ANNUAL LIFE REVIEW 2021
A year of ratio&will
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:
- Become an expert reader (92%)
- Reach meditation stage 3 (27%)
- Crush 3 willpower challenges (66%)
- Make sleep 1st priority (37%)
- No sweets for 365 days (365-day challenge) (76%)
- Move to ******** w/ Chia (couple goal) (93%)
- Become a smart worker (69%)
Release a paid app(substituted with goal 9)- Complete the iOS Lead Essentials (100%)
Kick-off GrowthPilgrim(canceled due to time constraints)- 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:
- MIND: 7/10
- BODY: 4/10 (+2)
- SOUL: 8/10 (+1)
- PLAY: 7/10 (+3)
- VOCATION: 7/10 (+1)
- 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%)
Impossible List
In 2021 I crossed off 3 items from my impossible list (vs. 4 last year):
- Read 52 books in a single year
- Visit Frankfurt (as part of “visit the 10 largest cities in Germany”)
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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*:
- Empower my soulmate for a career in Germany (Couple Goal)
- Recover my pre-COVID physique and vitality (top priority goal)
- Master Kaizen — build & maintain 30 tiny habits
- Start building my Indie App portfolio
- Rekindle my passion for writing
- Opportunity Goal Placeholder
*I also set specific, measurable key results for each of them to evaluate success or failure.