Imagine yourself sitting on a canoe in the middle of the ocean. You feel a slight tint of wind, grazing the skin hairs on your cheek. As you stare out into the large, blue abyss, you can see the force of the current gently rock the side of your canoe, as the current pushes you north.

The question then becomes, do you let the ocean just keep pushing you north? Or do you grab the oar, stick it in the water, and decide where you want to go?

If we imagine life as the ocean, most people don’t decide where they want to go. They let life push them in whichever direction it wants to go. I want to decide where I go. My annual reviews serve that purpose. But to make sure I’m on track, I’m experimenting writing quarterly reviews as well.

Personal Learnings

Achieving high performance in anything requires minimum 6 to 12 months of dedicated effort. A while back, my performance coach asked me: “Have I ever mastered anything?” No. My problem wasn't whether I was dedicated enough. It was that I was interested in too many things and did them all at the same time. I have improved here. This year, I focused exclusively on snowboarding, then running, then surfing (rather than multiple in parallel).

But it’s not quite there. To fully maximize performance, I can only pick one thing for the whole year. That’s it, which brings me to the second learning…..

I probably shouldn’t live in NYC. I want to maximize my performance in surfing. In order to do that, I need to live near a location with consistent and quality waves to practice. In NYC, it’s very difficult to become a better surfer (or snowboarder) and this kills me inside. Doesn’t mean I’m moving but it just means NYC is not the long term fit for me.

Don’t write to build an audience. Write for myself. Many years ago, I wanted to be a writer. It didn’t work, because I spent too much time thinking about how to build an audience. Kinda like how I’m doing with this quarterly review, I should not write for an audience. I should use writing as a tool for myself. That’s what going to keep me writing more often.

2024 Objectives

A slight tweak I made to my annual goals is to stop setting goals and to start setting high-level objectives. Objectives are better because they’re more general and they give me flexibility into the concrete outcomes I want to achieve, while still providing me direction. The key is to limit this to 4 to 5, so it’s easy to memorize.

My 2024 objectives are:

[Career] - Crack the code at Netflix
[Relationships] - Build and learn how to create a thriving romantic relationship
[Health] - Become a Renaissance Athlete
[Finances] - Build a Financial/Investment Plan for my Dream Life
[Misogi] - Complete a 5-Day Water Fast

2024 - Q2 Goals

There are two phases toward achieving goals: shaping vs. execution. Most people will decide on a goal and immediately start executing. The typical process people will take is “I want to learn Spanish.” Then, they sign up for duolingo and just start playing with the app. They’ll have an initial burst of motivation for a few weeks, and then as life comes along, their motivation keeps dwindling until it hits zero.

I’ve done this countless amount of times, which is why shaping the goals are so important. The goal in shaping is to define the goal and the plan. It typically involves gathering information, researching the best paths to achieving the goal and playing with different formulations of the goal until you arrive at a plan you feel good about, before you begin executing. Without this, you likely will lose motivation OR set the wrong goal (which I’ve done too many times).

An execution goal is one where you already have the plan and you just need to execute on the plan. For example, if I’m learning spanish and my plan is to practice duolingo 3x per week, all I need to do is execute on the plan to know if I’m successful. I’m not spending any mental effort to update the goal, since I did that in the shaping phase.

From my own experience, I only have room for the following:

2 execution-based goal (in different life areas)
2 shaping-based goals (in different life areas)

[Relationship] - Become as clean as my girlfriend (execution).

I’m not a complete mess, but my girlfriend definitely has a higher bar for cleanliness. It’s an area I do feel like I’ve improved in over the years, but I want to use this as a forcing function for me to improve in this area. My belief is that whenever I see someone operating at a higher level in any area, I should raise my level to match theirs. Not bring down their level to match mine.

[Finances] - Build an initial draft of a financial/investment plan for my dream life (Shaping). Right now, I just have a bunch of cash/capital accumulating in my bank account. The money is not intended to be used for anything. Money should not be an end, it should be a means to an end to realizing my dream life. So the key steps are to (1) define what that dream life is and (2) build out the financial plan to realize that dream.

[Career] - Build an initial development plan for myself (Shaping). My thinking here is that first, I need to think through the direction I want to take my career. This is tied to the dream life exercise & financial plan, as it’ll tell me how much more I need to earn and give me a why behind earning more. Then, given the dream life I want to build, what direction would I need to take my career?

[Health] - Brooklyn Half-Marathon Prep. The goal for this is still TBD, depending on the results of my mile test. But since I signed up for this, this’ll be an easy for forcing function for cardio/health.

Key Dates/Upcoming Plans

Wedding in Cabo [April 20]

Friends Wedding in Cabo

Brooklyn Half-Marathon [May 18]

For the next six weeks, I’ll be in NYC prepping for the Brooklyn Half-Marathon. As for the goal, it’s TBD, as I’ll be taking a baseline mile test to see where I’m at on a cardiovascular level.

El Salvador Surf Trip [May 19 to May 24]

This will be a mostly guys surf trip but now that winter season is over, we’re shifting to surf season! This will likely be a five-day trip where I work as well.

California <> Hawaii Surf Trip [End of June/July]

I have a wedding in July in California and I want to take my girlfriend around Hawaii & SoCal. I’ll be planning to venture through both SoCal, NorCal and Hawaii.

End-of-Year Asia Trip [December/January]

Toward the end of the year, the initial plan is to hit Niseko, Japan for more snowboarding. Maybe visit China, TBD on the details.