Five months in to 2025, how are your physical goals going so far this year?
One of my goals is a higher Heart Rate Variability (HRV), but it hasn’t been going great! Mine has been worse than baseline lately.
I’m an enthusiastic experimenter, so I’m constantly learning from “failures” and trying new things.
One thing that might be true is that I had two goals sort of in conflict; HRV and body composition. In order to hit my body composition goals, I had reduced my daily caloric intake to 1900 for a bit. I think doing so caused my body to have stress, and during stress your body changes its metabolism, and weight loss can be harder.
For the past week I’ve increased my caloric intake. I was going for 2200, but actually hit 3000 for several days. Oops! 🤣 It happened because I ate out several times, which I don’t normally do.
The funny thing? I didn’t gain weight. So, 1900 calories or 3000 calories, there wasn’t much change.
I know if I stayed at 3000 for an extended time I’d be gaining weight. But for whatever reason, this higher calorie period hasn’t had a big negative effect on me. Fascinating.
I’m not running double-blind clinical trials over here, so my experimental setups are imperfect. Including the fact that I can run multiple interventions at once!
For example, I used to not eat anything after working out, and I’d drink plain water. Now, I’m drinking salt water, and a little protein+carbs refuel.
The net effect of all of this is better recovery and lower stress, which helps my metabolism, which will help with body composition.
Time will tell, of course. Bodies are weird and complicated, and some effects are lagging.
Every time you make a mistake, every time you fail at something, you should throw your arms in the air and say, “How fascinating!”
— Ozan Varol in "Think Like a Rocket Scientist"
Three Things
1 - 🛻 Slate Truck As someone who will need to be shopping for cars for kids over the next several years, I’m intrigued by this new cost-focused company (that still retains a lot of safety features). It’d be fun for manual-crank windows to make a comeback!
2 - ⛏️ Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Deep Sea Mining I wasn’t aware of this rich deposit of rare minerals on the seafloor. Ironically, these metals are needed for clean energy solutions, but cause their own ecological issues in order to vacuum them off the seafloor (including a 43% drop in fish up to a year later). International rights are another complication.
3 - 🛡️ Uber for Armed Guards - Protector App on iOS I don’t currently have need of this, but I think it’s cool that this option exists. You can hire a motorcade and even choose attire. Annual membership is $129 and there’s a five hour minimum booking at $1000. That seems…reasonable.
(Enjoy this 1️⃣0️⃣ minute read)
Deep Dive on Strategic Habits and Tracking
You know me and my passion for Memento Mori - remembering that I’m going to die some day - because it reminds me that life is short. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, so we better make good use of our time and live intentionally.
That’s why I’m encouraging you to create a vision, a really audacious BHAG, and a set of measurable goals.
But we’re not going to get there just because we wrote it down on paper. That’s necessary, but insufficient.
We have to get to work.
Execution is the name of the game when it comes to strategy. It’s through action that you earn that future. It’s through action that you bend the universe to your will. Action is how you claw your way up the mountain, step by step.
Building the future you want isn’t for the faint of heart, but it makes life worth living.
The Flaw in Our Plan
Do you remember what the glaring flaw is if we stopped ourselves after completing a vision, BHAG, and goals?
They’re all out of our control.
We don’t control what happens in life. That’s the bad news.
The good news? We control how we respond. We control our actions.
By giving up on trying to control things that can’t be controlled, you’ll find you have a lot more time available to put towards the things that can. This makes somewhat easier to hit your goals.
“When you learn to let go of the details you can’t control, the amount of time and energy you’ll be able to devote to the things you can control will give you the ability to accomplish incredible feats.” - Amy Morin in “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do”
The Importance of Habits
Habits are the things that separate the professionals from the amateurs. The serious from the dabblers.
You’ll have a much harder time hitting your goals if you a) never define any habits, or b) haphazardly follow your feelings and interest each day instead of being methodical.
Note that methodical doesn’t mean rigid. Habits serve you, not the other way around. You can adjust if something isn’t working, but you have to be intentional about it. Laziness isn’t going to work, but making adjustments along the way is perfectly normal.
“After years of coaching business professionals at all levels, I’m convinced it’s not ability that separates the top performers from the rest of the pack. It’s habit. Having ability is very different from developing it. Cultivating your potential takes energy, discipline, perseverance, and a belief in yourself. It’s these qualities that determine the top performers.” - Cara Hale Alter in “The Credibility Code”
Defining Habits Take Strategy
How you create habits is the art of strategy. You’ll have to take your goals and compose a set of daily/weekly/monthly habits that will help you hit those goals.
In creating mine, I start with a brainstorming exercise. I look at my set of Key Results (KRs) and just start writing out all of the things I think I could control that would help me. I do a light set of filtering here, but not much. Meaning, if I have a really atrocious idea, I won’t write it down, but if it sounds somewhat reasonable or interesting, I’ll put it on the board.
After I finish my brainstorming, I start making cuts. I try to think of what would have the greatest leverage. I also limit myself to fewer than 10 habits, having learned that anything more than that won’t happen.
For 2025, when I looked at my final list, my habits fell into three buckets: - Directed toward serendipity - Directed toward specific Key Results - Directed toward 2026+
How did those “serendipity” and “2026+” buckets get in there? Wasn’t the whole point of this to brainstorm how to hit KRs?
This is me being realistic, flexible, and long-term thinking.
One of most reliable ways I’ve increased my business is through networking. I’ve noticed serendipity in these conversations. I meet people, share what I’m doing, then six months later I get a referral from someone. It’s great, but not predictable. It doesn’t feel like a strong lever towards 2025 KRs, but it’s something I feel strongly that I should continue. Thus, it stays on my list, and I put it under the serendipity bucket.
By comparison, I had a habit to research, and contact, channel partners for my financial modeling work. This has a much more direct effect on my KRs, so it goes in the KR habit bucket.
Lastly, I have things like this newsletter. I consider writing this each week a habit, and one I want to continue, but it currently has no direct impact on my KRs. I want to continue this newsletter because I enjoy it and believe it’ll be a bigger factor later, so it goes in the “2026+” bucket.
I ended up with my three buckets, and 2-4 habits per bucket, for a total of nine 2025 professional habits.
But that’s just a list! I need to operationalize these to make them real.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.” - James Clear in “Atomic Habits”
Operationalizing Habits
“Atomic Habits” is a huge best-selling book for a reason. Habits are awesome and interesting. James Clear goes through a LOT of techniques for how to operationalize your habits, which I won’t attempt to replicate here. I will share a few tips that really work for me - but read his book if you want to get great at habits.
Schedule Them Most of my habits are on my calendar. If it’s on the calendar, the chances I’ll do it go up 3x. If it’s not on my calendar, chances are that I’ll miss it. If you want to start your morning reaching out to people on LinkedIn, or calling prospects, schedule that time on your calendar. Don’t rely on your memory.
Keep the Schedule, Change the Scope This helps me all the time! One of the ways in which habits don’t stick is because you signed up for too much too soon, then you don’t have time to do it all, so you do nothing. Wrong move. Instead, keep the schedule, but change how much you’ll do. Did you have a habit to reach out to 10 new people each Monday, but you find yourself without time to do them all? Fine, just reach out to one. Don’t skip it or reschedule it.
Don’t Miss Twice Life happens. Even if you change the scope, sometimes there’s literally no time. That’s fine, give yourself grace. No one is perfect. But don’t let yourself skip twice. Keep your identity as someone who gets stuff done, and keep your momentum high by ensuring you never miss twice in a row.
A Portfolio of Bets
This idea comes from Annie Duke’s “Thinking in Bets”; instead of thinking of your goals and habits as rigid, inviolable, permanent things you must pursue at all costs for a year, think of them as a portfolio of bets.
A bet reminds you that your habit-to-goal connections and goal-to-BHAG-and-vision connections are just hypotheses. You may believe really strongly that your habit will help you hit your goal, and that your yearly goal will bring you closer to your vision, you won’t know for certain until you do them.
Sometimes you’re going to be wrong.
The reason you create more than one KR, and more than one habit, is because you need a portfolio. Just like a venture capitalist assumes some investments will go to zero, and some will go 10x - so too should you assume that some of your hypotheses are duds, and some have huge leverage.
The implications from thinking of your work as a portfolio of bets are many:
You don’t have to do it - Just because you wrote down a habit once doesn’t mean you need to pursue it forever.
Some things will work, some won’t - Don’t stress out too highly if something isn’t working. Not everything will.
Be comfortable stretching - What do you have to lose by aiming higher?
Be honest about your constraints - You can do anything, but not everything. Your constraints exist, so be honest about them.
Pivot when you need to pivot - Adjust as you learn. If something isn’t working, try a different approach.
Seize opportunities when they arise - Opportunity will come knocking. Don’t be so focused on your bets that you don’t notice a new opportunity.
Learning Loops
How do you check on a hypothesis? You close the loop and investigate it. Do that with your habits and goals on different time scales.
You do this by performing a light retro. You ask: What went well? What could be better? What new actions will I take?
I do this lightly every day, week, month, quarter, and year. It may sound onerous if you’re not used to it, but it’s not.
It takes discipline, sure, but it’s how you stay on top of your work, and you can minimize the time involved.
The longer the time scale you’re retroing on, the more time it’ll take. A daily review takes a minute or two. A weekly takes 5-10. A monthly is more like 20-30. The annual review might take a couple hours.
What you’re doing here is ensuring your not just doing, but doing and learning.
You can’t pivot if you don’t know you need to pivot. You won’t know a habit isn’t working unless you check in on whether your habits are working. You won’t know whether habits are driving goals unless you review the connection.
Let me show you what my actual daily/weekly/monthly review artifacts look like.
Daily Tracking
Daily tracking in Obsidian.
I start my day by listing out the top three big things I need to accomplish that day. This keeps me focused on what matters.
I keep track of ALL of my tasks in Todoist, but my daily note just lists the three that matter today. I’m of course allowed to do more than three things a day, but by focusing on no more than three, I ensure the important stuff gets done.
Oh, and I give myself a little ✅ next to the task when I complete it. The dopamine from checking things off a list is real!
I have space for other things, too. A “journal” if I just have to get something off my mind. My schedule for the day so I can build agendas and notes in advance of meetings. Space to make notes about how I’m progressing towards my goals.
At the end of the day I reflect on whether I completed my top goals and make mental adjustments for the following day.
Weekly Tracking
Weekly tracking in Obsidian.
A weekly plan is done before that week’s daily plans are created. The week gives you perspective on the subsequent days.
Again, I have a journal space just to clear my mind of any worries or excitement before getting down to business.
I focus on my client work first. What needs to get done? What are the big programs that need to move forward?
Are there any big meetings for the week I need to be ready for?
What do I need to do in my business this week if I have time?
At the end of the week I reflect on the extent to which I did or did not achieve my goals, and make adjustments for the next week.
Monthly Tracking
Monthly tracking spreadsheets!
My monthly review is where spreadsheets finally get involved - woohoo!
The goal is to automate as much of this as possible so that I’m not spending all my time tinkering with cells. The goal is to make decisions with the information, not to produce the information.
I have a spreadsheet for my habits. Since I want to meet live with 1-2 people each month, I write down their name and date in that month. Same for all the other habits. I write down the minimal amount of information I need. Then, the spreadsheet does all the calculations, and pulls data on those habits into the other overview sheet automatically.
I use the IMPORTRANGE function if the data lives in another spreadsheet so that I’m not writing down anything in two separate places. Everything lives in one spot, then I reuse that information if I need it elsewhere.
Because the monthly tracking is so simple, there’s really no time spent updating data at the end of a month. I spend my time with the analysis.
In my monthly review: - I score my KRs. - I review and assess my habits. - I reflect on wins and major developments from the prior month. - And I list out actions and adjustments for the next month.
Quarterly and Annual Review
At longer time scales you’re doing similar things, just across a longer horizon. You’re reflecting on how effectively your plan is taking you to your vision.
If you’re crushing your habits, but the KRs aren’t moving - you need to adjust your habits.
If you’re crushing your KRs, but not hitting your objective - you need better KRs.
Whatever is disconnected, suboptimal, or unpleasant is worth a look. We didn’t build this plan because planning is fun - although it is 😁 - we built this plan because it’s how you’ll get to live in the future that gives you goosebumps.
You owe it to your future self to invest in the strategy, tracking, and closed loop reviews - starting today.
Call to Action
Save this week’s and last week’s newsletter for reference when you need it. What we’ve covered over these two weeks is creating a vision, a BHAG, an objective, some Key Results - and now habits and a tracking process across multiple time scales.
If you set time aside, you can crush all of this in half a day. You’ll have a solid personal strategic plan in less time than it takes to binge watch a season of your favorite TV show.
Kevin
PS - There was a lot of new tactical stuff this week and last. If you’ve got any questions as you work through this, just reply and let me know!
