Pursuing Excellence

In many of my professional and educational pursuits in my life, I have not performed nearly as well as I know I am capable of. Now that I am almost 42, and entering a new phase in my life as I leave, hopefully, the last job I’ll ever have, this is the best time ever to pursue excellence.

In this next phase of life, I am focusing on several things. In each of these I can achieve a high standard. Below, I am setting some goals that I will pursue and achieve within a year or less of today.

• Athletic achievement. I will continue to pursue running and weightlifting
  • I will run 50 miles per week. I will run 5K races at less than 24 minutes. I will run half marathons at less than 1 hour 50 minutes.
  • I will deadlift 375 lbs, squat 335 lbs, bench press 205 lbs, and be able to do 15 chin-ups in one set
  • I will join a power lifting gym and attend at least twice per week
  • I will have creatine every day
• Body composition: I will achieve 12% body fat. This will probably put me around 150 lbs body weight.
• House cleaning and maintenance
  • The house and cars will maintain a daily state of tidiness and cleanliness.
• Cooking: 3-4 times per week I will cook a top quality meal for my family. I can’t control if they will like it or express gratitude, but the food will be objectively excellent by any fair neutral observer. Whether the kids appreciate it or not, they will form core memories of excellent home cooking.
• Home schooling: Ixchel will have a passion for learning with me, and will have academic achievement well above her grade level.
• Parenting: I will remain a calm, attentive parent who continues to have an open mind on the best ways to parent my beautiful children.
• Marriage: I will regularly give my wife physical affection and flirty words and messages. I commit to growing emotionally.
• Education: I will continue to educate myself. This might look as simple as a daily habit of reading the news. It also might look like learning a language, math, AI, or some other subject.
• Hobbies: I will pursue my hobbies with passion and intention. I can pursue them mostly during the weekdays for a few hours as outlined in my schedule.
• Self discipline: many of these are directly related to the above goals, but should be called out explicitly here as well.
  • screen time: I will not use screens idly and without intention. There is nothing inherently wrong with screen time, but reflexively scrolling without intention does not serve myself or my family.
  • sleep: I will regularly close my eyes for sleep at 21:00-21:30. Some nights I will have special activities, and that’s OK. I will wake up every morning at 4 AM regardless of when I went to sleep the night before. I will prioritize my naps during the weekdays, and sneak them in whenever I can during the weekend.
  • drinking: I will stick to my drinking rules, which are:
    • no drinks after dinner
    • max 3 drinks in a day
    • these rules may need to be modified to be more restrictive if I find it is antithetical to my goals
  • eating: the following rules are for my weight loss phase. After I lose the weight, I can revise the rules for the weight maintenance phase
    • no sweets except for special occasions
    • no snacks
    • salad for lunch
    • small/medium dinner
    • one cheat meal per week