As the year draws to a close, I am reflecting on the goals and habits that were important to me in 2019. Like many of you, I see the end of the year as a chance to look back and see what went right, what slipped through my grasp, and what I can improve as I go into the new year. Of course, my brain is already exploding with ideas of goals to strive for in 2020, but I know I have a better chance of success if I pause to take note of an obstacle here, a tweak there, and formulate my plans with this important context in mind.
Finally, this is a chance to reflect on the past year with gratitude. As Tony tells Pepper in The Avengers, “enjoy the moment.” 2019 was actually a pretty great year for us. Not every year is, and some are really, really hard. But, even when things are difficult I choose to find lessons that I can hopefully learn from and use to turn things around if needed. Without further ado….
2019 Goals
- Promote at work
- Increase knowledge of finance/investing
- Fix/improve our personal finance systems to up our finance game
- Maintain musical skill
- Launch website
- Build fitness and strength levels back up
- Make some improvements to our home
- Be a better/more present husband and father
Professional Goals
I haven’t received a promotion at work since 2013. That’s somewhat typical in my field but nonetheless, a promotion has been a long time coming and I’ve been actively working towards it for the past 4 years or so. 2019 was finally my year and it didn’t come easy. There were many long days, extra responsibilities and added side projects, some of which didn’t even pan out. I’d say this 4-year period was for sure the hardest and longest I’ve ever worked toward something, but it really taught me how to grind it out daily while keeping that long-term goal in mind. It strengthened my self-discipline, taught me how to be resilient by prioritizing things that would restore me (like my morning workout), and it taught me how to balance things when everything is a priority (seemingly).
My biggest takeaway was probably that nobody is completely self-made. Sure, I worked hard, but my wife and kids made many sacrifices as well. There were far too many days where I’d come home from a full day of work, say a quick hello to my family and then retreat to the bedroom or office to start working on the laptop. Through it all my wife was an absolute trooper and carried the lion’s share of work keeping the household running. I could not have done this without her and I will be forever grateful to her for supporting me and digging deep for the long-term well-being of our family. We definitely discussed this goal throughout, including exactly what it would take for me to promote, and it’s because of this that we stayed on the same page and maintained a strong relationship without resentment or bitterness. GOAL ACHIEVED.
Finances
Early on in our marriage, my wife and I read Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. Quickly we agreed about having an emergency fund, paying down our debt, and budgeting. However, I’ve always been a little intimidated by the stock market and felt somewhat clueless as to what is involved in investing. I decided 2019 would be the year that I made it a priority to learn about this stuff. Mostly I read books, which was a great starting point, but I also watched some Youtube channels and discussed things with friends and colleagues who have a greater knowledge than me on this subject. The finance books I read in 2019 were-
Retire Inspired
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
The Millionaire Next Door
I Will Teach You to be Rich
Everyday Millionaires
The Millionaire Fastlane (currently reading)
Some of these were great for getting you to dream about what is possible and to see the long-term big picture. So far as the nuts and bolts of investing, I’d say The Little Book of Common Sense Investing was the most informative. I’m now clear on what mutual funds are and what drawbacks are associated with them, what an index fund is, why they’re so good/popular and what the best long-term investment strategy is (at least according to one person, John Bogle). I Will Teach You to be Rich was also really comprehensive and had some good advice, especially when it comes to financial advisors and the true cost of having one (spoiler- they’re probably not worth it). I never set out to be an expert by the end of the year and I recognize that I’m just getting my feet wet in this area of knowledge. I definitely feel that I kept this up as a priority throughout the year and I’m further along my path towards financial literacy now than I was, so I’m calling this one good. GOAL ACHIEVED.
With this new found interest stoking a fire under me I was all excited to go ahead and take some action towards getting our finances in order, or at least make improvements to our overall plans. We needed to get our retirement plans optimized and I wanted to get all our accounts under one roof, so I decided to seek out a financial advisor that could help manage things and teach us some as well. This was before I read about financial advisors in the John Bogle and Ramit Sethi books : |
We did sit down with the advisors and got a good look at our overall plans and networth and then set about getting all our accounts consolidated at one firm. Some of those had not been managed well and are now better diversified but I do have some doubts about whether we really want our retirement accounts and mutual funds actively managed. I am going to continue to do research but at least we are now paying attention and being intentional about our money. We made some good contributions to our savings this year but also had a very costly tree removal done, so it felt a little like we were treading water. I still think we are being very thoughtful in considering how to manage our finances and are set up to do very well in 2020. We’re on the right path, we just need to continue focusing on making improvements and playing the long game. GOAL = MIXED RESULTS
Fitness
Towards the end of 2018 I had a several months long break from training due to the aforementioned increased work demands. I was on my feet a lot and burned a ton of calories, but I didn’t strength train regularly or workout much at all. And because I was so busy it was difficult to eat enough calories to keep up with how many I was burning. I dropped about 10 lbs or so, much of it muscle and was itching to get back in the gym on a regular basis. 2019 would be the year that I would rebuild myself, both in terms of strength and in body composition. The break was actually good in a way, in that I had continually tweaked either my back or shoulders off and on for years. I also decided I would make injury prevention and shoring up my weak points a priority. I did this by incorporating exercises that worked those smaller stabilizing muscles on a weekly basis and by strengthening some important muscles I had been neglecting, namely my glutes. I did barbell hip thrusts for much of the year, starting at a very low weight, about 135 lbs. By starting at a low weight and increasing little by little each week, I feel like I really taught my body how to fire the glutes and learned what it feels like when they fire properly. I immediately noticed a difference in how stable and secure squats and deadlifts felt from this. The other thing that helped those 2 main lifts was doing the McGill Big 3 every week. See below-
These exercises could sometimes feel tedious but oh my word what a difference they made! The bird dogs for sure strengthened my lower back and it’s felt great all year. I also did waitress carries and suitcase carries throughout the year and they helped with shoulder and core stability. Hybrid Performance Method and AthleanX are great resources for these kinds of injury prevention exercises. Because I was able to stay injury free and not experience setbacks from tweaks and such, I built my strength back up on the main lifts to almost as high as my all-time personal records. I recently tested them earlier in December and ended up with 305 lbs Back Squat (315 all time best), 230 Bench (240 best), and 355 Deadlift (365 best). Like so many (bulkin’ season!), I’ve been enjoying higher calories during the holidays and am stoked to see how much I can increase these numbers in 2020. I am in an optimal position to blow past my all-time PRs in the new year. GOAL ACHIEVED.
Website
I actually purchased the domain name upgradedragon.com towards the end of 2018, but then had so many changes/demands at work it sat neglected, floating around unrealized in the ether. After achieving my goal of a promotion at work earlier in the year, I was finally able to put some of my time and effort towards making this self-development site a reality. I set my goal pretty low here and just aimed to get the site put together enough to put it out to the public. Everything about this was new to me, and I had a lot to learn including how to build a site using WordPress, what the heck SEO is, what to write about, and how to get people to the site in the first place.
A lot of this I’m still figuring out and I don’t even know if anyone is reading this but I’m not bothered at all. I know it’s a process that I’m still in the beginning stages of. I wouldn’t be typing these words with the intention of putting this article up if I had never purchased the domain name or built the site in the first place. I’m even more excited now than ever before about Upgrade Dragon and I have tons of ideas to explore that cover habits, the many skills of Batman, balancing many interests, the ingenuity of Tony Stark/Ironman, online businesses and more. This website is still in its infancy but it has a ton of potential and a bright and promising future. GOAL ACHIEVED.
Skills
Ok, here is my achilles’ heel and I know I’m not alone here. I believe strongly that our modern world is so full of readily accessible knowledge and opportunities that I get way too excited and try to do everything! I have a list a mile long of skills and subjects I’d like to learn about and/or master and not enough time to get to them all. For those that don’t know, I am a musician, but no longer do it full time for a living. I am totally ok with that and am eager to learn other things, but I’ve worked so hard for most of my life building up my musical skills that there’s no way I’d just let them atrophy into nothing.
For 2019 I aimed to simply maintain my skills as a saxophonist by practicing 2-3 times per week. Really not enough time to improve, but hopefully maintain. Well, as the year went on, it was a struggle to play even 1 time a week! I just didn’t get it done, sometimes because I was busy with other things but other times because I just simply chose to do something else like read instead. Amazingly though, even though I have played infrequently and haven’t performed in over a year I’ve still been able to keep some fundamentals strong like my sound and pitch. Other things (ahem…technique) not so much. I am better off than if I had just given up totally and quit playing however, despite the fact I could do exactly that as there are no outside forces causing me to have to practice or prepare for a performance.
On the other hand, we did purchase a piano this year(!) which I am still so excited about and even though this didn’t do anything for my saxophone chops, it’s already helped my overall musicianship a ton. I’m busy brainstorming about how to best maximize my time/effort with both of these interests in the new year and I haven’t given up on trying to be good at both instruments! GOAL = MIXED RESULTS
Home Upgrades
We’ve been in our house for about 5 years now, and even though I am so thankful for our home and where we live, I am always looking for ways to improve it and our quality of living. To that end we try to make some carefully considered purchases (still playing good defense! Trying to be that Millionaire Next Door) each year. If you follow my Instagram account you know how much I value books, reading, and knowledge and we also really value developing that interest in our kids. Well since we moved in our kids have had one small bookshelf in their room and we’ve had one tiny one in our bedroom. Nothing in the living room. Almost all of our books have been in boxes in the garage. FOR FIVE FREAKIN’ YEARS. Ridiculous. One of our best upgrades this year has been an enormous bookshelf we purchased from Wayfair and I am so thrilled to have all of our books, which just make our house feel more like a home, displayed in our living room where the kids can go over and flip through them whenever they want. I know this sounds terribly pretentious, but to me it says “We value reading and knowledge as a family” and that inspires me daily.
Other than the piano I mentioned earlier, the other major home upgrade we made this year was starting a beautiful, luxurious garage gym! Witness-
Ok, so this is where it began. Not glamorous. Just a Powertec bench, cheap plates and a bar that don’t weigh what they’re supposed to and some dumbbells. As the year went on, we set aside money here and there for upgrades, bought used where we could, and diy’d an Olympic lifting platform. Here’s where it stands now-
Again, I’m thrilled with how far we’ve come and with the plans we have for building out the space in the coming year. Additionally, this is just half of the space that I’m working on as the other half is going to serve as a workshop/thinker/maker space. Together with the gym part of the garage, I’m calling it the Dragon Lab. It is somewhere I can go to be creative, work on skills I want to learn, and experiment- whether it’s a pursuit of the mind or new exercises and techniques I’m working on in the garage gym part of the space. GOAL ACHIEVED.
Relationships
As I
mentioned earlier, my wife and kids were heroes in supporting my working towards
promotion. In addition to this, I changed positions within my job and with that
new position came some relief in terms of workload and time spent away from
home. I really wanted to make the most of that this year, to be more present
when with my wife and kids and put them first when it counts. Mostly this just
took the form of daily events, such as making it to all almost all of
the kids’ sports practices and games, NOT working on the laptop at home, and
taking the time to have some family activities that did not involve screen time.
We did have a weekly pizza and movie night which was nice, but the kids are getting old enough that they’re now able to play and understand simple boardgames and cardgames. This is probably my favorite thing to do with them right now. I love seeing their little minds working to strategize and we can also laugh and talk about non-game related things at the same time.
We’ve read to them almost nightly since they were babies. Now they’re also learning to read, so it’s so rewarding to see them be able to take this power for themselves. And it really is a power! There are so many stories and subjects that they are going to be able to explore FOR THEMSELVES as they get stronger and more confident at reading. Having them read a story TO ME is another of my favorite things to do with them right now.
Probably the highlight of the year in this category for me was when I took care of the kids by myself for an entire week. My wife went to visit and help out family while I stayed back to tend to the kids’ needs. We had funny conversations at dinner, I did their hair (girls), we talked about school and practiced what they were working on. There were meltdowns of course, and we were late to every soccer practice. But that’s not what I’m going to remember about this week 😊
My wife and I made time and space in the budget for a date night at least once a month. We also had more conversations this year about our dreams and where we want to take our family in the future. These usually happened around budget meetings. That sounds so boring and tedious and there was an aspect of that, but armed with our knowledge and plans from the finance books we’d both been reading, we got excited about what’s possible. These were some of my favorite moments with my wife this year and this time spent dreaming together brought us closer and made us inspired and motivated to take action. GOAL ACHIEVED.
Year in Summary
All in all, I set 8 goals for 2019 and met 6 of them outright. I had mixed results on a couple of them but really that just gave me additional info and lessons I can use to hopefully do better in the future. 6 out of 8 is pretty darn good and it’s got me excited for next year! Over the next few weeks I’ll be refining exactly what I want 2020 to look like and will put that into an article sometime in January. I hope everyone out there had a great 2019 and whether you did or not, I hope you’re stoked and inspired to make 2020 an incredible and productive year!
