What I Discovered about Myself and the World in 2017
In 2017, I decided to reinstate my habit of doing something adventurous once per month.
- Driving alongside the Marina on a Kart in Agadir
- Going to a French Concert for the first time with one of my university friends
- Exploring a historical cave in Budapest with two of my school friends
- Riding a Segway in Budapest :)
- Experiencing the summit of the Vesuvius Mountain in Naples with my Dad
- Going to the famous Chartres Cathedral near Paris!
- Experiencing a natural fire Sweat Lodge
- Lying down in a Hammock for the first time
- Giving out three presentations from my house on the topic of building self-awareness and creating an awesome week
Where did I travel to this year?
- Eight days in Agadir, Morocco
- Six days in Budapest, Hungary
- Three days in Bath, UK
- Five days in Gloucestershire, UK
- Six days in Naples, Italy
- 1 day in Brighton, UK
- Five days in Lisbon, Portugal
- Three days in Chartres, France
- Three days in Tallin, Estonia
Total: 40 days
Thoughts on Adventures
I learnt that travelling in the UK can be just as rewarding as travelling abroad. And that’s something I hope to do more of, as there are plenty of towns in the UK I’ve never been to. While many people enjoy longer, less frequent trips in year, I’ve found over these last three years that frequent shorter trips work best for me [Total: 40 days on holiday].
Statistics:
- Health — Gym workouts: 100x, Sprints: 30x, 90 mins Football Matches: 14x, Floats: 9x, Saunas: 17x
- Creative — Articles Published: 17x, Articles Republished: 5x, Emails Sent to Subscribers: 25x
- Skills — Books Read: 54x, Online Courses Completed: 4x, Documentaries: 4x, Meetings: 30x, Chess Games: 4x, Coaching Calls: 10x
- Friends — Meetups: 160x
- Adventure — Movies watched: 14x, Standups: 8x, TV Shows: 10x, Museum/Art Gallery Visits: 10x, New countries: 4x
- Goals Achieved — 5 out of 8.
I was consistent this year with my habit of writing five experiences I was grateful for in the previous week. I also developed an unbelievably intuitive and unique system for tracking and monitoring my weekly habits.
Weekly Habits
Every part of my life is part of a broader holistic system, and every area affects every other area. But like a domino effect, by aligning everything, I can accelerate positive momentum.
It would be easy for someone to read this article and say it’s a solipsistic luxury. But through this year review, I am increasing my self-awareness, allowing me to make decisions in the future that affect the people around me, and the world at large, for the better. Alas, if someone reads this year review and picks up an insight that they take action on, I have just directly positively affected their lives for the better too.
Health
I now take 8–10 supplements each day, and having experimented with taking them on and not taking them (A/B test) I feel a clear amount of difference.
This year was also the year where I became a vegetarian. As a result of this change, my thinking feels clearer, and I feel more sensitive to external stimuli.
I did briefly go back to eating meat this year because of my curiosity, but I’ve learned that I’ve moved on. At the moment, I have no real desire to return to my old dietary choices.
What did I not do well at?
This year, I didn’t do as many workouts as I would have liked. But to be fair, it just came down to the fact that I was no longer enjoying my workout routine.
Workout PRs
- Bench Press: 70kg x3
- Incline Chest: 38kg x10
- Shoulder Press: 45kg x7
- Lat Pulldown: 73kg x8
- Front Squat: 100kg x3
- Stiff Legged Deadlift: 105kg x2
I’ll be looking to make a huge upgrade on those numbers next year. One of the things that’s stopped me from excelling in the gym is my protein intake. Ideally, I aim to hit an average of 120g of protein per day, but it’s become increasingly difficult to do so because of my vegetarian diet and my aversion to beans.
At the moment, I supplement with a Pea Protein Powder (50g protein), and Lentils (25g protein), but I will need to find an additional source of 50g of protein next year if I want my health and performance in the gym to go up.
Skills
In 2017, I read fewer books than I did in 2016.
Towards the end of the year, I decided to completely abandon Audible’s membership and concentrate on reading as opposed to listening to books. Considering I already listen to a quite a few podcasts and don’t internalize audio that well, I felt like the change was the right one to make.
Books I Read
Courses I Took
Podcasts I Listened to
The Pyramid of Learning
Creative
I wrote 17x articles this year compared to 11x last year. Although I have to say, I fell out of love with writing towards the last three months of the year. This was coincidentally when I decided to take up a Freelance SEO role to help my income, and although I earnt more, the time I invested in my writing career naturally took a nose dive.
Interestingly enough, my original goal this year was to write 52 articles, and while I didn’t hit it, it was only until later that I realized that I nevertheless nearly doubled the number of pieces I wrote this year compared to the last year, and I see that as a success.
September was the first month where I measured how many words I was writing per month.
What was my best month?
My best month of writing was in September, where I managed to write 23,180 words, an average of 1,159 words per weekday.
Feedback I received from Readers
Work Experiments
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with investing and that’s been great. I love this quote from Robert Greene, which epitomizes the state of being open to different possibilities:
“At a certain point, when you are ready to settle on something, ideas and opportunities will inevitably present themselves to you. When that happens, all of the skills you have accumulated will prove invaluable. You will be the Master at combining them in ways that are unique and suited to your individuality. You may settle on this one place or idea for several years, accumulating in the process even more skills, then move in a slightly different direction when the time is appropriate. The wide-ranging apprenticeship of your twenties will yield the opposite — expanding possibilities as you get older.”
What could I have done better?
I could have done a better job of managing and tracking all my food and transport expenses. Although, I’m quite happy that I managed to track all my charity, educational, and travel investments. For the last couples of days as of writing this, I’ve spent 5–10 hours strategizing how I’m going to effectively monitor my expenses throughout 2018, and distribute my budget. I’m pretty certain that this time invested will pay off huge dividends.
Media
Compared to last year, I approximately watched half as many movies. Although, I watched twice as many different TV shows. At the beginning of the year, I reminded myself of what I learned from Zig Ziglar: the “average CEO watches less than 8 hours of Television per week.”
So I went in the year with the aim of watching an average of 4 hours of television per week at the very max. I did far better this year compared to the last.
In fact, there were many weeks where I didn’t even watch any entertainment (particularly towards the end of the year).
Gradually, I’m getting to a stage in my life where I’m far less reliant on Movies or TV Shows for a sense of escapism and adventure.
Movies
TV Shows
Music
By combining my consumption of TV Shows in the superhero categories with comedy and stand-ups, as well as French rap, I feel like I’ve helped create a better inner-stage for being a light-hearted, playful, yet driven person (lol).
The art you explore can help you move towards what you want by creating an inner contextual environment for the type of person you want to be. I don’t see entertainment as a waste of time — it’s all about the quality and the dosage.
Environment
Towards the end of the year, I began a new habit of devoting 1–2 hours per week to helping others. I usually this did this by helping my little brother or my mother or waking up early on a Saturday to pick up litter outside my apartment. Other times, I shared presentations on some of the best stuff I’ve learned in my home.
I started the habit of helping others late in the year, and so it’ll be interesting to discover whether I’m able to build some consistency with this practice in 2018.
Besides that, I gave money away to friends, family, and charities.
Self Awareness in 2017
I took the following self-awareness tests this year, and they all helped me become far more self-aware.
HEXACO-PI Test
MBTI Test
StrengthsFinder 2.0 Test
Emotional Intelligence Test
Dark Triad Test
1. What movie genre would best describe this year of my life?
- A bittersweet journey of ascension.
2. What two or three major themes kept recurring?
- Letting go.
- Self-expansion
- Unbridled rapture.
3. What are the accomplishments I’m most proud of achieving?
- I wrote and publish my first self-published book on Amazon on Aug 31st
- I became a vegetarian on Aug 6th
- I got my first professional photoshoot done
- I discovered an amazing bioenergetics facility in London at the start of July
- I developed the habit of writing 1000w daily start of Sep
- I built an amazing money tracking system and found way to reduce daily food expenses
- I developed the habit of playing football more regularly despite my injury!
- I developed a system for measuring my habits
- I developed a more efficient and amazing yearly review system!
- I found an amazing laptop stand and optimal earplugs
- I invested 1% into charity a and an average of 20% into self-education!
- I joined a writing group
- I built far more consistency with cold showers and prayer at night
- Discovered the best phone of my life (Blackberry Keyone)
- I built amazing systems of organization
- I completed annihilated my dependency on caffeine
- I finally built the habit of waking up between 6–7AM 80% of the time
4. What could I have done better this year?
- There were certain women that came into my life this year that I got along with great. But they didn’t have the same life values as me. And so even if we get along great and there was attraction, our inner compasses were pointing towards different directions, and so it would have been impossible for us to build a meaningful, close relationship. I ignored this, and chose to continue investing myself in these women. I won’t be making the same mistake next year.
- Avoiding investing too much time in boosting my social media following on Instagram. I kind of feel like I was working on the wrong end of the stick in the second half of 2017, trying to get better at upgrading my follower count. Personally, I’ve come to learn that this is an incredible waste of time and more importantly, mental energy. Until I’ve had more success as a writer, I shouldn’t be fucking around with making my social media following better.
- Wasting way too much time editing articles and books. I kind of feel like this is a subtle form of procrastination for me. Instead of writing new shit, I like to go over what I’ve already done and see what I can do to make it better. It’s true that the art of great writing is rewriting, but I took this principle too far in 2017. And consequently, I wasn’t able to leverage my time to create more content.
5. What was missing from my life this year as I look back that I could implement into the next year?
- More consistency with my writing and tracking my word count every month.
- Writing my morning to do list and AAR(After-Action-Review) more consistently.
- Being more focused with how I acquire knowledge.
- Going to 4–6 educational conferences/events.
- Tracking podcasts listened to and days I drunk alcohol.
- Playing chess more often.
- Spending more time in deep work at the start of the day.
- Logging Food Diary on paper more consistently.
- Not using gym hooks for deadlifts.
- Spending more time on my creative work. I spent far too much time optimising my systems, but hopefully, this pays off for the next year because now everything’s as sharp as a razor blade.
- Delegating enough work.
- Having more mentors.
- Private
- Private
6. What major life lessons did I learn this year?
- Writing tasks on paper, in combination with a digital inbox, is far more effective than only using a digital system to manage a to-do list.
- If I want to feel well rested, 11 PM is my max sleep time.
Summary
This was a cool year, and the last three months were especially amazing. I feel like I’ve changed a lot as a person, probably more than the two previous years combined. There was more pain this year than the last, but the pain was meaningful. And I feel like I’m on the cusp of something great.
My overall rating for 2017 : 83/100 (Rating for Last Year: 82/100).
Bonus
If you read all the way to the end and want to receive more content, get my FREE Guide.
