Each year, I write my Annual Review and share it publicly. My Annual Review answers three questions.

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What did I learn?

What Went Well This Year?

Work

I grew into my role as an assistant principal by taking on more responsibility, building out new systems, and beginning to delegate more tasks. I also become a 12 month employee and experienced my first summer school.

Health

I continued easing back into CrossFit. I started to see myself making measurable progress for certain lifts and starting to see myself getting back to some pre-pandemic personal records. I also continued biking to and from work to increase my time in Zone 1 activity to embrace an 80/20 approach. I've begun to use Gentler Streak to track my progress and keep my in the zone. In 2023, I engaged in 211 activities for 82h 57m, using 56446 kcal and going a distance of 1103 miles.

Personal

I became a father! Fatherhood is nothing like I could have really imagined with each day different than the last. My daughter has been a dream and I look forward to what will come next with her.

What Didn't Go So Well This Year?

Health

While I made progress with physical activity, I took some steps backwards with nutrition. I continue to binge eat and stress eat. I'm particularly frustrated that I know better and continue to fall into bad habits. I tried to use Noom and was not able to sustain the progress. Ultimately recording food journals is not a behavior I can sustain. For 2024, I want to continue using Zero to intermittent fast. I believe this is a more sustainable habit that I can string together and the visual of starting a fast and tracking the time elapsed has worked to keep me from eating too close to bed time.

What Did I Learn?

I'm most proud of the number of books I read this year on how to build stronger habits and improve my work-life balance. Becoming a father and getting older means I don't want to devote as many hours to work as I previously did.

In particular, reading Cal Newport's A World Without Email, Deep Work, and So Good They Can't Ignore You have helped me develop clear vision on what I want my work to look like going in 2024