By Pete Cataldo
Let’s put 2020 behind us and look forward to a New Year. Here’s my annual personal review for the year that was and my goals for 2021.
+++
How do you know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been?
It’s a great question to ask yourself. Often.
But with the end of the year coming and the promise of a fresh start in the new year, I find this is especially a good time to engage in this kind of exercise.
I’m talking, of course, about performing your own annual personal review.
When you’re in a corporate job, they set KPIs (key performance indicators) that are your roadmap for success.
If you meet and/or exceed those KPIs by the end of the year, you’ll be in good standing and likely keep your job, if not get a raise or promotion.
When you fail to meet those KPIs, it shows room for improvement and key learnings on how to move forward.
So we do this with our professional lives, but we totally ignore it with our personal selves. That’s a flawed approach.
As I laid out in my guide to performing your own annual personal review, I explain how to build your own set of KPIs and how to review the progress you’ve made (or haven’t made) in the previous 356 days so you can create the path to success for the new year.
In other words: You take a look at where you’ve been, so you can chart the path forward on where you’d like to go.
I figured I’d practice what I preach and do this myself.
And I’m going to allow you to hold me accountable by sharing my annual personal review with you here.
Let’s have some fun.
+++
Why I’m conducting a personal review this year
This is a bit of a departure from my usual content on this site.
I set out to make the articles here evergreen (or timeless). It means you can read most of my stuff months or even years later and still derive value from it without the content feeling stale or outdated altogether.
But, 2020 has been … shall we say … unique.
And I think this provided a nice opportunity to break that evergreen mold a little bit.
My plan is to continue doing these annual check-ins with myself going forward. And I’ll publish them right here for you to read. Whether that be months, or even years from their original publication.
Let’s get into it.
Here are the three questions I’ll be asking myself in this annual personal review to evaluate where I’ve been:
- What went well this year?
- What didn’t go so well this year?
- What am I working toward?
Once I answer those questions, I’ll start knocking out where I’d like to go in 2021.
What went well this year?
I’m breathing.
Seriously. I’m alive and breathing.
If any year is a year to be thankful for the little things and put everything into perspective, 2020 was the year.
Social distancing became the words of the year. Wearing masks became fashionable. Staying inside for Zoom video calls, homeschooling and happy hours became the new socializing.
With hundreds of thousands of lives lost during this unrelenting pandemic due to COVID-19, I am just immensely grateful to be alive and healthy with a family that is alive and healthy, as well.
Never lose sight of things like this.
And I think 2020 really put the importance of being grateful into a whole new perspective.
Fitness
With everything shutting down in 2020, including gyms, many of us were forced to find some way to make more gainz without stepping foot in the gym.
Now to be fair, I actually do most of my training at home. But, I do have a pretty solid gym setup in my Brooklyn apartment building that I would use several times per week in addition to my at-home training.
I had to toss that out of the window and focus solely on working out at home. And I had to greatly revamp my home arsenal of equipment. So it was a mad dash to Amazon to beat the rush for fitness gear.
Not your traditional popular items like Peloton bikes and treadmills. Instead, I’ve been learning how to progress on calisthenics and bodyweight progressions with equipment like:
- Parallelettes
- Olympic gymnastic rings
- TRX suspension straps
- My existing furniture
When add those items to my already existing stuff like a pull-up bar and adjustable dumbbells, I was pretty set.
I’ve been learning how to progress into a full planche push-up and one-arm pull-up using the rings. The parallelettes have allowed me to finally nail the L-sit hold and I’m slowly learning the progressions on a free-standing handstand, along with handstand push-ups.
As a result, I’m having the most fun with my training than I’ve had in years. I’m working out less than I did before, and I’m still improving my strength.
I’ve adopted a much more minimalistic approach to working out that I’m going to test out with some of my clients.
As opposed to the more traditional 4-day workout split (upper/lower focus) that I used to employ, my week now looks like this:
Monday: mobility + sprints on my fold up stationary bike (30 mins max)
Tuesday: upper body workout (planche push-ups, ring handstands, one-arm chin ups, sternum pull-ups/rows)
Wednesday: MetCon or complex
Thursday: lower body workout (weighted pistol squats, nordic curls)
Friday: mobility
Saturday: lots of walking (I’ll try to get to 15,000-20,000 steps) or even a day of Micro Workouts (Don’t know what micro workouts are? Allow me to explain.)
Sunday: rest
That’s it.
Just two solid days of strength training. Lots of lower impact movement. That’s how you build a lifestyle that is sustainable and enjoyable and still based in lifelong fitness.
My message here: take control of your fitness, utilize your surroundings, get creative with your space and don’t be afraid to jump outside of your comfort zone.
I’m not so sure I’ll even want to really return to the gym again.
Business
I cannot begin to explain how many times I’ve screwed up my business.
Over the past three or four years, my path towards entrepreneurship and developing my own coaching business has been one bad decision after another.
That all changed this year.
The difference was finally acknowledging that I could not possibly do all of this alone, so I hired a business coach to help me develop my systems so I could not only be a better coach, but a better business owner.
And being a better business owner means being able to help more people.
As a result, I doubled my roster of online coaching clients. And doubling my roster meant increasing my income. Increasing my income meant more confidence and less stress and more focus on how to be a better person and dad and coach.
The learning here is that sometimes you need an extra accountability partner to help push you through to your goals.
A coach to help you see things that you possibly could not see on your own.
A mentor to help provide a new perspective on how to best navigate your journey. For me, I needed that person in business. For you, it might be time to look for that in your fitness journey.
Do not be afraid to invest in yourself.
The return on investment will be worth your time and money. Seriously.
Mental Health
Who the hell went through all of this crazy ass year without feeling some stress, anxiety and/or depression?
It’s been something that I’ve battled with for quite sometime. I’ve been pretty vocal and out in the open about my struggles and process to healing.
But 2020 was on a different level.
From mask wearing and social distancing. To school closures for my daughter and virtual learning to start her kindergarten year. All the way through an exhausting presidential election.
This year has tested every single fiber of our ability to mental focus and adapt and cope.
And my usual in-person method of coping with my therapist had to change to over the phone. In my own home. With my family on the other side of the wall.
Talk about intimidating. I’d have to lower my voice to make myself comfortable whilst talking on the phone during my weekly therapy sessions.
But, I adapted. And I still put in the work.
Constant checking in on myself throughout the craziness to make sure I wasn’t snapping.
It was all part of 2020. And now we’re finally here at the end. And I’m so proud of myself for sticking through it.
What didn’t go so well this year?
Writing
I write every day. It’s one of my top priorities for making sure I have a successful morning and it builds momentum for a productive day.
To be fair, I continued to make writing one of my top daily tasks. I write articles to this site consistently and provide tons of knowledge and wealth through my regular email newsletters and content on social media.
But, my long-term goal is to write a book. And this was to be the year that I would accomplish that one.
Instead, that did not happen. I have a blank page to show for it.
Now, I don’t want to beat myself up over this one too much. It was next to impossible to make this work in the middle of a global pandemic with the entire family pinned inside our closet of a Brooklyn apartment.
I did what I could to maintain sanity, keep my family safe and healthy and work on my business.
Mission accomplished there.
Now it’s time to figure out a plan to make the book writing happen. And that will start in the same way that I coach my clients.
Whether that’s trying to learn how to eat more protein, or develop a new strength training habit, or just aiming to move more in general, it all starts by starting slow and small.
Take action. Build momentum. That’s the directive I’ll have for starting this book in 2021.
Reading
I love to read. Admittedly, I’m not one that will claim some book reading superiority over others by pronouncing my collection of authors and titles that I’ve read in one week to shame others for not doing the same.
But, I do enjoy a good page turner.
Except, this year I was stuck on only a few books and well short of my usual goal of about 20 or so books read in a year.
It’s important to read. You should be reading. I should be reading, too. And I’ll get back on top of that going forward.
What am I working toward?
As 2020 finally kicks rocks for good and we can cleanse ourselves of the nasty taste this year has left in our mouths, let’s look forward to that fresh start in 2021.
I’m treating this less like a collection of lame resolutions and more like just some general things that I’d like to be more mindful of in the new year.
Purpose
My intent with everything I do is to provide value, knowledge, actionable info/strategies for you and do it with a purpose.
It’s easy to lose sight of that when you get caught up in pushing out content to churn likes and followers and potential clientele.
That’s why I’m putting this out there now and declaring that my purpose in 2021 is to continue to have purpose in everything that I do.
And that purpose is to provide you with right info that gets through the minutiae of life to crush your own goals––whether that’s fat loss, being a better parent, or just living your best life.
Be selfish
Sounds counterintuitive to say I want to be more selfish just one bullet point after declaring my drive is to have more purpose for helping you.
But, one thing I did better in 2020 is to really rethink how much I work.
For the first time in years, I actually allowed myself to take a full day off every week. It’s still new to me. I still struggle with feeling guilty for taking the time.
But, over the last quarter of 2020, I prioritized taking a day for myself and I was still productive, I still helped clients achieve fantastic results and I even found myself to be more creative and efficient in my production.
Don’t fall for Parkinson’s Law which states that the time it takes to complete a task will expand to the time allotted.
If you can get seven days worth of work done in six days, get it done in six.
My hope is that by the end of 2021, not only will I feel awesome about taking one day off per week to spend with my family, but maybe I’ll even work up to two full days off.
Create
One thing I really enjoy is the process of creating helpful content.
Whether that’s writing an article and getting down into the details of health and productivity.
Or perhaps it’s cranking out a fun video on TikTok.
Also enjoyable is hanging out on Instagram with quick nuggets of wisdom through my infographics or videos. I enjoy creating content. If you’re reading this, then you likely enjoy some of that content I create.
And I want that content creation to take center stage in 2021.
I’ve committed to creating even more for you. In the coming weeks, I’ll be providing more articles to this website and getting more involved in how I produce the content on sites like Instagram.
I’m excited to help even more people … with purpose … through my creative content.
In doing so, my end goal is to finally put the words down on paper for the book project Ive been talking about and alluding to and have yet to do.
Final thoughts on my annual personal review for 2020 as I look ahead to 2021
The past 365 days have been quite the challenge for all of us. In many ways, I’ve felt a tad guilty in enjoying the success that I’ve seen since so many people are struggling to make it through this no good, awful year.
But, I’m here to say that I’ve put in the work and I’m building momentum. And that momentum is leading to what will be the best year of my life in 2021. That can’t start without laying down the groundwork now and building out the vision for what that will look like.
So I encourage you to practice this same activity.
Let’s start to put 2020 behind us by charting the path forward for how to crush 2021. That all starts by taking a few moments to reflect on the year that was so you can create the game plan for the year that will be.
In other words, fuck 2020 … let’s have a fantastic new year.
Let me help you learn how to perform an annual personal review …
I’m here to help you out.
If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Annual personal review” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.
Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope. Enter your name and your best email address below and you’ll get 52 Free Fat Loss Workouts as my gift to you for being awesome.