2024 goals

Happy New Year, lifetothemax’ers!

For three years now, I've been writing about my New Year's resolutions in this newsletter. It's been an awesome experiment, and I have no reason to stop now! I've written over 50 posts, and there are now 79 of you who have subscribed and who receive my newsletter in your inbox. If you're reading this and you're not one of the 79, welcome, and you should subscribe because my first 100 subscribers are receiving a secret gift!

It's January 1, so you know what time it is. It's the annual event you've all been waiting for, time to announce my New Year's resolutions!

If you read my last post, you know that in 2024, I've decided to be more intentional about picking my goals. The main takeaway from last year was that I had put too much emphasis on some goals, which distracted me from others.

Before coming up with my goals this year, I started with an exercise to clarify my values. These values are the guiding principles by which I want to live my life. To come up with these, I followed this interesting exercise, which I encourage you to try. By doing this first, I'm ensuring two things:

1. My New Year’s resolutions cover all my bases. That way, I know that all of my values are represented in my goals.

2. My goals are balanced. I'm not doing too much towards one value and not enough towards another.

If done right, my New Year’s resolutions will allow me to live by my guiding principles. Here’s a diagram I copied from yesterday’s post, which I think nicely summarized why I did this exercise:

Anyway, enough of the theory, what were the results of my exercise?

These are my five core values (in alphabetical order):

• adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences

• authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, real; to be true to myself

• challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, improve

• creativity: to be creative or innovative

• self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals

The way I see it, adventure, challenge, and creativity allow me to expand the scope of my life. These values push me to try new things, continually improve and put more of myself out into the world. Self-control keeps me focused on my work and ensures I put my time and effort towards the right activities. Finally, authenticity keeps me in check and helps me stay true to myself if I ever veer off course with a new adventure, creative endeavor, or challenge.

Now that we’ve outlined my values, let’s see the goals that will help me live by them.

Without further ado, here’s the main attraction, my New Year’s Resolutions:

1) Publish 42 creations (including newsletter)

Values: authenticity, creativity

This resolution combines my two creative goals from last year: writing my newsletter and producing creative projects. The lesson last year was that having these as two separate targets prevented me from putting out the quantity that I hoped for. Last year's goal was 25 newsletters and 25 creative projects, so now that they're combined, I'm reducing it to 42. Why 42? Well, 50 is a nice round number, but it's too many, and 40 doesn't seem like enough. 42 means one creation per week with a 10-week vacation. That seems good. I haven’t read it, but I know “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” also states that 42 is the meaning of life, so there's also that.

This year, I've also specified that these creations must be published. Some of the creative projects I worked on last year stayed on my hard drive and have yet to see the light of day. This year, I want to encourage putting my creations out in front of an audience. This adds a layer to the creative process that I find essential.

2) Read 25 books

Values: challenge, self-control

This is the same goal as last year. I achieved it last year and don't want to increase it so as not to detract from my other goals. It should be an easy win, and it's super fun and rewarding.

3) Meditate 250 times

Values: authenticity, self-control

This one's also copied from last year. This one was not as easy as the reading, but I made it a daily habit by adding it to my morning routine. Since it's still a part of that routine, I don't see why I would remove this goal, and the target of 250 gives me the perfect amount of leeway if I miss a day here and there.

4) Do 36,500 push-ups

Values: adventure, challenge, self-control

Now, we get into the fun ones.

Since I'm not planning to do any races this year, I'm replacing the training I did last year with two physical challenges that should hopefully make working out a regular part of my life.

This goal speaks for itself. It sounds like a crazy amount, but it's really only 100 push-ups a day. Oh, and 2024 is a leap year, so it's even less than that! This goal will be challenging, but I can also realistically do it in very little time per day. It might take me 30 minutes a day for the first month, but as I keep doing it consistently, I'll be able to get that time down to under 10 minutes until I can eventually do 100 push-ups consecutively. Fingers crossed!

This fits under the two values of challenge and self-control, but I think it also fits the description of adventure. This is me seeking a novel experience and seeing what life throws at me. And hopefully, I get jacked along the way.

Some friends also suggested I should film this because it would make for a pretty cool documentary. I'll look into this, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

5) Do 100 endurance workouts (of difficulty at least equivalent to a 1-mile run)

Values: challenge, self-control

This is my second of two goals intended to replace my training from last year. I didn't want to lose the endurance training I put so much effort into last year by only doing push-ups.

My intention with this goal is to promote consistency over difficulty. For this, I'll count any endurance workout that is equivalent in difficulty to a 1-mile run or more as a single workout. That means if I go for a 10-mile run, that is still only one endurance workout. This will prevent me from trying to get this goal out of the way by running 10 miles daily for 10 days. I want to run throughout the year, so I don't care how much I run each time, just how many times I run.

These two goals should keep me fit while keeping the time I spend working out at a minimum so I can have ample time for the other goals.

6) Check seven items off my bucket list

Values: adventure, authenticity

This is the same goal as last year, except I'm reducing it from 10 down to seven. I got eight last year with little planning, so seven seems realistic for this year. I've already gone through my bucket list and highlighted 11 items that shouldn't be too hard to achieve. I'll keep those to myself for now, but I'm excited to get them done.

7) Travel to five different countries

Values: adventure

I've always loved traveling, but when I started my newsletter at the height of the pandemic, it was not something I could easily do. That's different now. I already know I will be spending time in the Philippines with Charlotte, and I'll also spend some time in the US and France. That means I have to plan for two other trips in the year. This should be pretty easy, but I think keeping it as a resolution still makes sense since I want to have it as a target for the year.

8) Have a conversation in Tagalog

Values: adventure, challenge

Since I'll be spending time in the Philippines with Charlotte, we will both be learning and practicing Tagalog. Getting comfortable speaking a new language is on my bucket list, and I'd love to make a start on that by practicing conversational Tagalog in the Philippines. I've read and watched videos online about new methods for learning languages fast, and I'm excited to test those methods out. I'll start with half an hour a day of learning and practicing, and this should get me to a point where I can have a simple conversation by the end of the year.

9) Complete all 16 of my work milestones

Values: adventure, challenge, creativity, self-control

Finally, with this last goal, I want my job represented in my New Year's resolutions. I've had a full-time job for as long as I've written the newsletter, but it has always felt completely separate from my newsletter, almost like having a day job and a night job. My job is a big part of how I spend my time, so it makes sense to have it represented here. This way, I hope, my job won't feel like it is taking away from my other New Year's resolutions but rather adding to and enriching them.

As we enter this new year, I have 16 very clear milestones that I will be working on at my job. I won’t publicly share those milestones, but I will share my progress. This way, I can track my progress like I've been doing with all the other aspects of my life.

You might also notice that I've counted this goal as pertaining to four of my values. I'm lucky that my job checks all these boxes and is flexible and rewarding. The 16 milestones will be both a challenge and an act of self-control on my part. They also require me to be creative in certain aspects since they involve me building and maintaining new products. Finally, the milestones represent a new adventure in my job and professionally as a whole. That's why I feel comfortable counting this goal towards all four of these values.

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There we go, that's the list! Nine goals that should enable me to achieve new heights in the new year.

Of course, this looks like a lot. And I'm very mindful of this fact.

Goals 2 and 3 are already part of my daily habits, so they should be pretty straightforward. With the two physical challenges, although they're pretty involved, they will require much less time than the amount I put into training for my two races last year. I've estimated how much time each of my goals will take me and measured how much time I’m putting toward each of my values.

Although authenticity is under-represented and adventure slightly over, I'm happy to have that be the case this year. It seems like a lot, but once broken down in this fashion, it also seems as achievable as ever.

Anyway, enough yapping. It’s time to do some push-ups.

Please let me know what you think of these goals and what goals you set for yourself this year. I always love to get your feedback. And, of course, if you want to get regular updates on how my goals are progressing, make sure to subscribe.

I love you all, and I hope 2024 is the best year of your life! ❤️