#90: A brutally honest review of 2024
How do you rate your life areas for the past year?
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Hey Friends,
Welcome to the 89th edition of my newsletter.
We have spent the last ten days since we brought Zeno home from the hospital trying to understand as much as possible about what it means to be a parent.
We both had realistic expectations, but you never know until you hit the wall. And we did.
As you probably know already, I’m a fairly organized person, with rituals and habits in place that help me as productive as possible.
Well, that’s something in the past.
Now, we both need to adapt to his schedule.
And if that means staying up with him from 3 to 8 AM and sleeping until noon, this is what I’m doing. It’s going to be challenging to adjust to this new way of doing things, but I have to.
It’s also a very beautiful journey, and I’m glad to be a part of it.
I found a bit of time today when he’s peacefully sleeping to do my annual review. And I want to share it with all of you.
I thought a lot if I should share this with you, but in the end, I decided to do it. It’s quite personal, but I will leave out some details that are inappropriate or too sensitive.
So, here it goes.
It might be a bit longer, but I hope it’s fun, and this will motivate you to do it too.
2024 Annual Review
It’s not the first time I do this, and I won’t get into the details. I detail the process in my productivity course, which you can get for free if you get the yearly subscription to this newsletter.
First, I go through my calendar and my journal, and I get all the main events for each month of last year. This helps me understand what brought me joy, what I should do more, and be grateful for the good things in my life.
It looks something like this:
January: wedding and trip to Kenya
March: visited mom for her birthday and trip to Poiana Brasov with friends
April: half-marathon in the forest and trip to London
May: 24-hour Strategy challenge for my MBA and Easter weekend in Braila
June: Hyrox in Rimini, trip to Prague, wedding in Bulgaria, 2 weeks in Maastricht (busy month!)
July: trip to Vama Veche
August: vacation in Romania
September: 20-years from high-school reunion
October: wife’s birthday, redid my website
November: finished my 3rd half-marathon, trip to Belgrade and to Braila, PR on Power Clean: 102 Kg
December: my birthday, Zeno’s birthday, Christmas with Zeno
Next, I take my life areas, and based on the goals that I’ve set at the beginning of the year and the overall feeling of that area, I rate it on a scale from 1 to 10.
Why do I do this annual review? It helps me understand the overall “status” of my life from different perspectives, and it’s the baseline for planning the next year.
Career: 8/10
Goals:
Stay on track with the MBA ✅
Pay the final amount for the MBA ✅
(I had some goals in Deloitte as well, but I cannot share them.)
I rate this as an 8/10 because I passed all my exams this year and I managed to fully pay for the program. I also had a very nice time for a couple of weeks in Maastricht with my colleagues and teachers. I learned a lot this year, in fields like strategy, finance, marketing, and many more.
I think I am a lot better equipped for a more senior role or even starting a business in the future; who knows? I can’t wait to see what the program has in store for me in 2025, as I have one more semester to go and the dissertation thesis and it’s done.
It’s not higher than 8 because there are some things I could have done better at work, and I plan to change this in 2025. I feel like I know the organization better, and I have some big plans for Deloitte this year.
Health and Fitness: 9/10
Goals:
Do a Hyrox ✅
Run another half-marathon ✅
Have a fat percentage of less than 20%. ❌
I’ve also had some habit goals, like having an average sleep of 7 hours per night and training for at least 5 times a week, and I managed to do this.
I went for my first Hyrox in June, in Italy, and I was supposed to go to another one in November, in Valencia, but it got postponed.
I also ran two half-marathons, both in the forest, and it’s becoming easier and easier.
I failed at decreasing my fat percentage to less than 20%. Even though I have a pretty healthy lifestyle, I still snack a lot, and I am not as careful as I should be with my diet. Another thing I plan to change this year.
Fun and Hobbies: 8/10
Goals:
Go skiing once ❌
Travel to 5 destinations (at least 3 outside Romania) ✅
Get a new tattoo ❌
Get a dog. ❓
While I didn’t manage to reach some goals here, I feel like I had quite a lot of fun in 2024. The only thing I really feel bad about is not going skiing, but this is also because there was practically no snow in Romania last winter. Regarding the tattoo, it was not really a priority, and I don’t consider getting the dog as a failure, as we realized it was not the right decision for us in the given context. But we will get a dog someday 🙂
Finances: 9/10
Goals:
Save at least 20% of my monthly income ✅
Build an emergency fund ✅
I never put actual numbers for personal finances, as some years might be good and some years might be not that good. Also, the context might change, and I don’t want to have goals about things I cannot control. Overall, our savings were a bit short and my goal was to start saving a bit more and have that financial cushion that helps me sleep better at night.
I advise all of you to have at least 3-6 months of mandatory expenses saved in an easily accessible account at any moment in your life. I’m not talking about 6 full salaries but something to cover the things you MUST pay each month: rent/mortgage, gas, groceries, diapers, etc.
The global economy doesn’t look very promising, and if you’re living in Romania, like me, things are looking even worse. I’m pretty sure people will lose their jobs in the following year, and even if your career is as “antifragile” as possible, you should still “hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”.
Sorry if I’m being too apocaliptical here; I’m quite risk-averse in this matter.
Family and Friends: 10/10
Goals:
Go out with friends at least 3 times a month ✅
Visit mom 7 times ❌
“Date night” once a week ❌
While I failed visiting mom that often (I think it was 5 or 6 times, actually) and having a date night each week, having Zeno in our lives made it the perfect year from this perspective. But that doesn’t mean I don’t consider the failed goals as not important and try to improve them next year.
Personal Development: 7/10
Goals:
Stay on track with the MBA ✅ (same as the one for Career)
I did not have any proper goals in this area, if you’re not considering the MBA. Because this took and takes a lot of my time, I did not have anything else in mind for this year, like learning a new language, a new sport, or something like that.
Come to think of it, I did try kite surfing in Kenya and managed to read/listen to around 15 books, so I consider it a good year here as well. And I restarted my meditation practice.
Online Business: 5/10
Goals:
Grow the newsletter to 5K ❌
Grow LinkedIn to 5K ✅
Create a new website ✅
Earn at least 1K/month from this ❌
This is my worst area for 2024, and I will probably change my whole approach to my “online business” in 2025. I’m putting ““ because it’s only a business if you’re making money out of it, and I’m not, or it’s just peanuts, so to speak. And this year I won’t focus that much on this aspect, because the goal of me writing online will change, and it won’t be about money anymore, but about building a brand, connecting to people, and exploring opportunities. But stay tuned for more; I will explain my whole approach in my next newsletter (or the one after that).
Home Environment: 7/10
Goals:
Close the terrace ✅
Buy a bigger apartment ❌
The only goal for this area was to close our open terrace so we can spend more time on the balcony, even when it’s raining outside, and we did this in spring. Afterwards, when we found out we’re expecting a baby, we figured out we needed a new place to stay. We live in a one-bedroom, and if we want our boy to have his own room, we would need to get a bigger place.
So, in summer, we started looking for bigger apartments. We were very close to getting a penthouse outside the city in September, but we figured we couldn’t afford it, so we moved on. The price range made us move our focus from the initial goal of buying a three-bedroom place, so I can have my home office too, to a two-bedroom one. We are still looking for a good offer and hope to get something in the first half of 2025.
Conclusion
This is how the radar chart looks like, in the end.
Summary:
Career: 8/10
Health and Fitness: 9/10
Fun and Hobbies: 8/10
Finances: 9/10
Family and Friends: 10/10
Personal Development: 7/10
Online Business: 5/10
Home Environment: 7/10
For me, this makes it easy to understand what I need to improve in 2025.
Recommendations:
The best TV series I’ve watched in a long time, Ripley, on Netflix. Amazing cinematography. It’s in black and white and if you’re a fan of old noir movies, Fellini’s pieces and 60s Italian songs, this one’s for you.
This video to become more productive in 2025
How to embrace perfection. In this podcast episode, author of Oliver Burkeman (author of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time For What Counts) explains how we can embrace imperfection and find liberation and joy in just doing our best.
Well, I hope you liked this edition.
Thank you for reading, and join me in the comments section for further discussions!
Leo
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