This is a qualitative summary of how the year 2023 unfolded for me. It is based on my goals, achievements, and journal entries composed throughout the year.

Its purpose is to serve me as a reminder and you as inspiration.   

See my quantified review for a more quantitative Report

My theme for 2023 was Anno Affectum 🔗

I intended to explore emotional attachments — the linkages we form with people, objects, and ideas.

• I read one book directly on this topic (The 5 Levels of Attachment)

• I read several books that indirectly relate to the topic (like books on parenting)

• I gained practical experience by becoming a father, marrying, and traveling for two months

• I continued with my meditation practice again, reaching 20min sessions by the end of the year

I rate myself a 5/10 in fully embracing this yearly theme, as I feel that I let it slip out of sight for most of the year. I wanted to read more books on the topic and write an essay about it. I also wanted to embed it more into my everyday life than I did. Ultimately, I cannot say that I learned much about the topic.

2023 Goal Success Rate

For 2023, I tried to avoid setting yearly goals but instead used a quarterly goal cadence. I set 3-4 goals per quarter; the achievement rates were 50%, 63%, 52%, and 47%, which seems rather low. This would make a yearly success rate of 53%, much less than I had hoped for. However, as a side note, I did not allow myself to alter any goals set on a quarter basis (as I usually allow myself to do on a yearly basis).

While I did not set annual goals last year, I wrote down some guiding visions for each life domain. By now, mapping my actual accomplishments onto these visions, I can rate myself like this:

1. MIND: FURTHER EXPLORE MINDFULNESS & SPIRITUALITY (50%) 📈

2. BODY: RECOVER MY PRE-COVID PHYSIQUE AND VITALITY (CONTINUED) (30%) ⚡️

3. SOUL: FOUND A FAMILY AND BECOME A LOVING & CARING FATHER (90%) 🏆

4. PLAY: REPLENISH MY ENTHUSIASM FOR LIFE (70%) 📈

5. PROFESSION: BECOME A SENIOR IOS DEVELOPER (90%) 🏆

6. VOICE: BUILD A REVENUE STREAM / PRODUCT (80%) 🏆

This makes for a 68% success rate. A lot better... This, of course, is somewhat “cheating”. But it makes for a better comparison with my previous years, which all used annual goal-setting.

Annual Accomplishment Score

In addition to reviewing my goals, I calculate an annual accomplishment score based on a list of actual accomplishments in the six life domains and compare them to the previous year:

1. MIND: 7/10

   1. I read 20+ (audio)books

   2. I started journaling and meditating again

   3. I completed two online courses (LYT, and Obsidian University)

   4. I improved my digital toolset (EN -> Obsidian, Chrome -> Arc, iTerm -> Warp)

2. BODY: 6/10 (-1)

   1. I completed 86 gym sessions, 23 long walks, 18 elliptical cardio sessions

   2. I completed 30 workouts in a single month and averaged 2,5 workouts per week throughout the year

   3. I set new PRs in the gym

3. SOUL: 9/10 (+1)

   1. I married my soulmate for a second and third time, completing the trilogy

   2. I became a father of a sweet little baby boy and watched him learn sitting, crawling, standing up, …

   3. I moved back to where I grew up, close to my family and childhood friends

   4. I spend a lot of time with friends and family

4. PLAY: 9/10 (+3)

   1. I traveled a lot and visited two new countries (Singapore and the Philippines)

   2. I took a total of 3 months of parental leave, two of them for full-time travel

   3. I watched a lot of movies, series and went to the cinema a few times

   4. I had several “first-time” experiences: play D&D, zip-line, hold baby lion in my arms,

5. VOCATION: 8/10 (+1)

   1. I bought a house and moved out of the city until I can move in there (currently in renovation)

   2. I worked through a few online courses and books on software engineering

   3. I built a blog with the Swift programming language

   4. I set up ETFs and gained a lot of money back in crypto

6. VOICE: 8/10 (+1)

   1. I continued to write on my new blog on personal accomplishment

   2. I have now over 1300 subscribers to my content (250 on FP and 1050 on Ubermind)

   3. I earned a few hundred € online from my blogs

Six points were gained, and one point was lost, resulting in a +5 life score.

This makes an overall annual accomplishment score of 47/60 (78%), my best score ever.

This, better than my goal achievement, reflects the overall great year behind me. Overall, I am really satisfied with what I achieved, even though my goal success rate does not show it.

Progress on my Arcs of Aspiration

In 2023, I crossed off ten items from my arcs of aspiration, the same number as in the previous year.

1. Visit Singapore and The Philippines (as part of “visit a new country every year”)

2. Visit Dresden (as part of my “visit the largest cities in Germany”)

3. Leverage My Parental Leave for Travelling

4. Marry my Soulmate, parts 2 and 3 (completing my wedding trilogy)

5. Parent a boy

6. Become a Senior Swift Developer (~5.000 hours of deliberate practice)

7. Create a Blog with Swift, on Swift (unfortunately, I already discontinued it, as I made a poor tech choice…)

8. Buy a house in Germany

9. Reach Todoist Karma Level "Enlightened"

10. Complete the Linking Your Thining online course

Here is how everything unfolded for me…

The year kicks off in Thailand. After marrying and traveling there in December, my (now) wife and I spend a few more relaxing days in a nice hotel before heading back to Germany. My yearly review drags on a bit his year and I am inspired to write about it. For the first time in many years, I decide to not set annual goals, but go with purely quaterly targets. As a theme of the year I settle for Anno Affectum. I want to expore emotional attachements. To people. To objects. To ideas. I laterd used generative AI to create the representative theme image (see above) as no available stock image were able to really represent what I wanted to achieve. My weight remained stable thoughout all 3 weeks in Thailand and the start of January, which is amazing. Unfortunately, a single bad week in January sets me back – I gain back +3kg on the scale. Since my coaching program of 2022 Q4 ended, I try out a month of Gyroscope X coaching which seems to be a nice and especially cheaper alternative. I decide to cancel after the trial month anyway, since I expect 2023 to be a very money-intensive year. We have the second and third wedding coming up and the baby is due in March. We also plan to travel a lot. In Janurary we also start to acquire all the baby stuff. I start to read my first book on parenting.

After the weight relapse in Janurary, I am highly motivated to make up for it in Feburary. I worked so hard and payed a lot of money to lose 5kg in 2022 Q4. So I set out to complete 30 days of workouts (one workout per day for a month, long walks counting). While I manged to do that, I gained back even slightly more weight bringing me back to where I started before 22 Q4. At least I have more luck on a different front. Fractal Productivity gets a huge boost of 150 subscribers in a single day as I get featured in a newsletter of Tiago Forte. Professionally, I am working through the awsome iOS Lead Essentials course again. It is the best course on iOS development out there and every time I go though it again I learnd a lot. Of course, my wife and I are now more and more excited for the baby to arrive. Up until the end of Feburary I don’t get around to start explore attachements directly. I want to change that in March.

March 23 starts quite surprising. On the fourth at 3am at night my wife’s water broke. 1,5 days later our son Jago is born. We expected our son towards the end of the month (26) but he wanted to come early, So my first month of parental leave kicks off early as well. And we really needed it"! The first month with the baby turns out to be the hardest month of our family yet. Especially the first two weeks. There was very little sleep, no structure to days, and a lot of arguments due to our anxiety to make mistakes. Needless to say, all of this drives my weight further up. I reach 95,78kg, another all-time high. My parents come visit us two times to see the little one. Towards the end of the month we also officially get marrried in Munich. While the day Jago was born was a magical experience (I remember vividly holding him in my arms for the first time), this month had a lot of downsides. But, strange as the univery is, it also presented us with an unexpected opportunity. We were offered to buy an old house close to my parents for a very good price.

April is even more intense than March. I fought a lot with my wive. Sleep deprivation took its toll. Now that my parental leave is over and I have to work again, I had to sleep on the couch to get any sleep at all. Chia gets close to no sleep still. Our son also reaches his peak cry period! Our baby seems to be A LOT of work in comparison to whoever we talk to. Some more weight gain is inevitable as I eat to bury my feelings. I also have close to no time for exercise. My sleep is unhealhty. I am highly stressed. On the bright side, we take our frist trip with the little one to visit my parents and family for 1 week. The idea of buying that house (not the one in the picture!) gets more and more concrete. We were basically on a “wait-and-see” strategy at this point. We knew we wanted to move out out of Munich and closer to my parents at some point. We did not expect it to happen so early. But with the support of my paretns closeby we decide to go for it. I aquire the house and start renovating it. While overall, April gets a good accomplishment rating, it was actually not that enjoybale. The work the baby demands of us overshadows everything else.

May, like the year before, was more of the same of what happend in April. I continued to sleep on the couch. With my weight continuing to be a challenge. I decide to try something new exercise wise: rucking. I pack on 10kg in my backpack and go on long walks. I also out of nowhere decide to start my new blog series on Fractal Productivity. It is some form of escape maybe. But it also my lifelong passion bursting through again after neglecting it over the last few years. I also reach Todoist Enlightend which marks a big milstone in my personal productivity journey. I take as an opportunity to kick of yet another series on FP.

June finally was a little bit easier again. Jago cries less and sleeps more. His consciouness grows and it becomes more and more facinating and wonderful to spend time with him. We have less arguments. We even manage to take a shot weekend trip to Dresden to visit "uncle" Subhyal. We do the final preps for the german wedding. I even mange to get out a few nights to play D&D for the first time. At work things are also going great. I implement a mental health feature, and get to experiment with KMM. I also sign up for “Obsidian University”, a course on using my new favorite PKM tool. I took it as an opportunity to improve my Obsidian workflows here and there. I had a work related WWDC Camp in Frankfurt. I manged to work out both in Frankfurt and in Dresden during our City Trip. However, I get less workouts in than the months before. I did continue with rucking at the beginning of the month, now carrying 15kg in the backpack. However, with all of these new things (Dresden, D&D, Obsidian University, WWDC camp) I realize that this quarter was horrible in terms of goal progression. All of my Q2 goals were either aborted, blocked, rejected or postponed.

July was great. We complete our wedding trilogy by marrying in a castle in Germany. July also marks the end of a very special arc in my life. When I frist moved to Munich this kicked of my whole personal growth journey and I regrad it as the best decision of my life. I hope that leaving munich now - 8 years later - may become the second-best decision of my life. Munich has served me well. I got my Masters, met a lot new friends, found my lifes purpose, met my wife, But now its time to outgrow it. To celebrate the finale, we take the last weeks as an opportunit to try out to some more restaurants and take more walks in the nice parks of Munich. We are also prepping the little one for our big trip at the end of the year. Of course, we meet all our friends who live in Munich 0ne last time. Our wedding was really amazing

In August we move to a house close to my parents. We intend to stay there until the house we bought will be finished, which may take a year or two. I also finally receive my company car. I drove the same old 2001 Golf 4 since 2008 and this is the frist new car I ever had. It is special me to since back in 2014 I had to make a decicion between buying an awsome car of use all my money to get a Master’s degree. I am happy I chose the latter, because now I have an awesome car for very little money. August was so busy that I did not even get around doing a monthly review. It is the first time I have to manage a whole house and a baby. A lot of stuff needs to get used to. A lot of new habits need to be built. A lot of bad habits sneak in again and need to be broken again… more weight gain…

September was a lot easier than August in terms of adaptation. It feels great to be close to home and family and friends again. It feels like home here. Gym started to get easier, a lot of house chores did as well. I had more time for myself again (I now notice, that I was so busy that I skipped the last two monthly reviews). We celebrated a welcome back party, and met all of our friends. I managed to walk and journal in the morning again. I got in more protein, cut down on sweets and a little bit on late night eating. I started trying out "morning complex" that is supposed to reduce hunger without much effect yet. Nonetheless, my weight continued to climb... reaching very close to 100kg at a body fat percentage of 24-25% according to my scale. The body scan at the gym was even worse. I did not track calories so I always run on guesses and mental calculations. Something I probably should come back to... I gained some more experience in maintaining a house and using a BBQ grill.

October was a nice productive month. I went to my first ever iOS Conference with appDev: PragmaConf in Bologna, Italy. I finished up implementing Dark Mode in a work project. I hit the gym regularly and got several new PBs. I released a couple of FP post. I participated and completed in LYT. And I moved my FP content production from EN to Obsidian. I also moved my weekly reviews there. Monthly reviews seem to be more difficult to move and stay in EN for now. We continued working on the house (so gar we still removing things: the garden, bathrooms, and tapestry). The time spent with Jago and Chia suffers a bit. But this will be to be the opposite in November, when we start our travel, so its OK. Jago says "papa" for the first time. We went to a few birthday parties, I had my regular Ubermind mastermind (4th and last of the year). Unfortunately, I seem to have further increased my weight now crossing 100kg a few times already. In October I also start to learn Thai (<200 words). Meditation and Journal practice are working out very well. We start our travels towards the end of the month.

November started out great. I finished off strong at work, we started to travel and spend 10 days in BKK to get some legal stuff done for Chias name change. During our stay in BKK I started to write in a coffee shop nearby for 1-2h daily while Jago was napping. We did a few activities and got acclimated to traveling with the little one. Then we move to Rayong where we spent a few days with Chia’s parents in a little house close to the beach. After Rayong we went to Chiang Mai where we stayed with Chias parents. We also visited the Loikrathong festival for the first time and got legal stuff done for Chia.

Luckily in December we finally got a handle on how to travel with the little one. We first visit Singapore for a few days, then move on to the Philippines where we stayed on Boracay for 16 days and on Palawan for another 15. Especially the underground river and crocodile farm were nice.

Going forward…

Annual Theme Setting

As a yearly theme for 2024, I settled on The Sculpting 🏺. I wanted something to encompass these ideals:

1. I want to form something new by improving what already is

2. I want to carve out the best of each of my life domains.

3. I want to simplify and remove the unessential.

4. I want to crystallize what already works for me and solidify it

5. I want to add visualization techniques to my repertoire

On a more practical side, I want to do only start projects that are “already 80% done”. This requires more planning and unleashing my creativity. As guiding questions, I set “Do I Already Have This?” and “Can this be more beautiful?”

For the first time, this theme will span longer than a year, both as an experiment and to account for several bigger ongoing endeavors in my life, like house renovation and body sculpting.

Annual Goal Setting

I didn’t set annual goals for 2023, and for the same reasons as last year, I won’t set goals for 2023 either. However, last year, I tried out yearly guiding visions for each of my areas, which worked out OK. I will try out a 1-2 year target board this year. This is both to simplify my goal-setting process, which has grown rather complex over the years and to try out a new time horizon. Peter Drucker recommended seeing what results could be achieved within a year and a half. Many things cannot be achieved within a single year. I have a few of these coming up, like my house renovation and my new body sculpting goals. So, this is a perfect opportunity to try it out. Plus, with this, I will have a better measure to compare myself against at the end of the year than I did this year.

So for 2024-2025, I devised the following “target board” (working title):

1. Build My Dream Home 🏡 — I am renovating the house I bought in 2023.

2. Shape Them Zen Habits 🔔 — I am establishing more stable, next-level meditation & journaling routines.

3. Sculpt the sh** out of this body 🏋️‍♂️ — I am further journeying to restore my pre-COVID vitality.

4. Form A Feel-Good Marriage 🎗️ — I am on the quest to build the best marriage I can.

5. Nourish My 7 for Life 👯 — I am crystallizing and investing in my best friendships.

6. Go On 12 Adventures 🎢 — I’m going YOLO with style, no longer having a single month without adventure.

7. Attain My iOS Blackbelt 🥋—I am continuing to become an exceptional iOS and Swift developer.

8. Carve a 2nd revenue stream 💸 – building up Fractal Productivity to yield more revenue.

9. Refine My Core Ideals 🖤 – I am reworking my mission, values, and codices in life.

This target board has overarching vague objectives and then contains clearer metrics underneath them. However, the metrics are not set in stone, and I don’t need to follow through on them. They are more like the buffet of options I have to reach the objective. The target board is overall flexible and may change throughout the year. In fact, I want to develop it further consistently so that at this point next year, it already consists of what I want to do in 2025 and 2026. The quarterly goals I devise from the board, however, are fixed. The board, as it exists today, on 31st of December 23, I want to freeze here in the review so I can better compare how it evolved over time. From experience, I know that things will change a lot. While no known big changes are on the horizon, one never knows what life has in store. So, this will be a living, breathing document. Going forward, the NOW page of my website will show this target board and my annual theme.

All in all, 2023 was another superb year. I rate it as an 8 out of 10 as I accomplished a lot, got the best accomplishments scores yet, and achieved many milestones like marriage and becoming a father..

This is a qualitative summary of how year 2022 unfolded for me. It is based on my goals, achievements, and journal entries composed throughout the year.

Its purpose is to serve me as a reminder and you as inspiration.   

See my quantified review for a more quantitative Report

My theme for 2022 was Year of Kaizen.

My intention was to build new habits, strengthen my standards, and prune unnecessary things out of my life.

• I (re)read 4 books on these topics (Atomic habits, Kaizen, Gemba Kaizen, The Toyota Kata Practice Guide)

• I built short below 40 new (tiny) habits (half of which are stable and 10 of which I discarded again)

• From the yearly perspective I slowly lost some weight and body fat over the course of the year.

• I pruned my quarterly, monthly and weekly reviews substantially (most of which now take half the time)

• I established a daily “golden morning” hour before work which allowed me to write 16 blog posts on my new blog and work through 3 work-related books

I rate myself a 8/10 in fully embracing this yearly theme as I feel that overall I did a great job in “going kaizen”. Still, there remains a lot to explore in this realm. I also made some bad choices in regards to what kind of habits to build. The habits I chose to build did not really support my yearly goals that much.

2022 Goal Success Rate

For 2022 I set the following goals:

1. Empower my soulmate for a career life in Germany (Couple Goal) (85%) ✔️

2. Recover my pre-COVID physique and vitality (Top Priority Goal) (40%) 🐌

3. Master Kaizen – Build & Maintain 30 Tiny Habits (100%) 🏆

4. Start building my Indie App Portfolio (33%) 💤

5. Rekindle my Passion for Writing (100%) 🏆

6. Dive into iOS App Architecture (Opportunity Goal) (100%) 🏆

This makes for a 75,5% success rate which is a great result and substantially better than the 62,3% from 2021.

I attribute this success to several factors:

• I limited the number of goals set to only 5-6

• I used a “12-week year” approach and worked in “focus quarters”

• I allowed myself to alter goals if they became outdated or irrelevant

What I could have done better is to not being led astray by my opportunity goal. I first had set it to building an online course and invested 2 month into it before realizing that it was not the right time for it. Also, with my couple goal I yet again set a goal that depended too much on other people.

Annual Accomplishment Score

Additional to reviewing my goals, I calculate an annual score based on a list of actual accomplishments in the six life domains and compare them to the previous year:

1. MIND: 7/10

   1. I consumed 30+ (audio)books

   2. I was a forum moderator for a BASB cohort

   3. I switched over from Evernote to Obsidian for work-related note-taking

2. BODY: 7/10 (+3)

   1. I rejoined the gym and reestablished a strong workout ethic (averaging 5 workouts per week)

   2. I lost roughly 4kg and 2% body fat (gym scale shows below 90kg for the first time in 1,5 years)

   3. I filled my Apple Rings for 6 months in a row

   4. I completed a 3 day water-only fast

   5. I spent one month vegan and two months without sweets

3. SOUL: 8/10

   1. I got engaged with and married my girlfriend in a traditional Thai wedding ceremony in Chiang Mai

   2. I got Chia pregnant and we are expecting a baby boy in March 2023

   3. I helped my girlfriend to reach German Level B2 (albeit she did not yet pass the examination)

   4. I spent a lot of time with (old) friends and (new) family

4. PLAY: 6/10 (-1)

   1. I travelled to France (2 weeks) and Thailand (3 weeks)

   2. I made several short trips: sledging, hiking, and a mid-year review at Chiemsee

   3. I had a great bachelor party and watched a lot of movies, series + went to the theatre a lot

5. VOCATION: 7/10

   1. I released my first-ever indie iOS app into the AppStore

   2. I switched to a new project at work which is a lot of fun and supports my professional growth

   3. I worked through 4 books on software engineering and consumed a lot of other content (podcasts, youtube, …)

6. VOICE: 7/10 (+3)

   1. I started a new blog (and earned my first-ever money online)

   2. I tried out the 12-week year approach for Q3 and Q4

   3. I reached 1.000 Newsletter subscribers across all my newsletters

   4. I started building an online course (but shut it down for the time being)

6 points gained, 1 point lost, resulting in a +5 life score.

This makes an overall annual accomplishment score of 40/60 (70%)

Progress on my Impossible List

In 2022 I crossed off 10 items from my impossible list (vs. 3 in the pervious year):

1. Marry my Soulmate

2. Earn over 70.000 € in one year

3. Work >80% remote for two years

4. Publish a 100% self-made app on the AppStore

5. Go 3 weeks without coffee

6. Visit France (as part of “visit a new country every year”)

7. Moderate in a BASB cohort

8. Reach 1.000 Newsletter Subscribers

9. Perfect Apple Rings for a quarter

10. Perfect Apple Rings for 6 months

Here is how everything unfolded for me…

2022 becomes my Year of Kaizen. I want to explore the subtle art of making continuous progress on things. I set out to master habit building, establish new standards, and start to think in “smaller increments”. In the past I went “all-in” too often and I now see that this approach has its limitations. So I want to be skilled both in “heavy lift” as well as “slow burn” work. To kick off this journey I (re)read Atomic Habits (3/5 ☆) and Tiny Habits (4/5 ☆). I decide to build 1 new tiny habit per week, starting with 2 push-ups after using the toilet. Building the first few habits works out smoothly. One tiny habit per weeks seems to be a reasonable goal. So I decide to continue with this for the whole first quarter. To not loose touch with compassion for animals, I participate in Veganuary. Partly due to the usual new year motivation I manage to loose 1kg body weight. This supports my top priority goal for the year: to recover the shape I was in pre-COVID. Losing 1kg per month would get me there. I celebrate my birthday quietly together with my girlfriend - we go to see a movie and have dinner at the best vegan restaurant in Munich afterwards. I take a short trip into the mountains with some friends. Unfortunately, my current project at work isn’t much fun anymore and it takes a toll on me.

My health challenge for February is to avoid sweets. Except on one cheat day I manage to do so. Unfortunately, it has no positive impact on my weight and I remain stable. I continue to build kaizen habits and start to explore a second, related dimension: pruning. I manage to remove all the non-essential form my productivity katas and unsubscribe from one newsletter per day to declutter my email inbox. I further work on making my goals more visible (a challenge I had to deal with in the past was making my goals visible and “present” enough). My girlfriend reaches a new level of proficiency in German and we start to talk german at home more often. She attempts the German B2 examination, Unfortunately, she’s not ready yet and fails. We both also get our third COVID-19 vaccination (which yet again knocks me out for 2 days).

January and Feburary were but a prelude for the year. March finally brings in some fresh air. First off, I manage to release my first ever indie app in the AppStore. I also participate in a iOS lead essentials mentoring session where I get valuable feedback on the codebase. Then, a first “detour” presents itself. I get accepted as course moderator in the personal knowledge management course BASB. This not only brings valuable experience, it also makes me launch my new blog on personal productivity, reignites my passion for writing in general and on top of that I make a new friend. I also go another full month without any kind of sweets (again, no positive impact on my weight). But there are also drawbacks: since Chia failed her German examination she gets rejected at all places she applied. I consume a lot of caffeine, mostly in the form of coffee. But sadly I also start consuming energy drinks again and experience heavy caffeine-crashes in the evenings and thus default to watching a lot of TV (luckily without snacking). I feel stress accumulating.

With Q1 behind me, and with 75% of my quarter goals reached, I set out on the Spring quarter. Since my weight loss was not fruitful so far I decide to mostly focus on health. And due to lack of ideas I once again take a more hardcore approach (instead of doing it the kaizen way): I water fast for 3 days, resulting in a weight loss of more than 2kg (weight that I will gain back over the course of two months). I also restrict watching movies and series to once a week and try out 18:6 fasting to support my health goals. I start taking 30min morning walks right after waking and meditating in a nearby park. I continue blogging and moderating BASB. Other than that April remains a less spectacular month.

May is more of the same. I finish my moderating job, keep on blogging and meet up with the new acquaintance I made. It get soaked into the idea of "building an online course" and decide to use my opportunity goal for it. In the course of Q2 I manage to revise my second brain, moving over most of my work-related notes from Evernote to Obsidian. With my skills and motivation I prepare and give a personal knowledge management workshop for some friends. I spent a weekend in the mountains with some friends to celebrate their birthdays. Unfortunately, my weight relapses to 94kg. Work remains unsatisfying but fortunately change awaits. I have an interview for a new work project and get accepted. This was a welcome and highly anticipated change. It restores my passion for work and my work ethic. It also seems to be the perfect project to grow from intermediate to senior level.

June is full of variety. I manage to go 21 days without caffeine/coffee, go on a hiking weekend with my family, conduct my first-ever mid-year retreat at Chiemsee, determine a topic for my online course and start creating an outline for it. Unfortunately, I reach an all-time-high weight of 95,8kg. Except for a lot of walking I exercise little. I am truly "obese" now and start feeling kind of helpless. Additionally, my car breaks down and in general my financial situation starts to get worse. Still, June is an OK month as I get to meet many of my friends and also enjoy a short little WWDC camp with my colleagues in Frankfurt.

Q3 shakes things up a lot. Inspired and motivated from my mid-year retreat I try to change my strategy. I will now work in 12-week years with a full focus on quarters and ignoring anything but my quarter goals. As suggested by my new friend I try to go on a keto diet for Q3. Additionally I reviewed what has worked for me in the past in regards to weight loss and working out in a gym was very high on the list. So I decided to join a nearby gym and talking strength training more seriously again. I manage to lose 1,29kg and 0,3% body fat by going keto, reducing calories and working out in the gym, even though I get infected with Corona for the first time and need to go into quarantine. Also, I start in the new project at work and it is a lot of fun. I also refine my online course outline and plan to ask Chia to marry me. We plan to visit Paris in August and I plan to ask her in front of the Eiffel tower. I also Then, shortly before the month ends the surprising news: Chia is pregnant.

Life is ironic. Sometimes, when the future is unclear and you have too many options, it seems to be a good strategy to wait-and-see. With Chia being pregnant, a lot of decisions become easier to make. In general, our future seems to crystallise. It fells like a lot of puzzle pieces falling into place. I get into the groove of working out again, but gain back the weight I lost in July. Partly due to my vacation / trip where I drop keto as it is simply not feasible. But as planned, during my travel to Paris and get in engaged with my girlfriend. Afterwards, I join the wedding of one of my best friends, tell my parents that Chia is pregnant. It was a sentimental moment and I felt more connected with my parents than in a very long time. I also I request a pay raise at work and receive it and work on my online course. Except the setback in my weight, August is a great month.

To some extent, September feels like an extension of August. I gain even more weight back, work a little bit on my online course, blog, read and workout little. Going back into my daily routines after the vacation seems surprisingly hard this time. We have a summer party at work, I join the Oktoberfest which now takes place again and the exceptional new Lord of The Ring series starts. With only a success rate of 48% this ends the worst quarter in regards to my goals. I attribute it to the fact that I changed my approach with the 12 week year and I definitely want to try it again. I start to realize that I have deviated too much from the course I had set myself for 2022 and decide to put the online course project on ice. Due to the new project at work I am more motivated now to leverage my opportunity goal in a way that has some synergies. I also decide that I need help with weight management. I seem to not have what it takes anymore.

New quarter, new 12-week year, new motivation. Regarding work, I decide to use my opportunity goal to read 3 books to grow my expertise and to take a deep dive into iOS application architecture. Regarding love, we decide to marry in Thailand in a traditional wedding in December. This was a perfect opportunity for Chia to finally see her parents again, for my parents and her parents to meet and simply for me to experience and understand her live before she met me. Regrading health, I sign up for an online coaching program that would boost my growth efforts and promised me to lose 7kg in 3 months in a healthy and sustainable way. The program did a lot more than that for me. It reframed my whole self-identity, set me up for success in the gym and helped me lose 3kg in the first month. It also helped me realize that kaizen was probably the wrong approach for my situation after all.

Continuing the successes of October, in November I manage to lose 1,5kg more and further reduce my body fat. I average over 5 workouts per week (including cardio). I record a new low weigh in at 90,6kg, and the scale in the gym even shows me <90kg on one occasion. My friends organize a bachelor party for me and we plan the wedding in Thailand. My second 12-week year infused with the motivation of the coaching program seem like a fresh start and I definitely want to keep this approach going forward. I also have to deal with some bureaucracy due to Chia being pregnant and her Visa running out in February 2023. Luckily, everything goes smooth on this end. Likewise, I have to deal with some birth-related stuff like picking a hospital and signing up for some parenting courses.

With 2022 coming to an end and me spending half of December in Thailand (marrying, getting to know Chia's family and traveling) I set the bar a little lower. I manage to finish all my kaizen and work-related goals before the trip. I also manage to work out a lot in the first two weeks of December, then average 1 workout and a lot of walking in the last two weeks of the year. I have a truly exceptional wedding day and travel with Chia's family and my family through the Mea Hong Son province in the northwest of Thailand. We also book a Thai cooking class and I manage to find an awesome co-working space to write up this annual review early (its 28th of December right now). As of my last weigh-in I am at 90,8kg, meaning that I at least was able to roughly maintain my weight. Looking back 2022 was a very good year with a goal success rate of 75% and an accomplishment score of 70%, both of which being the highest since I maintain this review process. Q4 was an especially great quarter and I want to replicate that for Q1 of 2023.

Looking at it from a meta-perspective 2022 taught me some other invaluable lessons:

1. Kaizen is no Silver Bullet: Both innovation/big bangs as well as incremental progress have their place and one should use the best strategy for the given context. For my weight loss journey to really get traction, I needed a big bang approach via coaching.

2. Patience: While I consider myself patient, I was challenged multiple times this year. The weight on the scale did not show the hoped for progress even though I invested a lot of time and energy. Chia’s progress in mastering the German language also remained stagnant for a long time. Patience is a truly important character trait to hone, and I am glad that I got to practice it (considering that I expect a baby boy in 2023).

3. 12-Week-Years: 12 months is too big a time frame to make food plans and set goals. Setting goals and reevaluating where you want to go on a quarter basis will often yield a much higher success rate and brings the benefits of heightened visibility, clarify and motivation.

4. The irony of life: Planning is crucial, but never ever expect your plans to be how things unfold. Hold them lightly because life will always have some surprises for you in check. I knew this intellectually before, but it surprised me again this year. I did not expect to marry so soon. I did not expect to become a father so soon.

All in all, 2022 was a superb year. I rate it as a 8 out of ten as I grew in almost every regard in comparison to the year before. While continuing to struggle with weight loss, I yet again invested a lot in my relationships and family and even go married and will be a father soon. I am feeling highly capable of handling what’s to come and expecting to surpass this years results next year.

Going forward…

Based on the above summary, my annual score, and goal achievement, going forward I want to fine-tune what I ended up in Q4 of 2022:

1. Put primary focus on my BODY, SOUL and PLAY domains

   • I’ve been struggling with weight management many times throughout my life. While I had very good runs in some years I never quite solved it. With my current setup I feel like being able to make some decent progress and maybe even solve it for life. So I want to double down on this. I want to be able to prioritise health even on vacations and trips.

   • With expecting a little baby boy on the horizon, I want to continue with and doubling down on my SOUL domain. I will read a lot about the subject and take several months off to experience and watch my son grow.

   • I also want to highlight PLAY in 2023 as I have really neglected it in the last few years. With taking off several months this has some nice synergies with my SOUL domain ambitions.

2. Work in 12-week years with 3 goals each

   • I found that while yearly goals give a direction, there is way too much change to be expected. So for 2023 I will set quarterly goals only. As for the longer term string, in addition to a yearly theme, I want to set very rough directions or themes for each of my life domains instead (see below).

3. Mix project and kaizen approaches to achieve my goals

   • Being proficient in both project-based work and habit-based work I want to make smarter decisions about how to reach each of my goals.

4. Favor simplicity and pruning over adding and replacing

   • I want to continue with removing stuff from my life instead of adding something.

For 2023 I set myself guiding visions for each of my life domains:

1. MIND: FURTHER EXPLORE MINDFULNESS & SPIRITUALITY

2. BODY: Recover my pre-COVID physique and vitality (CONtinued)

3. SOUL: FOUND A FAMILY AND BEcome A LOVING & CARING FATHER

4. PLAY: REPLENISH MY ENTHUSIASM FOR LIFE

5. PROFESSION: BECOME A SENIOR iOS DEVELOPER

6. VOICE: BUILD A REVENUE STREAM / PRODUCT

The yearly themes I set myself over the last five years were:

• 2018: A Year of Vagabonding 🧳

• 2019: A Swift Year 👨‍💻

• 2020: A Year Quantified 📐

• 2021: A Year of Ratio & Will 🚀

• 2022: A Year of Kaizen ⛩

For 2023, knowing that I am now married, that I’ll have a baby boy and found a family, and that I’ll further explore mindfulness and spirituality, I want to more deeply explore all the kind of linkages and attachments we build in the world as we grow. 2023 will thus become my Anno Affectum 🔗 (from latin: year of the attachment).

This is a qualitative summary of how 2021 unfolded for me. It is based on my goals, achievements, and journal entries composed throughout the year.

Its purpose is to serve me as a reminder and you as inspiration.   

See my quantified review for a more quantitative Report

The theme of my 2021 was A year of ratio&will

My intention was to improve rational decision-making and self-discipline.

• I read 15 books on the topics (increase my knowledge)

• I completed several willpower challenges (Cold showers, no movies, zero sugar, fasting, …)

I rate myself a 4/10 since I learned a lot, but did not feel much practical growth.

2021 Goal Success Rate

For 2021 I had set myself the following goals:

1. Become an expert reader (92%)

2. Reach meditation stage 3 (27%)

3. Crush 3 willpower challenges (66%)

4. Make sleep 1st priority (37%)

5. No sweets for 365 days (365-day challenge) (76%)

6. Move to ******** w/ Chia (couple goal) (93%)

7. Become a smart worker (69%)

8. Release a paid app (substituted with goal 9)

9. Complete the iOS Lead Essentials (100%)

10. Kick-off GrowthPilgrim (canceled due to time constraints)

11. Visit Greece w/ Chia (Opportunity goal) (66%)

Overall I succeeded with 62,3% of my goals which is a lot better than the 45% from the last (heavily COVID impacted) year.

For this, I completed about the same amount of goal-related quests/projects as last year (21).

Annual Accomplishment Score

Additional to reviewing my goals, I calculate an annual score based on a list of actual accomplishments in the six life domains and compare them to the previous year:

1. MIND: 7/10

2. BODY: 4/10 (+2)

3. SOUL: 8/10 (+1)

4. PLAY: 7/10 (+3)

5. VOCATION: 7/10 (+1)

6. VOICE: 4/10 (-5)

7 points gained, 5 points lost, resulting in a +2 life score.

This makes an overall annual accomplishment score of 37/60 (61%)

Progress on my Impossible List

In 2021 I crossed off 3 items from my impossible list (vs. 4 the year before):

1. Read 52 books in a single year

2. Visit Frankfurt (as part of “visit the 10 largest cities in Germany”)

3. Visit Greece (as part of “visit a new country every year”)

Here is how everything unfolded for me…

January ‘21

2021 starts off with the usual enthusiasm. There are several bigger changes: I get a new flatmate, move my sleep schedule to 10pm-6am to support my sleep goal, design a new mourning routine with 30min deep reading to tackle reading goals, and start working 4/5 days from home to support my professional goals. I sleep, read, and exercise a lot. All these changes I manage to maintain over the whole month of January. On the counter side, I still struggle a bit with my sleep quality and my weight management, have some issues with a colleague at work and measured some unexplainable high blood pressure. Unlike my big 30th birthday party prior to COVID pandemic, I celebrate the end of my 31st year with good Thai food in a quiet setting with my girlfriend Chia and my new roommate Subhyal.

February ‘21

February turns out as another solid month. Unfortunately, some first broken windows appear, especially concerning meditation and reading; also my home office productivity is not as high yet as it was in the office. But other than that, everything looks good, especially regarding my health: my sleep is stable, my weight is stable (assumably because I did not consume any sweets whatsoever; one of my yearly goals), I continue to exercise a lot (5x per week), and my VO2max reaches 40 for the first time in a long time. I get a raise at work (unfortunately, the amount turns out to be a bit disappointing), and the colleague I had issues with in January hands in his resignation. I continue to work on the Ubermind app I am planning to release soon, make some first hiking trips with my new flatmate, try out smoking weed for the first (and as of date last) time in my life. Further, a lot of exciting changes are visible on the horizon: moving together with Chia this year and getting new colleagues and projects at work..

March ‘21

March is a month of change. A lot of it work related: I get 2 job offers from other companies, get new colleagues at my current company, and discover a new awesome online course to take me to the next level as an iOS developer. But the biggest turbulence has to do with my relationship: I have the most severe fight with my girlfriend since we are together (3 years) and we were close to breaking up. What starts as scary fight, turns out to be the best thing that can happen. This fight somehow seems to have been the final challenge of our commitment in the relationship. After this fight my relationship seems to reach new heights and a new level of love. I am now certain that I want to move together with Chia and see if I want to spent my whole life with her. Health wise everything continues to stay on track: my weight is stable, I exercise 4x per week, do not indulge in a single sweet. I reach 66% of my Q1 goals, which I feel to be a good start.

April ‘21

Q2 sets off where Q1 ends. I actually and to some extend surprisingly I accept one of the job offers I got in March. It feels right and it will give me 2 months off, due to my overtime and remaining vacation days. It feels strange, yet liberating. I also start to get more concrete with searching for a new apartment since Chia gets her VISA approve. My meditation practice improves (I almost manage to meditate 30min per day for 30 days straight), but my journaling suffers due to less time. I have some slight sleep problems, gain a kilogram of body weight, even though I keep exercising my performance seems to suffer, too. I cook a lot with Chia and Subhyal on the weekends, visit my family.

May ‘21

May is my first month off. I initially intended to spend this overtime travelling, but due to COVID I gave up on that. So I repurposed this month to invest in my intellectual and professional capital and conduct some self-experiments. I buy the advanced online course I discovered in April and spent the whole month completing it. The course is so promising and time intensive that I replaced my goal of "releasing a paid app" with completing this course. It is a great experience overall. And with this I reach my second goal of the year. Experiment-wise I complete my first willpower challenge of the year: a 30 days of cold showers challenge. I also attempt to go 30 days without sugar but stop it after 2 weeks since it was too difficult to integrate into my otherwise busy schedule. Why? Other than spending my time and energy on the online course, it now becomes evident that I will need a new apartment rather soon, so that my girlfriend is allowed to stay in Germany. So most of May I search for a new apartment with Chia and also for someone to replace me in my shared apartment when I move out. It takes quite a toll on someone, finding an apartment in Munich with a limited budged and while also having handed in a resignation. After many interviews and just as many rejections towards the end of the month I am lucky to find a suitable and affordable apartment available as of June and take it. The next challenge is to find someone to replace me in my current home (due to the nature of my contract I cannot terminate my contract unless I find a replacement).  So even though in May I have a whole month off, I am very busy and gain another kilogram of body weight... and in June things start to really get out of hand.

June ‘21

June is my second month off and it really becomes a "wild" month. The biggest success is that I complete my fist yearly goal of moving together with Chia. Over two consecutive and exhausting weekends with the help of my parents I move all my stuff to the new apartment. Other than that, the lack of structure and daily routine ironically takes a toll on me. While it was supposed to be a great and liberating time it led me to stop meditating, journaling, exercising all together. My sleep is bad, I binge watch a lot of movies and series (The Office), I order food a lot instead of cooking. Some small positive things of June are that I see my parents a lot, some friends visit me in my new home, WWDC (Apples developer conference) takes place.

July ‘21

After some big changes, July means rebooting. But since I now for the first time in my life live together with a girlfriend and additionally work from home 100% it is more like a fresh start than a reboot. A new home by itself already poses the threat of losing of some good behaviours and introducing some unhealthily new ones. But also moving together and living with a partner (and not just a flatmate) full-time, means an additional redesign of existing habits and routines is required. Further, a new job means a lot of effort in the beginning and while it also offers chances to build new working routines and standards it also might introduce bad ones. Unfortunately, being in the thick of things, I am so focused on my yearly goals and completing my active projects that I fail to recognise how big this shift in behaviour this truly is. In retrospect, a proper way to approach this would have been to place a focus on building couple standards, habits, and routines from the get-go. Nonetheless, July turns out to be a great month. Chia cooks a lot (and I eat a lot), I reach some milestones in my finances, in reading and journaling. I explore Obsidian as a replacement for Evernote. I order a new bed and new equipment for my home office. Several things come to a conclusion: I get some last payments from my old employer, I find a new tenant for my old room/apartment, I start to shift my mindset from being a room mate to being a life mate.

August ‘21

Summer. I take it easy, letting myself sink into couple life, calling it a day earlier in the day to enjoy the nice weather, planning and starting my 10 day vacation in Greece with Chia (my opportunity goal for 2021). My cousin visits us for 3 days. I try to establish a new morning routine with Chia which is partially successful. I get my first vaccine shot (Moderna) and lay sick for one day. I sell some old stuff I don't need anymore. I hurt my back since my new bed did not arrive yet and I have to sleep on an uncomfortable and small couch. I start snacking again and fail my 365-day challenge of consuming no sweets whatsoever. I also barely exercise. Therefore, my weight trend still is upwards.

September ‘21

Waking up still on Corfu, Greece. This is my fist trip since early 2018 and feels really good. My third goal is complete. Unfortunately, I gain two more kilograms of body weight during my 10 days in Greece. To counter it I start to push my breakfast to later in the day (mostly 9 or 10am instead of 7am). To have no hunger pangs I start drinking Americano instead of Espressi in the mornings. I get my second vaccine shot (Moderna). I lay sick for 2-3 days this time with 39 degrees fever. Chia then starts her social year in a kindergraden. September flys by really fast.  Chia and I learn a lot about living together. I visit a friend for his birthday and go for dinner with a couple of friends I did not see since my 30st birthday. I continue to workout little, just like in July and August. Sleep could be better. But then the new bed I ordered in July finally arrives. According to my tracking data the bed itself increases the time I spend in bed (not necessarily the time asleep); not very surprising, given that it is a thousand times more comfortable. September and Q3 ends, I reach about 60% of my quarterly goals.

October ‘21

October is first "normal" month without anything extraordinary happening. Living together with Chia feels normal. Working 100% remote for the new company is becoming my daily bread. I manage to neither over- nor underwork; averaging about 40h per week, +- 2h. I join two bachelor parties of two friends and hold a little "opening" house party for my new apartment. I make some good progress with the Ubermind App which suffers from some last bugs and a little bit of "feature creep" and the fact that the project had to lay dormant since May. Version 0.6 is now ready for Testfight testing again. After all, it is not part of my yearly goals and only an additional project I take on. Moreover, since things quieted down a bit, it is time for my second willpower challenge of the year (goal no. 3). Since I had been watching a lot of movies and series over the last month, I decide to quit watching any films for 30 days. I successfully manage to do that and it offered me a lot of free time. I also conduct some small sleep experiments with avoiding food after dinner, putting on magnesium oil before bed, taking melatonin before bed, using a weight blanket. No extraordinary results here.  I also decided to start gaming a little bit, get the free Apple Arcade month and play Monster Hunter on my iPhone instead of watching movies. A nice change. I am lacking behind with reading, exercise and weight management.

November ‘21

I November I have the first thoughts about 2021 coming to an end. I need to do a lot of catch-up to reach my yearly goals. I decide to give up on two of my goals: meditation and starting a new blog so that I can better focus on the rest. That makes 3 "fails", 3 "wins" so far for 2021. In November I take a lot of walks, but else exercise little. My weight increases further. For Chia's birthday I visit Frankfurt for the first time (and check it off from my impossible list). I also meet my new colleagues at the new company there, for the first time ever. To complete my last willpower challenge I decide to do a 7 day WOF in December.

December ‘21

With most of the year behind me I go into end-sprint mode. I still need to read more than 15 books and complete a willpower challenge. I try to do a 7 day WOF but fail to go through with it so after day 2 I change to another challenge of going with OMAD for 14 days, which I complete for 7 days and then also fail. I end up reading 10 books in the last 10 days of the year to complete my reading goal. I meet many friends and as usual we spend the last week of the year with my family. There also I conduct a lengthy annual review. I evaluate how good I did at making sleep a priority (I had medium success) and working smarter (I did OK). I then evaluate my overall goal success rate to be 61% for this year. I then derive the focus of 2022: kaizen, build new habits, strengthen my standards, and prune some existing things out of my life.

Looking at it from a meta-perspective 2021 taught me some other invaluable lessons:

1. The Importance of Structure: Without a clear daily structure and routine I tend to let myself go. While taking on a longer vacation a little bit more relaxed and less structured might seem a good thing, it does not make me happy in the long run.

2. Big Life Changes: I should never again do multiple major life changes (like switching jobs, moving apartments, and living together with a partner) at the same time.

3. Goal Setting and Overestimating Oneself: I seem to have a deterministic tendency to overestimate myself by "20%"; given I am setting 10 goals per year, if I want to keep the goals the same "size", I should probably set only 8 going forward.

4. Couple Life and Routines: Living together with a partner requires some adaptation on both sides. It may not be possible or even desirable to have the exact same routines. Rather, some routines should be built together and shared, others should stay individual. Learning this takes time and experimentation.

All in all, 2021 was a solid year of recovery from 2020. I rate it as a 6 out of ten. While continuing to fight some health issues and struggling to maintain my weight, I invested a lot in my relationship and family. I did not quite reach all of what I set out to achieve, but feel like this year set me up for a great 2022.

Going forward…

Based on the above summary, my annual score, and goal achievement, I want to make some big changes for 2022:

1. Focus heavily on my BODY and VOICE domains

   • The second year in a row my BODY rating is extremely low. It is definitely time to change that, even at the cost of other domains.

2. Set 1-2 goals less than usual (since I always end up with a 60% success rate this is an indication for too many goals)

   • In 2021 several things happened faster than expected (moving together with Chia), some things happened completely unexpected (like changing jobs). Since COVID disrupted almost all of my plans for 2020 I already had set more flexible goals for 2021 (e.g. I left the concrete approaches more open and set one opportunistic goal), but still vastly underestimated the unpredictable nature of reality. By setting fewer goals I hope to compensate for that and leave even more room for agility.

3. Apply fewer project strategies and more kaizen strategies for achieving my goals

   • In the last years, I relied heavily on the completion of "projects" to achieve my goals. I want to leverage more habits, routines, and small incremental improvements as strategies for the next year.

4. Favor simplicity and pruning over adding and replacing

   • Some parts of my life have become rather complicated.

For 2022 I set myself the following 6 ambitious objectives*:

1. Empower my soulmate for a career in Germany (Couple Goal)

2. Recover my pre-COVID physique and vitality (top priority goal)

3. Master Kaizen — build & maintain 30 tiny habits

4. Start building my Indie App portfolio

5. Rekindle my passion for writing

6. Opportunity Goal Placeholder

*I also set specific, measurable key results for each of them to evaluate success or failure.  

This is a summary of how 2020 unfolded for me. It is based on my journal entries composed throughout the year.

Its purpose is to serve me as a reminder and you as inspiration.   

2020 was truly a bad year for me in regards to my goals. I barely succeeded at 45% of my goals even though I did an additional planning session at the end of Q2. Adherence to my standards (habits, routines, maintenance efforts) I rate as follows:

1. MIND: 7/10

2. BODY: 2/10

3. SOUL: 7/10

4. PLAY: 4/10

5. VOCATION: 8/10

6. VOICE: 9/10

My slogan for 2020 was „A year quantified“. I aimed to start measuring all areas of my life: productivity, health, social metrics,... I rate myself an 8/10 in this regard since I gathered a lot, but not all the data I set out to measure. For more, please see my separate quantified self report 2020.

So while some areas still rank high, all in all, I rate my life in 2020 a four out of ten. It has not necessarily been the worst year of my life, but definitely the worst of the last six. COVID disrupted a lot of my plans and forced me to adapt. But, assuming I was not infected by the virus, my health condition (whatever it was) really brought me down. It drained the happiness and joy out of everything else I achieved.

Here is how everything unfolded for me…

January ‘20

2020 kicks off with a lot of love. A great year behind me, I spend New Year’s Eve with my girlfriend, family, and friends. There is a somewhat magical motivation in the air. It feels like the perfect year is about to start. I set high goals and standards for myself: Start quantifying every area of my life. Go 99% vegan. Complete 3 trail run competitions. Reach 74kg. Start freelancing. Releasing my first iOS app. Little do I know, that soon, everything was about to change. Yet, January unfolds smoothly: I celebrate my 30th birthday with a big group of friends. I make good progress at the gym. I embark on a short trip to Austria (Salzburg & Hallstatt). My newsletter list at Ubermind reaches 500 subscribers. Only very far in the background, the C* word begins to appear.

February ‘20

January reaches into February. My fitness and meditation practices continue to improve. I start journaling again. I am on track with my weight loss. Everything seems to work. Then my girlfriend's VISA ends, and she has to go back to Thailand. The day after I bring her to the airport everything starts to go downhill: I get sick and have a severe fever and trouble breathing. Soon I would find out, that this moment will have some big health implications for me. I get better. Only to find me with a 2nd illness a week later: this time I again seem to have infected my lungs. Unfortunately, this remains no single occurrence. Rather, this trouble would go with me for months. The sickness completely disrupts my plans. I fail to finish the Ubermind app which I had planned to do in February. It further disrupts my concentration at work. My daily meditation practice breaks. Most of all, it jeopardizes all my health goals.

March ‘20

March burns itself in my head. It is a rollercoaster ride with great implications. My health continues to go downhill. My breathing problems continue. Additionally, I develop some sleep issues and a strange "heart ache". At about the same time COVID-19 is conquers the world. While my doctor reassures me that my health issues are not related to the virus I am at the worst point in years. Since 2015 my life had bettered itself every year. Now this upward spiral had stopped. It makes me feel insecure. And it shows. Again, I don't reach my weight goal. Again, I have to delay the Ubermind app. Further, the virus causes me to lose a lot of money on the stock market. The only positive side is, that with all the sick days and working from home, I gain some more time and freedom. I rediscover my favourite teenage music artist (Hayley Williams). I explore some of the more useful sides of Youtube. I manage to get a daily 20min meditation routine in. Humans are antifragile. They usually grow stronger from adversities. I know that intellectually. Yet experiencing it is a different thing. And I am a fool to believe that I will recover from it much faster.

April ‘20

April is like a second march. My health remains fragile. I gain more weight. I still have bad sleep quality. I still cannot exercise much. Also, my acne gets worse. All my other projects seem to fail, too. Even Ubermind.de seems to come to a sudden end since we decide to produce no more blog posts for the time being. As if it were not enough, the virus now also blocks my girlfriend from reentering the country. We planned this for May. Unfortunately, her VISA request is a week too late. Germany closes the borders. So she now has to wait until August and waste some 4 months of her life. April shows me two things: First, COVID will not go anywhere anytime soon. Second, COVID is not within our circle of control. We cannot change it; we cannot power through it. It requires adaptation instead of mere persistence. So I am forced to be creative. I start to do workouts at home instead of hitting the gym. I leverage some new opportunities and abandon some of my death-born goals for 2020. I order a lot of food and start cooking for myself instead of going out.

May ‘20

Hoping for betterment I get disappointed in May, as my health hits rock bottom. I still fight with my breath. I gain more weight. Additionally, I am not allowed to exercise for a month. I develop more acne. My blood pressure rises due to continuing sleep issues. I lack any motivation to improve since I don't expect my circumstances to get better any time soon. I still have no idea what is happening to me: was it the sickness from February that caused all this? Did I have COVID-19 after all and now suffer from long-term damage? Is pollen the cause of this? Is it my vegan diet? Is it my posture? Luckily, some new beginnings start to take place. We pivot Ubermind.de from blog posts to a monthly mastermind newsletter. I get ready for creating my first ever newsletter series. I rediscover my passion for writing. At work, some key people leave the project and make things more interesting for me. I realize, that this low point also resembles the turning point of the year.

June ‘20

June is much like May. I know that from now on it will (presumably) get better. The stock market starts to recover. I spend more time outside. My girlfriend gets approval to enter Germany in August. I can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it is still a long way and I have to persist. am lucky enough. Luckily enough I can draw energy from life domains that have not been affected by the virus. At work, for instance, it's going quite well. I also continue developing my Ubermind newsletter course on GTD. Still, my breathing issues remain. Blood work shows that I lack vitamin D, but that I am "healthy" otherwise. I am still clueless about what happened in February. Yet, I now gain even more confidence that the low point is behind me.

July ‘20

The end of the second quarter brings some nice changes to it. I finally realize that I need to throw my goals for 2020 overboard. Instead of drifting along, I conduct another annual planning. My girlfriend gets her VISA for August. I complete my GTD newsletter course. My blood pressure goes back to normal. The stock market gains some more. All this finally gives me some new momentum. Unfortunately, I still have some severe problems breathing at times. Even though a lung doctor now concludes I am completely healthy I don't feel like it. Also, my weight is now at 83kg. This is far away from the 76kg which I had set out to achieve by July. So even though July has some good sides to it, it shows me that health is everything. Sickness has the power to overshadow every other area of life, no matter how good it's going. I am thankful that July 2020 ingrained that lesson deep into my heart.

August ‘20

Finally! August is the first good month since February. At work, we manage to get our application released into the App Store. My Ubermind app is now available on Testflight for Beta Testing. Chia (my girlfriend) reenters the country. I take a short but nice trip to the Black Forest (COVID seems under control now). I welcome all the change after this long dread of being locked in at home. I take some days off from work (physically and mentally). I don't consume any coffee for two weeks to reset my caffeine tolerance. I freeze my task manager for a week to prove that I am in control. I start to work in the office building again (where I have silence, a standing desk, and some good coffee). I discover and watch some interesting new movies. I read The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem for the first time. And I am immediately hooked by Nathaniel Branden's style and intellect. August for me is the month of breaks and pauses. Due to the monotony at home, I didn't realize how overdue these breaks were. Taking these breaks did not only recharge my batteries. It felt more like I traded in my old battery for completely new ones.

September ‘20

September represents an interesting ending to Q3. For the first time in months, I have the hope that my breathing issues are gone for good. My lung doctor now declares me completely healthy. I have some amazing sex. My meditation practice gets better again. I start to experiment with sleep tracking using my new Dreem 2. My flatmate cancels the apartment towards the end of the year. I try eating a Pescatarian diet for a month. I gain some first followers on Twitter, which I am experimenting with since August. On the other side, my physical performance has suffered some severe damage. And somehow at this point my self-image is not yet updated. When I start to exercise more I always feel that I should be way better or at least that I should improve much faster. I am puzzled. So while the adversities caused real physical damage my mental faculties did not adapt. Starting again at the gym feels dreadful, for example. My VO2max finally seems to rise again, yet every run is torture. Further, I reach my highest weight to date: 86,6kg.

October ‘20

October extends September. My sleep and health seem to get better. Big changes begin to emerge. I start to search for a successor for my flatmate. I finally spend more time with my friends again. I discover an awesome Restaurant in Munich (Pad Thai). Still, even if some areas of life are great, it is rarely the case, that everything is perfect. Life, after all, seems to be a never-ending juggling game.

November ‘20

November is a very varied month. My social life improves again. I spend a week of quality time with my parents and I celebrate Chia's birthday with her. I complete 16 workouts, meditate for 30 minutes for 5 days in a row. I receive a "Corona bonus" at work. I finally buy myself an espresso machine which I had planned to do at the start of 2020. Since the stock market is recovering, finances seem to be about the only area that went great for me in 2020. I manage to save as much as I had intended to. Still, I am able to buy all the things I had planned for. Additionally, I have enough capital to buy two expensive high-quality online courses. It looks like I have some end year rally going on. Yet, my weight reaches another all-time high of 87kg. And, once again, I start to develop some acne on my scalp. This usually happens to me based on stress and the consumption of milk products and sugar.

December ‘20

The year ends with a lot of gains: the stock market rocks. My physical performance starts to come back. A new flatmate enters my life. I now have a better-equipped home office. The final beta testing of the Ubermind app is also ongoing. And an extensive annual review and planning session takes place. I reach 88,9kg after Christmas, a number I never wanted to see on a scale. This means I gained a total of 9,1 kg in 2020 (and lost in lean body mass percentage!). December shows me that sleep, after all, might be one of the reasons for my unexplainable weight gain in 2020. Throughout the whole year, I was maintaining a sleep schedule of 8/9 pm - 4/5 am. I always scheduled enough sleep opportunities per night (8h). Yet, still, I got only an average of <7h of real sleep. I decided that in 2021 I will focus to make sleep 1st priority in my life. This will entail shifting back to a sleep schedule of 10pm-6am. Falling asleep at 8 am currently does not work for me. Especially since I live with a flatmate that stays up longer. But also, since I want to maintain a healthy social life. In 2021 I additionally set out for a 365 challenge of eating no sweets (desserts, chips, chocolate, gummi bears, ...). I expect this to be another main contributor. Lastly, I am to reduce my overtime at work. Throughout the last 3 months of 2020, I had accumulated over 160h of overtime. I once had a 70h work week and averaged around 50h. 2021 I want to prioritize self-care above my vocational and financial goals. Also, I want to reduce my workaholic tendencies.

Looking at it from a meta-perspective 2020 taught me some other invaluable lessons:

• First, this year of in-depth journaling showed me how little we remember. You cannot trust your memory; without a journal, it is hard if not impossible to recreate the past.

• Second, another year I did not take meditation seriously enough. I managed to up my sessions from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. But I only very briefly experienced real benefits like calmness thorough the day. At least now I know that for real meditation "gains" your sessions need to be 20 minutes or longer.

• I think this year I really experience psycho-cybernetics. What I think my physical performance is, is one thing. My actual abilities and reality are quite another. After 5 months with a lot of idleness, I expected my gym and cardio performance to decrease only slightly. When in reality, I should have realized, that such a long-term break would take months to recover from.

These are not necessarily new insights. But they are real ones. I experienced them first-hand and so I can assume that I really understand them now.

Going forward…

2020 was a low point for me. But, this also means, that it was a turning point. It only gets better from here. As humans, we have the capacity to rise from adversity stronger than ever before.

In 2021 I want to put more focus on self-care.

That is why I set myself some ambitious quality-of-life objectives*:

1. Become an expert reader

2. Reach meditation stage 3

3. Crush 3 willpower challenges

4. Make sleep 1st priority

5. No sweets for 365 days (365-day challenge)

6. Move to ******** w/ Chia (couple goal)

7. Become a smart worker

8. Release a paid app

9. Kick-off GrowthPilgrim

10. TBD (Opportunity goal)

*I also set specific, measurable key results for each of them to evaluate success or failure.