2019 review - a transition year…

Hello in 2020! So… instead of saying that “hindsight is 20/20” we can say that the future is twenty-twenty! Does it mean, I have a “perfect vision” for this upcoming year - well, maybe… but now let’s focus on reviewing 2019 as it was a very transitional year for me:

2019 review - personal life, sports, business and beyond…

This is my 7th annual review where I summarize the three key aspects of my life - personal life, fitness and business. I’m writing these reviews every year while doing my annual planning mostly for my future self - to have a regular glimpse into my life in regular intervals. To be able to see what (and how!) I was doing, what my hopes and dreams were… and how they changed over time. I hope these reviews also bring you value and inspire you to change something in your life! For reference, here are my summaries of 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013.

Personal life - entering a new decade!

Yep, this past year I turned 40. And grew a beard 🧔 which all of my girls (including my wife) really like, so I’m sticking with it for now.

Speaking of the women in my life - my three daughters are growing very fast. The eldest will turn 11 in a few days and she’s already 150cm tall and her main thing now is synchronized swimming. The middle one just turned 7, is in the second grade of primary school and I’m very impressed with her artistic abilities. The youngest is not only the cutest of them all but she’s also the fastest in achieving almost anything. Can’t believe how much she talks now!

Past year we managed to enjoy quite a few family trips together but the highlight was our RV/camper van family vacation in Sweden. I discuss some of it in the episode 191 of The Podcast FM.

Me and my wife enjoyed a lot of “alone time” together last year. We managed to have two get-away-weekends without kids and a longer honeymoon while walking together the last 260km of the Camino de Santiago.

Speaking of walking, I really liked how in total I walked 363 km last year. It’s something I definitely want to track more this year - more longer walks with my wife, friends and kids…

Sports and fitness - steady training with room for improvement!

My ambitious plan to do a 70.3 Ironman completely and utterly failed. As a consolation prize I did my 11th olympic-distance triathlon and it went pretty good. I tracked it using the AppleWatch which finally makes it a gadget present at every stage of my triathlon journey.

This year I’m NOT planning to attempt another Ironman. I’m sticking with just doing 2 olympic-distance races - one in the Spring and one in the Fall.

After all, I’m doing all these three sports just to keep being in shape and for that I should be doing 50 km swimming, 500 km running and 2000 km biking - and I almost made it happen this year:

• Swimming - 41km - Better than in 2018 (32km) and I keep trying hit the swimming pool at least once a week. Just beat my personal best for 500m so I’m more motivated than ever. And I love starting a work week with a swim on a Monday morning!
• Biking - 1700km - Only slightly worse than 2018 (1735km) but still far off from my 2K goal. I blew it in the last quarter of 2019 - rarely went out in Oct, Nov and Dec… Note to self about my milestones: RHx18, Rx4 and SVx6 (don’t ask, only I can understand that :-)
• Running - 478km - 100km better than 2018 (373km) and very close to the 500km ideal. With quite a few runs at the end of the year, I’m feeling confident about taking my running to a higher lever this year.

Apart from these 3 sports, I made significantly more time for other sports this year:

• Tennis - 60h - Lots of progress. I have a personal trainer session every other week and a weekly match with a buddy of mine - Steve. I doubled my time on the court - from 30h in 2018, to 60h in 2019 - more than 1 hour per week average! And I intend to keep it at this level now.
• Strength training - 17h - much more than in 2018 (only 4h!) and I feel much stronger now. My new goal is to do at least one 30min session a week - so around 20-30h total.

As I have my new Apple Watch series 5 with me all the time I’m tracking my progress with activity rings. I’ve just reached my 1000th move goal and had a “perfect month” for 6 months in 2019 which is kind of amazing.

This proves that despite all that happened I had a very active year sports-wise and I’m hoping that the routines I’ve set up in 2019 will serve me even better in 2020.

My weight remained consistent during the year at around 72kg which is a little too much for me. My aim is to lower it down with appropriate diet to 67-69kg levels which would be ideal for me.

Nozbe business - big transitions ongoing!

I finally fired myself from the last direct role in my company and I’m no longer the VP of Marketing. Now I’m ready to embrace my role as the CEO and true leader of the company.

Last year was my year of un-tangling and this year will be a true test if I have what it takes to learn to take the company to a whole new level.

I took lots of time off social media this year and this served me well. I’ll keep posting on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but only a little and rarely. I’ll hardly be using Instagram anymore… The most important thing is that I’m no longer addicted to any of these apps, which is great!

We’ve had a very turbulent time when preparing to launch Nozbe Teams. We went back and forth between the new Nozbe product names - it’s not Nozbe 4 anymore, it’s Nozbe Teams now. We’ll be a two-product company.

Our new productivity app for teams is now at open-beta and we are preparing for an official launch 🚀 in first quarter of this year.

We have an ambitious plan for this year’s Nozbe Teams rollout so I’m hoping to report a great success in my next year’s review.

For me personally it’s going to be a demanding role of the “face of Nozbe” and the “product visionary” behind Nozbe Teams… while letting my VPs do their work and the rest of the Nozbe team do their magic.

After all, as the CEO I’m just a servant and facilitator - my job is to help each of my team members succeed. Not do their work, but to make their work easier, to help them reach higher levels. Let’s see how I perform this task this year.

Changes in some of my routines and habits

I have a few ideas for a change in my daily and weekly routines. In 2019 many things didn’t work as well as I had hoped, so it’s time to do some experimentation.

Some of the things I want to try are:

• Simplify my journaling even more
• Improve my morning routine
• Try out a concept of “core hours”
• Redesign my “weekly review”
• Reschedule some of my training sessions

Most of these ideas are a result of my recent session of re-reading (for the X-th time) the Essentialism book by Greg McKeown - all in order to help me execute both my business and private tasks as effortlessly as possible.

Here’s to an amazing 2020! 🥂

I know it’s going to be an exciting year for me and I’m hoping it’ll be an amazing one for you, too! Good luck! 🍀