My 2022 in data - and predictions for 2023

I started a tradition of reviewing my year in data in 2017. Until last year, I did it in italian (you can find blog posts here for 2019, here for 2020 and here for 2021), but this year I’m writing it in English, since most of my network is outside Italy.

Until last year, I had a very defined and controlled way of tracking and benchmarking how I spent my year. This was before I got married. Marriage complicates a lot of things, but in some way it simplifies it: indirectly, my wife got me thinking that I had too many structures to define everything that I do.

Until last year, I set a few macro-goals (7 last year, for example), and then for each macro-goal I would define instrumental goal, that are indicators that I can use to check If I did good or not. But I also tracked what macro-goals I worked towards to every day by tagging it in a journal, on the Day One app.

This year, I definitely tagged every day with the most accuracy, but I did not work on the specific instrumental goals that I planned on working on. But the thing is, I actually reached most of my goals, with unprecedented strength.

The seven goals of 2022 were, in order of priority:

1. Build (my future, my marriage, my home)
2. Stay healthy (by being active and eat healthy)
3. Make money (either by work of by investment)
4. Travel (for work or leisure)
5. Relax (playing video games, watching movies and tv series, traveling with my loved ones, etc.)
6. Divulge (with articles, talks)
7. Read (books, researches)

Specifically, the instrumental goals would have helped me:

• Build way more
• Stay way more healthy
• Make the same money
• Travel less
• Relax the same (but watching less movies and tv series and staying more with my loved ones)
• Divulge the same
• Read something

2022 taught me that I had very bad instrumental goals, because I couldn’t track most of it, but I did very good on everything, even if the priorities seem different looking backwards. These are the number of tags for each macro-goal in my journal:

• Make money: 234 days
• Stay healthy: 181 days
• Relax: 169 days
• Travel: 83 days
• Build: 70 days
• Read: 50 days
• Divulge: 37 days

Keep in mind that each day I tagged multiple macro-goals, if I felt I had accomplished more of them. For example, a week on holiday at the seaside is 7 days of both Travel and Relax tags, and I could even put in a few days or Read, if I did, and Stay Healthy, If I went for a walk or run or rode a bike.

2022 also taught me that more does not equal better, when it comes to working towards my macro-goals:

• I built a lot more, by moving into a new house and making it just the way we wanted - Home, sweeet home, but I had no way of tracking an indicator. I just tagged every day I worked on the house, or on meaningful discussions with my wife, or similar. And I didn’t tag a lot of days, but those 83 days were more than enough to achieve everything I wanted;
• I stayed way more healthy by going to swim in the first 8 months, then running for the rest of the year. I now have the best running pace and fitness that I ever had. But I did not run 80 runs like I planned to (I ran 40), or did thousand of push-ups and sit-ups. I swimmed a lot, and that was way more than I could ever have expected;
• I made more or less the same money, in the sense that I made more money by work, but lost a lot on investments (bear market, sigh);
• I divulged less but more: I wrote less articles, but I made 4 talks: the first one at the Avalanche Summit in March (the most important), the second one at the Crypto Coinference in Bologna in May, then one at the Avalanche House in Berlin, and the last one at SpaghettETH Rome in December. I did less than what I planned to with my instrumental goals, but actually more towards my macro-goal;
• I relaxed a lot, by being more time with my loved ones and playing video games (sometimes together, when I played Cuphead with my wife for about 50 hours over the holidays)
• I traveled a bit more than last year, but still in line with what I planned - about 10 trips;
• I read less than I wanted to (8 books instead of 18), but I knew that could happen;

So, that leaves me with one conclusion and one follow-up.

Conclusion: I will stop tracking instrumental goals for each macro-goal, and continue tagging macro-goals in my journal, trying to be even more accurate. I will still have a few indicators to look at over the year, but they will just help me understand if I’m staying on track - like the Fitness level on Strava or the TV series watch count on Trakt. I will be more agnostic, in this sense.

Follow-up: I will shuffle the macro-goal priority list a bit:

• Stay Healthy more
• Divulge more
• Read more
• Relax same
• Build same
• Make Money same
• Travel same

The list indicates the effort that I need to put in in order to reach the goal: for example, I need less effort to build the same than to stay more healthy.

Have a good 2023. I sure will try to.