Q4 2022 Review
This is my 12th consecutive quarterly review. It's a reflection on my goals for the fourth quarter of 2022. 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.
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 new routines and consistency. I joined a CrossFit gym in February, and I attended about 130 classes during the year. I also logged 63 runs for the year. I think my strength has basically stayed the same—I'm planning to test some benchmarks this month—but my overall fitness has improved. My muscular endurance is better, and I've learned a few of the more skilled movements like snatches and power cleans, which will continue translating into more power. I plan to remain consistent with CrossFit (hopefully 160 classes in 2023) and do more running this year, hopefully about 100 runs for somewhere around 100 hours and 600+ miles.
More risks: I lived pretty conservatively this year. I worked a boring but high paying job all year. I didn't make any alternative investments. I did increase some concentrated stock positions which performed terribly but I believe will perform well in the long term. I'm not sure what my risk taking will look like going forward. My biggest goal in this area is to live in a way such that I'm able to take big risks when I'm presented with the right opportunities.
More money: I set a net worth goal of $2 million by age 37. In 2021, my net worth increased by 23%. This year it decreased by 19%. Despite earning, saving, and investing more money this year than any year in my life—and spending very responsibly—my net worth still got rocked. The vast majority of my net worth is in the market, which got walloped this year. Although the outcome sucks, I'm happy with my performance. I followed the plan I outlined at the beginning of 2022, and I didn't sell anything all year. With a bit of patience, it should come roaring back.
More philanthropy: This has been non-existent for me. Right or wrong, 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 649 and finished the year with 1,382. I fell slightly short of my goal to have 1,500 subscribers by year end, but it was a 113% increase year over year, so I'm pretty happy with that performance. My goal for the next few years is to double my subscribers every year. I'm going to round up and shoot for an even 3,000 subscribers to The Lake Street Journal by the end of 2023.
I had hoped to publish 35 pieces of writing on my website in 2022, but I only ended up publishing 23. Even so, my page views increased from 33,000 in 2021 to 87,000 in 2022. I would like to increase that number to 200,000 this year simply through publishing more content and promoting it more.
Okay that's it for my ten year plan progress. Now I want to take a moment to review my full year goals from 2022 and outline my full year goals for 2023. I don't usually do this publicly, but I’m trying something new. Let me know if you like it.
Full Year Goals:
In 2022, I had three main goals for the year:
Shoot five golf rounds in the 80s.
Grow my email list to 1,500 subscribers.
Increase my net worth by $140k.
I achieved the first goal, recording eight rounds in the 80s. I won't bore you with any details. I wrote about my golf pursuits at length in my other 2022 quarterly reviews.
As I mentioned above, I fell short of the second goal, but I was still happy with my performance. I more than doubled my email list, finishing the year with 1,382 subscribers.
The last goal was a total bust. I held up my end of the bargain, but the market didn't cooperate. I saved and invested more than I hoped to. My wife and I spent less than one third of our gross income. But like I said, the investments had an awful year. Not much else I could've done there. Instead of a $140k increase, I saw a $99k decrease. Get 'em next time!
Onward to 2023.
I have six main goals for the year. I elaborated on them in great detail in my journal, but I'm going to give you the abbreviated version.
Grow Wonderful Words newsletter from 0 to 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year. I launched a second newsletter this week. It's a twice weekly newsletter aimed at helping people become better writers. I've been thinking about this project for a long time and decided 2023 is the year to make it happen. This goal includes an option to quit after six months if I haven't hit 500 subs, since I don't want to waste too much time if the idea isn't catching on.
Perform at least two hours per week of Zone 2 training in the first six months, then re-evaluate for the second six months. I've been hearing a ton about the benefits of Zone 2 training, and it seems like you need about two hours per week for six months to start seeing solid results. I'm giving it a shot—mostly with runs.
Transition away from compliance work and into being an independent creator. This will happen if the opportunity presents itself, but I'm spending the year continuing to build my audience and selectively seeking out the right opportunities.
Spend 200 hours reading books and complete notecards for all the books I read. I spent 157 hours reading books in 2022. My output as a writer is directly correlated with how much I'm reading and how well I'm taking notes on what I'm reading. This increase in deliberate consumption should have a corresponding increase in production, which will contribute to adding subscribers and moving toward life as an independent creator.
3,000 LSJ subscribers. This is pretty straight forward.
Spend less than $72k for the year ($6k/month average). This is a joint goal with my wife. It's slightly less than we spent last year, but barring unforeseen events, it shouldn't be too hard.
Alright, now I've got those down in a public place, I'll finally move on to my review of Q4 2022.
Complete Successes:
These are the goals I nailed.
One investment program analysis.
As I mentioned in my last review, I decided to pause all after tax investments in favor of diverting those funds into a solo 401k. That's exactly what I did. Although I put the funds into the 401k, I haven't made any investments yet due to market volatility. I anticipate slowly starting to dollar cost average my money into a broad based mutual fund beginning in Q1 2023.
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 34% since inception, down from a -33% paper loss as of last quarter, and down from a 128% paper return at its all time high. What a wild ride.
Send 13 newsletters.
This one is straight forward. I sent 13 issues of The Lake Street Journal - one each week. At this point, I've sent 157 consecutive issues of The Lake Street Journal. I haven't missed a Friday in three years. If you're reading this and aren't subscribed, I'd love for you to sign up.
One workout program analysis & complete two six week strength cycles (deadlift and overhead press).
Some stats for the quarter:
38 CrossFit classes attended.
12 runs for a total of 45.5 miles.
628,598 steps or about 6,800 steps per day.
Last quarter I attended 36 CrossFit classes and ran 26 times for a total of 62 workouts. I attended two more classes this quarter and ran a lot less. I tallied a total of 50 workouts for the quarter.
This looks like I regressed, but I'm actually happy with my performance considering I was out of commission for two weeks with the flu. It destroyed me.
That brings me to the six week strength cycles. I was in week 4 of my deadlift cycle, and I was kicking ass. Then the flu showed up and kicked my ass. It took two weeks to get back in the gym, and even when I did, I had a lot less energy. Setting goals is a great practice, but the map is not always the territory. When you're out in the field and the territory differs from the map, it makes sense to adjust your plan.
That's what I did with the strength cycles. It would've been counterproductive to force them. Instead, I focused on getting in good workouts when I was at CrossFit and getting good rest when I wasn't. I'm feeling great again now and ready to push in Q1.
Journal at least once per week.
In Q3 I only wrote three journal entries. It was an abysmal performance. I decided to dial back the goal and adjust my approach.
In Q4 my aim was to write one journal entry per week, and I set a calendar reminder every Monday morning to get it done.
I didn't stick to the times in the calendar perfectly, but I wrote a total of 11 entries for a total of 8,690 words. This may not technically be a 100% success, but I feel like I nailed it. I'm happy with my performance and plan to ride the momentum into Q1.
The key to succeeding here was starting with something smaller than I thought I was capable of achieving. This works well with any habit you want to build.
Partial Successes:
These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either.
Spend 50 hours reading.
This was a good quarter for reading. I spent 43 hours with my nose buried in a book, and I loved every second of it. I read for about 21, 13, and 9 hours in October, November, and December, respectively.
I finished six books:
As you know, 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.
Publish 8-10 articles.
I published five articles and one quarterly review for a total of 9,174 published words. This is quite a bit more than I published last quarter, although it's still short of my goal.
I also published one curation piece that was almost 15,000 words, but I'm not counting that one because it wasn't any new writing. It was simply a collection of all the content I sent in my newsletter in 2021. You can check it out here.
These are the pieces I published last quarter:
Relatedly, I don't count my weekly 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 every day.
ROMWOD is a daily stretching routine with video instruction that lasts about 20 minutes. I highly recommend it.
I missed 26 days this quarter, which is coincidentally the exact same number I missed last quarter. Weird.
That means I stretched on 66 of the 92 days. I'm pretty happy with this performance. I've been stretching with basically the same consistency for almost three years now.
I'm going to adjust this goal next quarter. Rather than stretching every day, which is a goal I've never achieved, I'm going to shoot for stretching on 75% of the days, which is 68 days. That will be a slight improvement for me, and then I won't feel guilty about the days I skip—which tend to be days I'm away from home spending time with friends or family.
At this point, stretching is a habit I need to maintain, not I habit I need to maniacally build.
Spend 20 hours writing.
I spent ten hours and four minutes writing in Q4 for a total of 11,853 words written. This is a considerable improvement from last quarter, even though it's still short of my goal.
My writing time was buoyed this quarter from my work on a new project: the Wonderful Words newsletter. I spent some time getting ahead on emails and crafting the voice and style of the newsletter. I'm pretty excited about this project and would love for you to subscribe.
On the other hand, my writing time was limited by my work schedule. I picked up another client which increased my workload by about 10 hours per week. Just as soon as I stopped spending time on the golf course, I replaced that time with something else. At least this use of time was making me money. Nonetheless, my writing suffered a bit.
I think I have a great shot at hitting my writing goal next quarter, since I'll be spending a lot of time writing for Wonderful Words.
Also important to note, 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.
Failures:
These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection.
Pass 1,500 total newsletter subscribers.
This was a lackluster quarter when it came to adding newsletter subscribers.
I began the quarter with 1,339 subscribers and ended the quarter with 1,382 for a total of 43 new subscribers. This represents a quarter over quarter increase of 3.2%, down from 12.8% last quarter.
Newsletter growth is a game of consistent publishing and sporadic bursts of good luck when someone with a big following shares your work. My consistency has been lacking, and I wasn't graced with much good luck this quarter. Since luck generally follows consistency, this is entirely my fault.
As I mentioned last quarter, this isn't my full time pursuit, so I don't expect rocket ship growth. My focus is on delivering a high quality newsletter every week for my readers and high quality articles when I have the time. As long as I send a quality newsletter every Friday—which is totally sustainable for me—and I commit to only publishing quality work, growth will continue. And if I'm ever able to spend more time on writing, I'll be building upon a strong foundation, and growth will increase significantly. Maybe this will be the year, maybe it won't.
Anecdotally, I feel like I'm getting more positive email replies to The Lake Street Journal. While I don't have a huge amount of subscribers, the people who do subscribe seem to really enjoy it. It's not where I want to be, but it's still a nice feeling knowing other people enjoy my work.
Conclusions:
As another quarter and another year come to a close, I've enjoyed my time reflecting and planning through this review.
As I said to a friend the other day, it seems like life just keeps getting better over the past few years. I have an awesome wife. I live in a nice apartment. I have a good job, and I'm financially secure. I have a wonderful extended family, and I'm about to be a first time dad. I have amazing friends. I have my health. And I have hobbies I enjoy and the ability to pursue those hobbies.
I can't imagine how life could get much better.
Sometimes I stress about not quite achieving all my goals, but the reality is that everything I wrote about in this review is gravy. I already have the important things. I'm unbelievably lucky. I'm also unbelievably grateful.
This doesn't mean I'll get complacent, but I'll keep my pursuits in perspective.
So here's to continued happiness, health, and the blessing of pursuing my goals.
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.
Q1 2023 Goals:
One workout program analysis (& test my fitness benchmarks).
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.
Publish 8-10 articles.
ROMWOD 68 days.
Journal at least once per week.
Add 400 LSJ subscribers.
Spend 50 hours reading.
Spend 20 hours writing.
Photo by Jonathan Francisca on Unsplash
