Q4 2021 Review
This is my eighth consecutive quarterly review. It's a reflection on my goals for the fourth quarter of 2021. 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.
I'm posting this publicly as a way to hold myself accountable and so others have a framework to follow if they so choose.
First, I want to reflect on some of my progress against my ten year plan. I don't typically do this in the quarterly reviews, but since it's the end of a year, I'd like to reflect briefly on a few topics.
More fitness: This was a year of holding steady. Between a wedding, honeymoon, cross country move, and small knee injury, I didn't make a lot of progress. That said, I recorded 110 strength training workouts, plus a lot of runs and other Crossfit style workouts that I didn't record. Like I said, not a huge amount of progress, but enough effort to keep from going backwards.
More risks: I'm content with my risk taking this year. My cryptocurrency holdings crept above 10% of my net worth, so I sold some to bring the balance back down. I'm also starting to concentrate my stock portfolio more towards a few of my higher conviction positions. Finally, I took a big risk in joining a startup this year. That risk didn't play out the way I'd hoped. After six months, I wasn't working there anymore, but it was a good lesson in many ways. As it pertains to risk, it reminded me that the downside you perceive is often more severe than the one you experience. Although this wasn't a year for alternative investments, I'm still casually looking for different ways to invest my money.
More money: Speaking of money, I set a net worth goal of $2 million by age 37. This year, my net worth increased by 23%. I'm happy with this number considering I didn't work for three months. If I can maintain this growth rate, I'll hit my goal early.
More philanthropy: I haven't done well with this in the short term. I'm more focused on accumulating money now so I can do good with it later.
More readers: I set a goal to have 50,000 email list subscribers by age 37. I started the year with 454 and finished the year with 649. While this is a 43% year over year increase, it's well short of my goal to have 1,500 subscribers by the end of 2021. In 2022, I plan to focus more on writing and less on podcasting, so hopefully I can hit the 1,500 number I'd hoped for last year. In 2021, I published 25 pieces of writing on my website. In 2022, I'd like to publish at least 35 pieces.
Okay, now I'll jump into my performance from Q4 2021.
Complete Successes:
These are the goals I nailed.
One investment program analysis.
In Q4 I continued dollar cost averaging into VTSAX and VEMAX every two weeks. I also added to a number of positions including: PINS, BOMN, UPST, NNI, RSKD, SE, TDOC, and MELI.
I decided to sell some of my VEMAX holding and re-allocate it to SE and MELI. VEMAX is an emerging markets fund, and SE and MELI both operate in emerging markets. Like I mentioned above, I want to take more risks and concentrate into some of my higher conviction positions, and this seems like a good way to concentrate while still having exposure to emerging markets.
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 up about 30% since inception, down from 43% last quarter.
I re-evaluated my cryptocurrency holdings this quarter and sold about 25% of my BTC and ETH. Then I used those funds to purchase the stocks I mentioned above.
My plan for Q1 is to re-build my cash position after a 3 month vacation and start aggressively moving more money into the market.
Send 14 newsletters.
This one is pretty straight forward. I sent 14 issues of The Lake Street Journal - one each week. This is one of the accomplishments I talk about the least but am most proud of. At this point, I've sent 105 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.
My exercise approach remained consistent with prior quarters. I'm still doing three days of weight training per week—one push day, one pull day, and one leg day. I was also running several days each week until I injured my knee while running a misogi. Now I'm easing back into the running—about a mile at a time—which is pretty frustrating but a good lesson in patience and moderation.
I enjoy my workout routine, and it's been effective, so I plan to continue as usual. Hopefully by the end of the quarter I'll be back to running 10-15 miles per week.
Publish 8-10 articles.
I published 10 articles and one quarterly review for 11 total pieces of writing. I didn't realize until writing this review that I published 44% of my 2021 writing in the last quarter of the year. Looking at it that way, it's not surprising I didn't hit my goal of 1,500 subscribers by the end of the year. Although Q4 was great for publishing, I need to be more consistent throughout the whole year.
You can find all the articles I published in Q4 here. If you'd like a recommendation, these three were the most popular:
Add one interesting person to my contacts (who I speak with 1-2 times per month).
Like last quarter, my new connection came from my email list. What's even cooler is that it came specifically from someone who reached out after reading my last quarterly review.
One of the biggest benefits of writing online is meeting interesting people, and I'm continuously reminded of that every quarter.
Partial Successes:
These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either.
Journal at least twice per week.
I wrote 15 journal entries for a total of 9,683 words. My cadence was closer to once a week than twice a week. I can't say it was a complete success, but I'm also not upset with the outcome.
ROMWOD every day.
ROMWOD is a daily stretching routine with video instruction. I highly recommend it.
I missed 16 days this quarter, meaning I stretched on 76 of the 92 days. This is about the same as my performance last quarter. I've found that when I travel, I tend to stretch less. I was away from home for about four weeks in Q4, and that's where all but one of my missed days happened. I'm planning to be home a lot more in Q1, so I anticipate my performance will be better.
Reach out to 50 VC firms to pitch my writing idea.
As I mentioned in my last review, my dream job is to do what Morgan Housel does: write one article per week for a VC firm or similar company. One of my goals for Q4 was to cold email 50 VC firms to see if any of them would hire me.
I reached out to 20 different firms. I got two responses that turned into meetings, but here's the interesting part: the two people who responded and agreed to meet with me were people whose writing I complimented specifically. I read their articles, emailed them complimenting the article, and asked if they had some time to talk about their work.
These were technically still cold emails, but I think they worked because I was interested in their writing and their advice on how to pursue a similar career. The emails I sent to random GPs or marketing people didn't get any responses, and I hated sending them.
So I stopped sending the emails and didn't hit my 50 email goal, but I learned a better approach than spraying and praying. Meeting and building relationships with the people already doing what I want to do (or who at least value it) is more likely to lead to a job than asking a favor from a random person. I plan to pursue this targeted approach more in the future. But I can't really set a goal around it. These connections happen more serendipitously.
Spend at least 180 hours reading.
I spent 96 hours and 16 minutes reading in Q4. This amounted to 2,713 pages read and seven books completed. While it was well short of my goal, it was plenty to fuel my writing, which was the purpose of the goal. As it turns out, about an hour of reading per day gives me enough ideas to publish about one article per week.
So while I didn't technically hit my goal, I'm considering this a successful fact finding mission. And I read some great books along the way:
Spend at least 90 hours writing - minimum 1 hour and 200 words per day.
I'm conflicted on this one. I spent 22 hours and 56 minutes writing in Q4. In those 23 hours, I wrote just over 23,000 words. I didn't come anywhere close to my time goal. I didn't write every day. But I wrote a lot of words and hit my goal for publishing articles.
This goal was an input metric—something I could control that would lead to a bigger goal. The bigger goal was publishing articles. I achieved my bigger goal while falling short of my input metric, so it's reasonable to assume I can reduce my input metric. Like my reading goal, this was also a fact finding mission, so I'm marking it a partial success.
Complete 36 abdominal workouts (three sets of four movements).
I didn't do very good with this goal. I completed 15 ab workouts during the quarter. In my defense, I did larger workouts that included things like "100 situps," but since it was part of a larger workout and didn't technically meet my criteria, I didn't count it.
I think next quarter I need to dial the goal back to 24 workouts and schedule two times each week to do them. This will help me build the habit rather than haphazardly trying to throw in an ab workout here and there.
Publish something on 70 of the 92 days in Q4 (75%).
In Q4, I published something on 24 of the 92 days for a total of 22,025 published words. In my last quarterly review, I defined a qualifying publication as one of the following:
An article or curation on my website.
An article on somebody else's website (as long as it has my name).
A screenshot essay on Twitter (see an example here).
A Twitter thread.
I published 11 articles on my site, seven screenshot essays on Twitter, and six Twitter threads. I fell well short of my goal, but I quickly realized I care more about quality than quantity. I could've published a Twitter thread every day just to hit my goal, but they wouldn't have been very good, and they would've taken a lot of time.
This was another goal that was a good starting input metric, but it wasn't properly calibrated. Next quarter, I'll only set a goal for published articles because those are what have the longest lasting value and contribute to subscriber growth.
Failures:
These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection.
Spend at least 90 hours taking notes.
I totally flopped on this one. I spent one hour and 21 minutes taking notes during the quarter. When I say taking notes, I mean transcribing the notes I wrote in the books I read into a central document for that book.
I was still taking notes as I read—lots of them in fact—I just didn't organize them into an easy to reference format. I very quickly realized this is a lot of work, and I can still write a lot of articles without doing it. Where this would become necessary is if I were working on a book. But if that day ever comes, I can go back to the books with the notes in them and transfer them into an easier to use format.
Make $1,000 from freelance/writing work in one month.
This simply didn't happen. I didn't make any money from writing or freelance work during the quarter. To be fair, I wasn't actively looking for clients. I was more focused on publishing my own work.
I also concluded that I'm better positioned to make money through my well established professional skills and simply continue writing on the side. I could work ten times as hard writing and make a fraction of the money that I can make from a regular job. If I'm being honest, that would suck the fun out of writing. So I'll continue writing on the side. If I make any money from it, it'll be a nice bonus. And eventually, I'll be able to stop working and write full time, without any pressure to make money from it.
Reach 1,000 newsletter subscribers.
Oh boy, this was another flop. I began the quarter with 626 subscribers and ended the quarter with 649. I added 23 subscribers which represented about a 4% growth rate, up from 3% last quarter.
While I'm disappointed with the growth, I'm proud to say that I followed through on my plan to improve. It just hasn't worked—yet.
I still think the main reason for the slowdown in my subscriber growth is that I wasn't publishing consistently. While I got back on track in Q4, I think I need more time of consistent publishing. If I'm able to publish as many articles in Q1 and still don't see a meaningful change in growth, then I'll have to re-evaluate my approach.
Conclusions:
I had more failures and near failures in Q4 2021 than in recent memory, but I also feel like this was an excellent quarter because I learned so much.
I had the opportunity to take three months off from work and do exactly what I wanted to do—spend my time writing. This time made me realize two things: I still really enjoy writing, and I'm not at a point where I can make any money from it. I thought this realization would be disappointing, but it's actually liberating. I can continue writing on the side as a hobby while working full time in a job that pays me really well. If I hadn't taken time off to pursue writing, I would resent my full time job for preventing me from writing full time. Now I more fully understand that my full time job allows me freedoms that writing currently can't, and I appreciate it more for that fact.
I learned that I have a lot more confidence and feel a much greater sense of purpose when I'm doing something that pays well. I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but knowing it is certainly valuable.
I learned that time off is fantastic, but I need to have a goal I'm working toward—something more specific than vague—in order to be happy and fulfilled.
I learned that doing hard things like a misogi has value, but having the power to tame your ego and practice moderation has more value. As I get older, my actions have more severe consequences, and the most important factor in my fitness is avoiding injury. If I can stay healthy, I will stay fit.
I learned exactly how much reading, writing, and note taking I need to do in a quarter to hit my publishing goals. The sweet spot feels like 70-100 hours of reading, 15-25 hours of writing, and zero hours of note taking. This information is so valuable to have!
And while I can't quite prove it yet, I feel like my writing is on the cusp of taking off. But if it doesn't, that's fine too. It's a hobby I enjoy, and the absence of widespread praise won't change that.
While I was experiencing Q4 2021, I knew it was a great quarter. But looking back on it in this review, I appreciate its value even more. I know it set me up for more success ahead.
Thanks for reading. I hope this was as helpful to you as it was to me. I'll see you back here next quarter.
Q1 2022 Goals:
One workout program analysis.
Complete 24 abdominal workouts (three sets of four movements). Do these every Tuesday and Thursday.
One investment program analysis.
Send 12 newsletters.
Publish 8-10 articles.
ROMWOD and/or The Ready State every day.
Journal at least twice per week.
Add one interesting person to my contacts who I speak with at least 1-2 times per month.
Add 100 newsletter subscribers.
Spend 90 hours reading.
Spend 20 hours writing.
