Q1 2022 Review
This is my ninth consecutive quarterly review. It's a reflection on my goals for the first quarter of 2022. I plan to conduct these quarterly reviews to track my progress on my ten year plan, which I published at the end of 2019 and suggest you read to get the most out of this article.
If you want to conduct your own quarterly reviews, here's my free comprehensive guide and my toolkit with templates, trackers, and video instructions.
This has been an exciting quarter for me. I didn't achieve all my goals, but I made meaningful progress on most of them. Since I'm working on a ten year plan, accomplishing goals isn't necessarily the box I'm trying to check on a quarter by quarter basis. I'm simply looking to remain consistent, make progress, and improve my process.
This quarter feels like a redemption story for me. In my Q2 2021 and Q3 2021 reviews, I wrote about my lack of progress in many areas. I wasn't regressing, but I wasn't progressing either. After stringing together some consistency in Q4 2021 and Q1 2022, I'm finally seeing solid progress.
Let's get into it.
Complete Successes:
These are the goals I nailed.
One investment program analysis.
I started a new job with a very different salary at the end of December. In early January, I sat down and drafted an investing plan for the year. It's a simple framework to ensure I'm investing the same amounts of money in the same companies at regular intervals. I spent a few hours thinking it through, building a Google Sheet, and discussing it with a close friend. Here it is:
Every two weeks, I take 60% of my salary and split it in half.
The first half gets invested into two Vanguard mutual funds: VTIAX and VEMAX. This happens automatically in Vanguard. I set it up once and now it happens every two weeks.
The second half gets split between eight different equities: SE, MELI, NNI, FLGT, UPST, SPOT, BOMN, and PINS. I weighted my higher conviction positions more heavily, but I buy roughly the same dollar amount of every company, every two weeks.
I like this plan because the thinking took place up front which makes the consistent action easy. Half of it is automated, and the other half only requires following a checklist. Every two weeks, I open my Google Sheet and my Vanguard account, buy my predetermined companies in predetermined amounts, and record everything in the sheet.
This marks a deviation from my investing in previous quarters in that it's much more systematized. Earlier, I was shooting from the hip more often than I am now. This approach will be more effective and consistent.
I'm still holding all 26 small cap stocks I mentioned in previous quarterly reviews. I purchased equal dollar amounts of all 26 companies in May 2020, November of 2020, and May of 2021. Now the plan is to hold through 2025 and see what happens. As of this writing, the "fund" is down about 6% since inception, down from a 30% paper return as of last quarter.
Send 12 newsletters.
This one is pretty straight forward. I sent 12 issues of The Lake Street Journal - one each week. At this point, I've sent 117 consecutive issues of The Lake Street Journal. I haven't missed a Friday in two years. If you're reading this and aren't subscribed, I'd love for you to sign up.
One workout program analysis.
I'm pretty excited about this one. As I've mentioned previously, my workout routine has been consistent for years. I go to the gym to lift weights, and I go for runs on tracks, trails, and treadmills. It's worked really well for me. I'm in good shape, and I've generally gotten stronger and faster.
But January marked eight months living in a new city where I don't know many people. My wife leaves for work every morning, and I walk across the hall from our bedroom to my office. I love working from home, but I was lacking human interaction. If you've seen the SNL Man Park skit, that's how I felt.
So I decided to join CrossFit. As you may know, the first rule of CrossFit requires you to tell everyone that you do CrossFit, so this is my obligatory announcement. But seriously, it was a great decision. I tried three gyms, joined the third one, and I've been having a blast. I get some interaction every morning with other fit, motivated people. I'm learning how to do different exercises. I get to compete a little bit. And best of all, I'm getting a better workout than I was going to the gym by myself.
If you ever find yourself in Greensboro, NC, make sure to do a drop in at College Hill Collective, and tell them I sent you!
Add 100 newsletter subscribers.
I'm happy to report—for the first time ever—that I hit my subscriber goal for the quarter!
I began the quarter with 649 subscribers and ended the quarter with 796 for a total of 147 new subscribers. I beat my goal by 47%, and increased my total subscriber count by nearly 23%.
Most of this growth can be attributed to the kindness of others. Specifically, I want to thank Tadas Viskanta of Abnormal Returns, Jim Wang of Wallet Hacks and Apex Money, and whoever runs Monevator. These guys have shared my writing often, which has been instrumental in my growth.
I'll give myself a little credit too. I've been fairly consistent with my publishing, which simply means I have more chances to get my content in front of new eyes. If I write a dozen articles, one or two are bound to be decent. Putting in the work is the pre-requisite. Getting lucky enough to have important people share my work is what leads to growth.
Hopefully I can keep it rolling into Q2 and beyond.
Publish 8-10 articles.
I published seven articles and one quarterly review for a total of eight pieces of writing. This amounted to 11,857 published words.
I barely hit the target for the quarter, but based on subscriber growth, I published enough content to move the needle. Since increasing subscribers is the output metric I'm trying to hit, I'm happy with my performance here.
I would like to be more consistent with my publishing schedule. While I published eight pieces, I only published one in February. I'm not sure if this matters, but ideally I'd like to have more of a regular publishing cadence.
You can check out all the articles I published here. If you'd like a recommendation, these three were the most popular:
Partial Successes:
These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either.
ROMWOD every day.
ROMWOD is a daily stretching routine with video instruction. I highly recommend it.
I missed eight days this quarter, meaning I stretched on 82 of the 90 days. This is my best performance since Q1 of 2021 where I only missed two days; however, it's much better than the previous three quarters where I missed 16 days, 13 days, and 45 days, respectively.
As I mentioned last quarter, I tend to stretch less when I'm traveling. Consistent with this observation, all eight misses this quarter were days spent away from home. On the plus side, I had travel days where I did stretch, so that's an improvement.
Complete 24 abdominal workouts (three sets of four movements).
It seems like 15 ab workouts in a quarter is my limit. Both this quarter and last quarter I topped out at 15. Last quarter I was being lazy. This quarter I have an explanation.
When I was working out at the gym by myself, I never incorporated ab movements into my workouts. As a result, I wanted to add some supplemental core workouts. Now that I'm doing CrossFit, many of the workouts include abdominal movements, so I don't see a reason to add supplemental workouts. I'm finding my body is much more tired after CrossFit workouts than my regular gym sessions, so it's best for me to limit my time outside the gym to recovery rather than additional workouts.
So that's why I stopped at 15 this quarter, and this won't be a goal going forward.
Journal at least twice per week.
I wrote six journal entries for a total of 4,772 words. I didn't do a very good job here. Journaling was more of an afterthought than a priority, so it didn't get done.
In Q2, I'm going to make sure I write at least one journal entry every weekend. I'll use my wife to keep me accountable. In fact, she'll probably appreciate it because she also likes writing in her journal and sometimes struggles to find time to do it.
Spend 90 hours reading.
I fell very short on this one. I spent 31 hours and 43 minutes reading in Q1. I finished four books: Blue Fairways by Charles Slack, The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio, Not Fade Away by Peter Barton, and Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday.
I read for about 13 hours in both January and February. Then I fell off in March. I had two weeks in March where I crammed 40 hours of work into four days, then took Friday off. One was to go backpacking and the other was to visit family. So those two weeks basically didn't have any reading.
Realistically, 90 hours of reading was an ambitious goal considering I only read 96 hours in Q4 2021, and I wasn't working. I know I should do better than I did this quarter, but I think I'll shoot for 50 hours of reading next quarter.
Reading is an input metric for articles published and, by extension, subscribers added. It would be easy to say that I read enough in Q1 since I hit my publishing and subscriber goals; however, I'm positive my growth in Q1 came on the back of my work in Q4, so I'll need to pick it back up if I want to see similar growth in the future.
Additionally, I only track my time reading books. I spent a decent amount of time reading articles in Q1, but that reading isn't as easy to track, so I don't.
To sum it up, 90 hours was ambitious. Fifty hours seems reasonable. I'll reassess next quarter.
Spend 20 hours writing.
I fell very short on this one too. I spent eight hours and 21 minutes writing in Q1. I wrote a total of 9,404 words, which if you're an astute observer, you'll notice is fewer words than I published in the quarter.
How is that possible?
Well, looking back at my Google Docs drafts, I realized several of the articles I published in Q1 were pieces I had nearly finished in Q4 2021. This happens often. I'll bang away on the keyboard, emptying an idea that's been bouncing off the walls of my brain, then I'll put it away and not think about it for months. Sometimes I just can't get it right, and the only thing that helps is time away from the idea.
Anyway, these archived drafts helped me hit my publishing goal in Q1, but I'll need to get closer to 20 hours of writing in Q2 if I want to keep hitting my goals.
Failures:
These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection.
Add one interesting person to my contacts who I speak with at least 1-2 times per month.
As far as I can remember, I didn't accomplish this goal. But I've made some friends at CrossFit who I'm seeing a couple times a week, so I guess that counts.
I don't think I'm going to keep this as a goal going forward. Meeting interesting people should happen organically, and as long as I continue to write online, I'm sure I'll continue meeting interesting people.
Conclusions:
Considering the quarter as a whole, I'm thrilled with my performance.
I made a couple important changes with fitness and investing, which tells me my systems are working. I've been reviewing my fitness and investing plans every quarter without many changes. In this quarter, my reviews led to a couple big positive changes. Revisiting my plans consistently helps me know when I need to make adjustments, and that's exactly how I hoped the system would work.
I hit my publishing goal and crushed my subscriber goal—which was largely a result of consistently hitting my publishing goal. Checking these two boxes felt great because I completed an input metric that led to an output metric, which, again, tells me my systems are working.
Otherwise it was a fairly boring quarter. But boring is good. Boring means I'm doing what I want to be doing, and I'm doing it consistently.
There's a good golf analogy here. I always say I want to play boring golf. Boring golf means hitting straight, consistent shots, keeping the ball in play, keeping the ball out of hazards, and making pars. Nothing spectacular and nothing disastrous. If you can play boring golf consistently, you're a really good golfer.
The same is true for life. If you can do boring things consistently, you'll accomplish a lot during your decades on the planet. Invest money every two weeks. Don't skip workouts. Set aside time to read and write regularly. Nobody gets excited about these boring actions—but they do get excited about the results these boring actions produce.
So here's to more boring quarters. Consistent actions and small improvements, repeated for decades.
Thanks for reading. I hope this was as helpful to you as it was to me. I'll see you back here next quarter.
If you'd like to set, track, and achieve goals like me, check out this free how-to guide I wrote. I also built templates, trackers, and step by step video instructions you can purchase here. It's a $10 purchase that could change the trajectory of your life.
Q2 2022 Goals:
One workout program analysis.
One investment program analysis.
Send 13 newsletters.
Publish 8-10 articles.
ROMWOD and/or The Ready State every day.
Journal at least twice per week.
Add 200 newsletter subscribers.
Spend 50 hours reading.
Spend 20 hours writing.
Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash
