This is a follow-up to see how I did on the big 2019 to-do list I laid out back in January.
Goals
1. Write every day. Not done! But all is not lost. I did write a lot more in 2019 – with 15 articles posted here on this blog, and one on my sister site Tri for Les – just not every day. I’m particularly proud of three articles, in which I tried to explore new styles, topics and ideas that I think are important: Digital Density, Univercities, and Red Nation. Finally, even though I whiffed on my goal tactic to “establish a regular time and place to close off, open up, and write for an hour — no matter what” I did follow through on refreshing my website and content strategy. I also added an email newsletter subscription to make this blog easier to follow.
2. Get really smart at math, Round II. Done! I tore up four excellent courses across two semesters at Arizona State University: Linear Algebra, Applied Statistics, Experimental Statistics, and Exploring Data in R and Python. I still consider myself more of a creative, words guy, but these courses – the statistics ones in particular – just clicked with me. After a few years now working as a business analyst while taking math courses on the side, my quant game is officially on point. I’m super excited to use these super powers to tackle new challenges and projects.
3. Go keto. Done! This was a weird one that took some lifestyle adjustments. I followed The Keto Reset Diet by Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns as my primary guide, and also read the book The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance by Jeff S. Volek and Stephen D. Phinney. I lost about 10-15 pounds early on in the process as I reprogrammed my body to burn fat instead of carbs for energy. After tweaking a few things, and taking the time to let myself adjust, I gained most of that weight back while maintaining the same healthy diet. This adjustment also meant that I needed to scale back my exercise routines during the transition, which took about 4-6 months to get comfortable and figure out what works best. Now, I can happily say I’m a fat burning beast, and no longer a slave to carbs or routine hunger. It essentially trains you to realize that you really don’t need to eat as much as you routinely do in the standard American lifestyle, where if it’s 12pm it’s time to eat – hungry or not. Now, I can easily skip a meal, and I try to only eat when I’m hungry. There’s a lot more to this story, and I’ll be sure to do an in-depth article on this experience in this coming year.
4. Read these books. Done, pretty much, and then some! I read 15 of the 19 books from my original list, plus an additional 11 books that I picked up along the way. That’s a total of 26 books read in 2019, or about two books per month (those math classes are paying off!).
The list below has all of the books referenced above, along with links to any of my associated book reviews. Note: Just because I didn’t write a book review, doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, or that I don’t recommend it. Rather, it means I’m lazy.
My top five recommendations from this list are highlighted in bold. But I enjoyed nearly all of them.
Books read from the original list
- Our Towns by James Fallows and Deborah Fallows
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (my book review)
- Radical Markets by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl
- The Book of Why by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie (my book review)
- The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
- Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen (my book review)
- Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann
- Judas by Amos Oz
- The hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell (my book review)
- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (my book review)
- Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
- Magicians of the Gods by Graham Hancock
- The Cost Disease by William J. Baumol
- The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
- The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
Books read not from the original list
- Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Second Mountain by David Brooks
- Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
- Maoism by Julia Lovell
- China’s New Red Guards by Jude Blanchette
- Order without Design by Alain Bertaud (my book review)
- The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Keto Reset Diet by Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns
- The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance by Jeff S. Volek and Stephen D. Phinney
- Primal Endurance by Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns
Books not read from the original list
- World Order by Henry Kissinger (In progress as of this posting)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Iliad by Homer
- The People vs. Democracy by Yascha Mounk
5. Take an epic hike. Done! Maroon Bells Four Pass Loop
6. Complete the Simple and Sinister kettlebell workout at 32kg. Not done! I was aiming to graduate to one-arm swings for 10×10 in five minutes, followed by 10 Turkish Get Ups (five each side) in 10 minutes. However, the keto transformation (see Goal 3 above) took longer than I expected, and I needed to scale down my strength training big time. Now that I’m a fully keto-adapted fat-burning beast I will go after this one in 2020.