Q1 2023 Review
This is my 13th consecutive quarterly review. It's a reflection on my goals for the first quarter of 2023. I 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.
I expect this quarter to rest fondly in my memory as one of the best of my life. On February 4th, my wife and I welcomed our first child, a beautiful daughter, into the world.
The last two months have been a wonderful adventure full of happiness and new experiences. Those new experiences have filled some of the empty spaces in my schedule. Spaces I used to fill pursuing my various goals. But these are happy tradeoffs. And when I review my progress over the quarter, I actually did a pretty good job.
I fell short on some of my goals, but that happens every quarter. I kept the big pieces in check. I was consistent with fitness and finances. I was disciplined enough to launch a second newsletter and exceed my expectations for it. I spent a lot of time reading and writing. But I fell short on my longer form writing. I barely published any new content on my personal website, and my subscriber numbers reflected the lack of progress. So it goes.
Let's dig in.
Complete Successes:
These are the goals I nailed.
One investment program analysis.
My taxes are filed and paid for 2022, so that's a big financial cloud I'm happy to say has blown over. I made my 2022 solo 401k contribution in a lump sum, and I plan to dollar cost average it into VTSAX in equal amounts over the next four to six months.
My next plan is to replenish the cash supply that my tax payments depleted before thinking much more about investing. My wife and I like to live conservatively, generally keeping about a year of cash in the bank in addition to the funds we're saving for a downpayment on a house.
After investing diligently for about ten years, I have a decent base growing in the market. I plan to keep adding to that, but at this moment, I see more value in having a lot of cash than investing more money in the market at the expense of liquidity. I have a few reasons for this.
First, my current job is a contract role that could end at any time. If it were to end, I want the luxury of taking as much time as I want to figure out what's next. This will allow me to pick the perfect fit rather than taking the first opportunity that arises so I can pay my bills.
Second, my wife and I will likely buy a house in the next two years. Having more cash obviously puts us in a stronger position for this life event.
Third, because I already have a solid base of funds invested in the market, I'm always interested in alternative investment opportunities. I don't know exactly what this might be. It could be a great deal on a rental property. It could be the chance to invest in a business. It could be access to invest in an exciting IPO at the issue price. Regardless of the opportunity, these things generally happen quickly, and if you don't have the cash to invest, you'll likely miss the boat. I'm willing to forgo some potential market returns if it gives me the liquidity to participate in some other undefined future opportunity which will likely yield much higher returns.
On another note, 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 2020, and May 2021. Now the plan is to hold through 2025 and see what happens. As of this writing, the "fund" is down about 27% since inception, up from a -34% paper loss as of last quarter, and down from a 128% paper return at its all time high. What a wild ride.
Spend less than $18k as a couple.
My wife and I set a goal to spend less than $72k this year, or $18k per quarter. In Q1, we spent $16,007.06, coming in well under our goal.
Hitting this goal in the second quarter will be challenging, since we'll be paying the hospital bill from our daughter's birth. But being under our Q1 goal by $2k should help keep us on track for the full year spending goal.
Send 13 newsletters.
This one is pretty straight forward. I sent 13 issues of The Lake Street Journal - one each week. At this point, I've sent 170 consecutive issues of The Lake Street Journal. I haven't missed a Friday in over three years. If you're reading this and aren't subscribed, I'd love for you to sign up.
One workout program analysis (test my fitness benchmarks).
I didn't test my fitness benchmarks this year. I realized it takes a good amount of time to test everything, and I'd rather spend that time just doing workouts. Based on my regular workouts, I know I'm not regressing in anything. I actually know I'm improving in some areas. For example, I did my heaviest ever one rep max deadlift last month.
Here are some of my stats for the quarter:
39 CrossFit classes attended.
16 runs for a total of 65 miles.
649,867 steps or about 7,221 steps per day.
Last quarter I attended 38 CrossFit classes and ran 12 times for a total of 50 workouts. I attended one more class this quarter and ran a little more. I tallied 55 workouts for the quarter.
I'm really happy with this performance. It's a slight uptick from the previous quarter despite having a lot more responsibility (a new baby) and a lot more deviation from my normal routine (family visiting the new baby).
I've seen a lot of improvements in my CrossFit ability over the last year. As long as I'm able to keep up my current pace—which should be relatively easy—I expect I'll continue to see improvements. I hope to be able to crank up the dial a little bit, but time will tell how that will play out. It will mostly depend on work and parenting commitments.
One of my fitness goals for the year was to do a weekly average of two hours of zone 2 cardio. I'll talk about this below in my 'partial success' section...
Send 26 Wonderful Words newsletters.
As expected, I hit send on Wonderful Words 26 times during the quarter. These were the first 26 issues of 104 I plan to send this year. Growing a newsletter is a challenge, but there's nothing to grow if you don't send consistent emails. I kept up my end of the bargain and will continue to do so.
Check it out and subscribe here.
Add 250 Wonderful Words subscribers.
I began the quarter with zero subscribers and ended the quarter with 442. I'm thrilled with this progress.
I wrote a detailed thread on how I did this, but the biggest additions came from sharing the project with LSJ readers, shoutouts from a couple friends in their newsletters, and one paid ad placement in a writing themed newsletter with 50k subscribers.
I'm also trying to post something every day on Twitter and LinkedIn (give me a follow). This is a long game play because it takes time to build an audience, but I think this will eventually convert to more subscribers.
Spend 50 hours reading.
This was a great quarter for reading. I spent 49 hours with my nose buried in a book. I read for about 32, nine, and eight hours in January, February, and March, respectively. My daughter was born on February 4th, which is why my reading took a nosedive in February and March.
I finished four books: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, The Terminal List and True Believer by Jack Carr, and The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd.
I track the number of books I finish, but it's purely for the sake of having information. I care about time spent reading far more than number of books finished.
I also spent a ton of time reading articles, which I don't track. Many of them end up being shared in The Lake Street Journal.
Spend 20 hours writing.
I spent 16 hours and nine minutes writing in Q1 for a total of 19,377 words written. While this is short of my goal, it's a huge improvement from last quarter where I wrote for about 10 hours and 12k words.
Most of my writing time this quarter was spent on Wonderful Words. The format of this newsletter makes it easy to write. I can sit down and knock out a newsletter in about 30 minutes, and it doesn't require the same extended amount of time and deep focus that I spend writing my other articles.
It's allowing me to practice my craft in a way that fits into my current lifestyle as a new parent.
Notably, I don't count any of the time spent writing The Lake Street Journal toward my writing time. I have a couple reasons for this. First, it's a little harder to track because I often write it in bits and pieces, as is conducive to the format. Second, when I'm writing the LSJ, I'm not writing longer pieces with central ideas and arguments. It's more about writing tidbits, which is great for what I'm trying to do, but it's not the same as the writing I publish on my website.
Same goes for writing in my journal. If I counted these two things, I'd probably be north of 30 or 40 hours for the quarter.
Partial Successes:
These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either.
Two hours of Zone 2 exercise per week (average).
I logged 16 runs covering 65 miles in ten hours and 52 minutes in Q1. This comes out to an average of 50 minutes of running per week.
As I mentioned above, one of my fitness goals for the year was to do a weekly average of two hours of zone 2 cardio. After hearing a ton about the benefits of zone 2 cardio, I decided to give it a try. Everything I've read and listened to suggests you need at least two hours per week to see the benefits, so that was my starting point.
My plan was to work up to an average of two hours per week over the first six months of the year. I was hoping to be at or above 2 hours per week by the end of Q1, but life had other plans for me.
When my daughter arrived, I had to adjust my exercise a little bit. I was able to keep up my CrossFit schedule as usual, but where I had added runs in addition to that in January, I wasn't able to sustain this pace. I was honestly just happy to keep up with CrossFit, so I tabled the running for a bit with the plan to come back to it when possible.
February saw basically no running, but in March I was able to log almost as many miles as I did in January. This trend suggests I might be able to approach my goal in Q2, but I'm not going to be crazy about it. At this point, I'm pretty good about understanding what my body needs, and I will be prioritizing CrossFit, rest, and recovery over running. I'll keep this as a goal for Q2, and we'll see what happens.
Publish 8-10 articles.
I published two articles and one quarterly review for a total of 6,033 words. I also published 26 Wonderful Words newsletters for a total of 14,013 words. Counting both locations, I published over 20,000 words for the quarter, which I'm pretty happy about.
This goal is intended to be for my main website, so I fell pretty short of the goal with only three articles. That said, I published a lot of writing on my Wonderful Words website, which was where the majority of my energy was focused. I'd love for you to check it out and subscribe.
These are the pieces I published on my main site:
Relatedly, I don't count the Lake Street Journal newsletter as part of my published writing because it is more ephemeral, but over 13 issues I wrote and sent somewhere around 10k words (most issues average between 700 and 800 words).
ROMWOD 68 days.
ROMWOD is a daily stretching routine with video instruction that lasts about 20 minutes. I highly recommend it.
I missed 30 days this quarter, which means I stretched on 60 of the 90 days. This isn't terrible, but it's still short of my goal. A good chunk of my misses came on days I was away from home or on days we had visitors. This happened more frequently than normal in Q1, so with a little diligence, I think I can get right back on track in Q2.
Journal at least once per week.
I wrote eight entries totaling 6,007 words. This was one of the first things to go out the window when my daughter was born. I usually write journal entries in the earlyish morning or the lateish evening. Now that time is filled with playtime and diaper changes. When it's not, I'm usually doing something higher priority like reading or writing.
I'd like to keep working at this because I know my daughter's early months and years is a time I'll want to remember. The best reason I've seen for keeping a journal is to travel back in time and remember the moments I might otherwise forget. So journaling will continue to be a goal.
Failures:
These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection.
Add 400 LSJ subscribers.
I began the quarter with 1,382 subscribers and ended with 1,352 for a total of -30 new subscribers. The represents a quarter over quarter decrease of 2% and the first time I had a net decrease of subscribers in a quarter.
This was an incredible failure but not an unexpected one.
Aside from my quarterly review, I only published two new pieces of writing in Q1. Publishing articles is the primary way I grow the email list, so when I'm not publishing articles on a regular basis, I can't expect the list to grow.
And while it stings a little to see the list shrink, if people aren't interested in what I'm sending, I would prefer for them to unsubscribe. No hard feelings. Interests change, and I've unsubscribed from plenty of newsletters. Reducing subscribers who aren't interested is what keeps my open rates in the mid 50s and my click rates in the mid teens.
Additionally, I changed my strategy a bit in Q1. I put nearly all of my focus into writing and growing my other newsletter, Wonderful Words. My thought process is that Wonderful Words will be easier to grow because it is a specific niche—the craft of writing. I also think a decent percentage of the people who like Wonderful Words will also like The Lake Street Journal. So the long term plan is to grow Wonderful Words and then advertise the LSJ to that audience. I think this will result in better long term growth for the LSJ, but it will definitely mean lack of performance in the short term.
As part of shifting my focus to Wonderful Words, I updated both my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles to be writing focused, meaning I'm basically only posting about how to become a better writer. Since I'm not advertising the LSJ or my main website on social media, of course my growth will suffer.
So while I totally missed my subscriber goal this quarter, it's actually an expected side effect of the larger plan I'm pursuing. I'm not worried. Things will work out in due time.
I'm going to pause my LSJ subscriber goals at least for next quarter. Then I'll reevaluate and figure out how to best proceed.
Conclusions:
At the end of another quarter, I'm feeling both proud of my accomplishments and like I still have a lot left to accomplish. I hope I always feel like this.
One of my favorite speeches is Matthew McConaughey's Best Actor acceptance speech where he talks about his hero. When he was a young man someone asked him who his hero was.
"It's me in ten years," he replied.
Ten years later the same person asked if he was his hero yet.
"Nope, not even close. My hero is me in ten more years."
The point is you never get there. You never accomplish everything you hope to accomplish because there is always more to be done.
You have to be careful with this mindset. You don't want to find yourself on an endless treadmill chasing accomplishment after accomplishment. But you also don't want to find yourself endlessly on the couch watching your life pass you by.
I think the key is to appreciate what you have. Enjoy what you accomplish. Savor the moment you're in. And always keep in mind what you're capable of achieving.
I had a hell of a quarter. I've enjoyed every single moment I spent with my daughter. And I've enjoyed the time I spent pursuing the things that make me a happy, well-rounded human. A good father. The type of man who can lead my daughter where she needs to go.
I'm not there yet. Like McConaughey, I never will be. But I'll always be working on it and enjoying the ride along the way.
Q2 2023 Goals:
One workout program analysis.
Two hours of Zone 2 exercise per week (average).
One investment program analysis.
Spend less than $18k as a couple.
Send 13 LSJ newsletters.
Send 26 Wonderful Words newsletters.
Add 250 Wonderful Words subscribers.
Stretch on 68 days.
Journal at least once per week.
Spend 50 hours reading.
Spend 20 hours writing.
Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash
