able to offer insights and encouragement in real time. Practice users will be able to see their progress, look back at their activity feed, and celebrate their Practice—not just at the end of the year, but throughout it. They’ll be able to see the Practice of others, and get inspired by their progress, techniques, and learnings.
I can’t wait for other people to have this experience. To scroll through their year of making, reflect on their progress, and feel proud of what they’ve done, and the time they spent reaping the health benefits of making. Pretty powerful stuff 🥹
Speaking of powerful stuff: I’ve had the pleasure of spending half of this year co-founding a startup that is 1000% aligned with my passion and dreams. I believe we have the opportunity to change people’s lives for the better, shifting the perception of craft along the way. I think we also have the potential to create a sustainable business and a really wonderful company. We have a long way to go, but it has been such a blast so far, and so fulfilling.
I’ve also really liked the weekly-ish ritual of writing these posts—more than I expected. I hope you’ve enjoyed following along on the journey, and am infinitely grateful for all of your support and encouragement along the way.
I hope you’ve had a great year, too. I can’t wait to see what we all create next year.
Happy New Year! May your 2025 be filled with joy. And (of course) making!
— Erica