My 2023 Annual Review (5K PR, Body Composition Changes, Personal Finance Audit, Weekend Protein Hack, and More)

Writing an annual review has become one of my favorite ways to evaluate my current state of not sucking at life.

Well, it’s that time of year again.

Here’s my current format:

1. Reflect on past year's highlights
2. Identify areas of opportunity
3. Define habit goals
4. Set a theme for the new year

Feel free to steal this format and if you do, send me a link to yours. I’d love to read it.

Without further ado, let’s get to it.

Part 1: 3 Highlights From the Past Year

1. Completing Year 3 of Parenting

My daughter turned 3 in September. The past three years and change has been the greatest experience of my life.

Year 3 has been the most challenging year so far. It’s like everything has been magnified. Bigger tantrums and messes, but also bigger moments of joy and awe.

Watching her grow, learn, build her personality, and develop likes and dislikes has been the coolest thing ever. I’m grateful for all of this and excited to be there for her every step of her childhood.

2. Family Trip to London

We didn’t travel much this year outside of routine stuff like Disney World, but we did have one big trip – visiting London for a week in June

This was our biggest international trip as a family and my daughter’s first to Europe. It was an eight-hour plane ride there, ten hours back, and she was good both ways.

We did a lot of sightseeing and tourist stuff during the day. We also got a hotel babysitter for my daughter two of the nights so we could go to a couple of shows.

The highlight was spending time with my London family – uncle, aunt, and cousins. It was nice for them to finally get to meet my daughter and vice versa.

I’m not a big travel junkie in general, but I value experiences like this. I recently found out my cousin in England just got engaged which will give us another excuse to go back in the next year or two.

3. Achieving a 5K PR

In November, I hit a 5K PR of 24 minutes and 14 seconds. This was a cool milestone because my running journey has been kind of unorthodox.

I've been running, not taking it seriously most of my life. Before kids, I did some longer races like half marathons, but the past two or three years I’ve focused mostly on shorter distances like 5 and 10Ks.

After COVID in fall of 2021, my 5K time dropped two minutes out of the blue. My previous PR was 27 and a half minutes, and dropped to around 25 and a half minutes.

The only thing I could attribute that to is walking a ton because of lockdowns and COVID. My step count increased dramatically in 2020, from 6,000-8,000 to 10,000-12,000 steps a day, sometimes upwards of 15,000 steps per day.

This built up my aerobic base and cardio fitness even though I wasn't running much. It allowed me to unlock a new gear and motivated me to be more consistent with my running to see how much faster I could get at the 5K.

This year after being consistent with weekly Zone 2 training, I got my 5K time down another 30 seconds or so from my previous PR. Now I'm knocking on the door of a sub-24-minute 5K which would be a nice goal to hit, especially now that I’m in my 40s.

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Part 2: 3 Areas of Opportunity for the Coming Year

1. Continuing to Improve My Body Composition

A year ago, I decided to focus on building muscle. Throughout 2023, I've done a slow lean bulk, gaining 10 pounds in total—about half muscle, half fat. All things considered, this wasn’t bad. Consistency in training helped. I hit the gym 2-3 times a week about 95% of the year.

This coming year, I aim to continue adding muscle—ideally 5 to 10 more pounds. But I’d also like to shed 5 to 10 pounds of fat. My ideal body composition is around 10-12% body fat, which is where I was a year ago, but under muscled.

To achieve this, dedication in training, protein intake, and caloric balance are crucial. However, one area needing improvement is workout intensity—reducing reps in reserve per set to zero to one on every set. If I’m being honest, I probably only did this 50% of the time.

This year, I’ve come to the conclusion that consistently going to the gym will only get me so far. If I don't push myself in the gym, my muscles have no reason to grow. Of course it’s easier to end sets early instead of pushing for PRs or failure. But that’s why so few people in the gym actually look like they lift.

2. Creating Digital Products

Shifting from fitness to content creation: Creating digital products is something I’ve talked about it for years, but haven't executed. I’ve got a Gumroad account and several product ideas so there’s nothing stopping me—I just need to do it.

Similar to lifting, it’s easier not to go full steam and stick to Twitter and newsletter writing. But I’m already putting in the time to write, so there’s no reason not to create digital products and turn my readers and subscribers into buyers.

I’m assuming once I unlock my “thousand true fans,” the content creation game becomes way more fun.

3. Optimizing Recurring Spending

My wife has recently taken a new job with a slight pay cut. She gets to work from home now, so I'm happy to adjust my personal spending because it'll improve her quality of life. Instead of looking at this like a burden, I saw it as a chance to identify some suboptimal spending habits and decide what's truly valuable.

I recently did an audit on my recurring spending by creating a new tab in my personal finance spreadsheet for monthly and annual subscriptions. The good news is it’s not out of hand, I know what I'm spending on and track it.

But when I actually listed everything out and forced myself to answer whether each item was adding value, it became clear some things are essential, while others can be replaced or removed. For example, health supplements that likely aren’t making a big difference.

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Part 3: Habit Goals

In 2017, I took a different approach to “New Year’s resolutions.”

It was infinitely more effective in training myself to become the type of person I want to be.

Years later, I’m still doing it (and don’t plan to stop anytime soon).

I call this approach habit goals.

Habit goals are precisely what they sound like:

Specific and measurable habit-based goals that require me to be consistent on a daily or weekly basis for the entire year and eventually longer.

For example, instead of “eating healthier” (a common New Year’s resolution), my nutrition habit goal is to eat a minimum of 4 servings of whole fruits and vegetables per day.

I’ve been working on many of these habits for years, so the goals may not change much from year to year.

Here are my habit goals for 2024:

• 4 servings of whole fruits and veggies per day minimum (ideally 5–7)
• 10k steps per day minimum (ideally 12–15k)
• 120 minutes of exercise per week minimum (ideally 50/50 strength/cardio)
• 5-10 minutes of morning sunlight within an hour of waking
• 10–15 minute post-prandial walk after dinner
• Gratitude journal every night
• 2-4 newsletters published each month

What are your habit goals for 2024?

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Part 4: Theme for The New Year

Some people declare a “theme” for the New Year as part of their year-end review.

This is not an explicit goal. More of an overarching guide to direct behavior.

The idea is to have a short, memorable phrase to keep in mind as a compass for decision-making.

When thinking about what I want my “theme” for 2024 to be, the first thing that came to mind was a useful prompt I first heard from Tim Ferriss:

“What would this look like if it were easy?”

Every time I feel overwhelmed, stuck, or frustrated, asking myself this question instantly opens my mind to creative solutions or small action steps I can take to improve my situation.

This prompt has helped me so much, I want to make it a point to revisit it more frequently this year, for issues both big and small.

For example, I recently learned from my Personal Health Score Year in Review that I’m consuming about 20g less protein on the weekends as I am on weekdays.

I asked myself what consuming extra protein on the weekends would look like if it were easy and came up with the idea to buy ready-to-drink protein shakes on Amazon and have one first thing in the morning every Saturday and Sunday.

This is a good example because I could easily make my own shake with the protein powder I keep at home, but buying the tasty, ready-to-drink ones in bulk and keeping a couple in the fridge before the weekend removes that tiny bit of friction that comes with mixing the shake myself. It’s the most fail-proof solution to my issue.

What is your theme for 2024?

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