2024 Resolutions

I love New Years Resolutions.

It's an arbitrary line in the sand, sure, but it stands as the reset point for my life and behaviours.

My method of setting New Years Resolutions in the past has been that of shooting with buckshot - you aim in a direction, and you hope that some part of the projectile hits the target, even if a bunch miss. In this analogy, I set many goals, with the understanding that I won't land everything.

But this comes with the obvious drawback of not having to hold myself accountable to where I miss. I can chalk it up to "well, I missed this year, maybe we'll go again next year - look at all the goals I did accomplish!"

The issue with this is it encourages the "easy win" resolutions to pass, and the harder, grittier ones to fall by the wayside.

This year, I want to think more deeply about crafting resolutions. And I want to make sure I have the mechanisms in place to track and achieve them.

A look back at 2023

I wrote these out at the beginning of last year at 3am, after some drinks with friends as we sat around talking about life. Now, I want to reflect back on the goals, and my relative success and failure.

• 1365 total big 3 lifts - 3.5, 4.5, 5.5 ❌ This didn't pan out. At the beginning of last year, I had been on a real lifting kick, since where I was living at the time I had access to a gym in the basement. Combine that with some rugby injuries, and this became a very hard goal. I did improve my deadlift to 525lbs though, so it wasn't a total loss on the year
• Get a cooler job ✅ Current job is way more fun than previous job. I'm three months into work at this point, and building AI and data tools for YouTubers is a much more fulfilling way of spending my days. It also doesn't hurt that the pay is about 40% higher than my last job.
• Move somewhere swag for minimum 1 month ❌ Did some cool travels, but didn't live anywhere cool this year. Playing rugby in Toronto for most of the year limited this. Still thinking about Argentina as a possible WFH destination in the new year though.
• 1 piece of written content per week ❌ Total whiff here - wish I could have done better here. No excuses given the amount of free time that I had this year.
• Limit screen time average sub 3 hours ❌ This is a goal that failed due to a lack of plan/process. I always say I want to limit my time, but don't put into place the behaviours/processes that will help me achieve the goal.
• Climb 5000ft mountain 🆗 Did some pretty sick climbs with Nik around mount Rainier, but none topped 5k ft in elevation gain. Did some hike at 5000ft so maybe can count that, when I combine it with the fact that Nik and I climbed over 500 flights of stairs (5000ft) in under 48 hours in our adventures.
• Learn golf 300ft drive ❌ Still can't golf for shit
• Visit John and Nik, Thomas ✅✅❌ Visited John and Nik, I owe Thomas a visit still.
• Crazy steak dinner 🆗 Went for a nice tasting menu dinner with Nik, Thomas and Gordon, one of the plates was Waygu. Counts for something, but not a total "cross off the list"
• Rehab shoulder/back/knee 🆗 Definitely feeling stronger on shoulders and back, but rugby injuries have kept this from being a complete success
• Go on a significant cut, 20-25 lbs 🆗 Roundtripped this year. Started around 265, got down to 240, then put weight back on to currently (post christmas dinner) weight of 262
• 52 books in 2023 ✅ Made it to 54 books. Was one of the real successes, definitely a better consumption pattern instead of Netflix
• Donate blood ✅ Did it once, need to do it more. Just tough to justify during rugby season, but I should be able to do it during the winter more.
• Journal 75% of days ❌ Finding the time to write didn't happen. Need to build this into a daily habit along with writing weekly blog posts.
• Meditation ❌ Never figured it out honestly. I tried doing it when saunaing, went alright. But cancelled my headspace because I really wasn't seeing the value in it.
• Meal prep 🆗 Meal prepped sometimes, not always. Definitely could still improve
• At least 60 days alcohol free in a row ✅ Suprised how easy this was. Didn't miss it at all, and has me tempted to try a longer version of this challnege for next year.

End count: 4 full successes, 6 partial successes and 7 full misses. Not the worst, but think I can improve this batting average for next year.

2024 Resolutions

I want to start with a thought experiment - if I was to look back at the end of 2024 and think, "wow, this was the best year of my life", what would that look like? What steps would I then have to take in order to acheive this?

To me, that happens if I'm in the best physical shape of my life, have better day-to-day structure to optimize for what's important in my life, have had career growth, and have exercised creativity more than I have in the past. So thematically, we'll break subgoals into these four areas to be the building blocks for my goal setting

Physical Goals

No blue light, no eating, no drinking, phone out of bedroom @ night