My annual review for 2020 is broken down into three sections:
1. Year in Review
2. Three Themes
3. Goals Results
Happy New Year.
Year in Review
It’s been a rollercoaster year, unprecedented for each of us in our own unique way.
In my case 2020 started off with a bang: in January I quit my job, got rid of most of my stuff, and set off to travel the world for a while. I explored Poland for two months and Iceland for two weeks. Then COVID-19 hit the fan.
In early March I pulled the ripcord, canceled the rest of my travel plans, and came scurrying back to the US the day before they announced the borders would be closed. I spent the next three months staying with family in Denver, living the quarantined life, pretty much just reading, writing and working out all day.
In June I rented a car, loaded my duffle bag and some canned foods into the trunk, and drove down to stay with family in Phoenix, because who doesn’t love summers in the Valley? After a couple months sweating it out, exploring options for what my next move might be, and still pretty much just reading, writing and working out all day, I decided to go back to school.
In late August I enrolled in the MS in Mineral and Energy Economics program at Colorado School of Mines and moved to beautiful Golden, Colorado, just in time to start classes for the fall semester, and just in time to meet my new nephew, Warren, who was born August 15 in Denver.
Life got pretty busy after that, and it was a great busy. I had a strong first semester, I’m enjoying the program, and I’m excited to be getting smarter about energy and economics. I also love living in Golden.
The year ended on a sad note when my grandmother, Evelyn Feffer, passed away on December 13 after contracting COVID-19. It was a tough couple weeks for our family. We weren’t able to be with her before she passed, and we weren’t able to be with each other afterwards — but we were all together in spirit, flexing to the grooves of this warped year.
Despite all the ups and downs — or maybe because of all the ups and downs — I feel like I learned a ton and grew much stronger this year. I landed in a great place. I’m lucky to have been able to sneak in my travel adventure when I did. I’m thankful for the time I spent living with family. I’m grateful for all the new connections, perspectives, and lessons learned along the way.
Three Themes
Before we get to the results of my 2020 goals, I wanted to jot down some quick notes that came to mind as common threads from the past year. They’re a bit scattered and incoherent, but I like them, so I’ll leave them here for now to be interpreted as you like.
1. A priority stack
Feelings over thoughts,
Thoughts over actions,
Actions over words,
Words over images.
2. Take responsibility
Fix your attitude,
Find meaning in the struggle,
Control your narrative,
Grow stronger in the face of stress and trauma,
Build up and not burn down,
Connect with people,
Create art.
“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” — Viktor E. Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning.
3. The journey
The outcome does not define success.
From The Iceman Cometh:
Don’t depend on the prize at the end for motivation.
The hot chocolate up on the icy summit. The most delicious beer and burger back at the trailhead shack. The Ironman tat you have sketched out for the back of your calf. All the likes you’ll get on that finish line photo. The satisfaction of checking off another goal from your bucket list. I get all that. The problem, however, with that line of motivation is that sometimes you reach the summit and they’re out of hot chocolate. You will not be a happy camper, and an otherwise great day will be tarnished by a minor hiccup. Protect yourself from this pitfall by using the journey itself as motivation. That way, no matter what happens at the end, you’ve already won. Setting goals is fine — great even! — just don’t lose sight of the moment, your intention or the bigger picture.
From Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl:
…it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, “Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning.” The question which beset me was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning?” For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance — as whether one escapes or not — ultimately would not be worth living at all.
2020 Goals Results
Circling back to the 10 big things I wanted to get done in 2020, here are the results, along with some notes about each effort.
1: Make a big move; take a few months off to travel and explore random stuff that seems interesting; see where the wind takes you.
Result: Done
In early January I hopped on a plane with a one-way ticket to Poland for the Wim Hof Winter Expedition, which you can read about in The Iceman Cometh. After that I explored Poland for the next couple months, visiting Kraków, Zakopane, Katowice, Warsaw, Wrocław, and Gdańsk. My favorite city was Gdańsk, a northern coastal city with beautiful cobblestone streets, colorful architecture, cleaner air, and easy access to the Baltic Sea.
Some of my most memorable and powerful experiences during this trip to Poland centered around exploring the history of the Jewish community in the country. Two experiences that really stuck with me are my visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and the sad and rundown Jewish cemeteries I visited in Gdańsk. You can read about these experiences in Jewish perspectives in Poland.
Reflecting further on my visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, I now appreciate how it helped me better feel the tragedy and the history in a way that strengthens my connection with everything I read and learn about the topic. And when I say topic, I mean not just World War II, Nazi Germany, or antisemitism, but the broader evil that lies in the heart of every man, and the broader good–heroic, kind, and resilient–that lies on the other side of that very same heart of humanity.
This connection resonated for me when I read Book 6 of My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, which features a 400-page essay on Hitler and Mein Kampf.
It resonated for me when I read Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankl, which shows how even when suffering in a nightmare such as Auschwitz, one can still find meaning, strength, a good attitude, and even humor.
It resonated for me as I followed present-day atrocities at the Xinjiang concentration camps in China, which continue to be broadly ignored, obscured or rationalized.
After Poland, in late February, I traveled to Iceland for another Wim Hof style ice adventure led by Joren and Elena of Into The Wild Within. This was an intense week that made my Poland expedition seem like little league. You can read all about the experience in Ice baths in Iceland, which included: an epic — extremely cold, snowy, and windy! — swimsuit hike through Reykjadalur Valley; ice dips in a frozen lake; and a sweat lodge.
This experience, the connections made, the doors opened, the lessons learned, the habits built, remains one of the best experiences from the past year and I’m thankful I was able to set that foundation early in the year.
After the workshop, I spent another week exploring the other worldly wonder of Iceland in winter. I planned on keeping the adventure going with flights booked to Portugal, Finland and Denmark.
Then, in early March, COVID-19 started to get really bad. I accepted the COVID-19 changes, canceled those trips and hopped on a direct flight from Reykjavik to Denver, the day before the US announced it would be closing its borders.
I picked a hell of a year to quit my job, drop everything and travel the world. But I’m thankful for the opportunity to go on an adventure and make the big move when I did.
2. Get at least eight hours of sleep every night, preferably nine.
Result: Done
I made consistent sleep patterns a priority this year, and typically got eight or nine hours of sleep every night. I also cut out caffeine, which I think helped, and tried to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday.
My area for improvement is to go to stop working earlier and go to bed earlier. Now that I’m grinding through grad school, I’ll often stay up late studying or working on papers. I’m going to try over the next year to set a hard deadline of 9pm to close the laptop, put the phone away, and wind down more consistently.
Let me give another plug for the book that inspired this goal: Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker.
3. Practice breathing exercises every day.
Result: Done
For the first half of the year I practiced the standard Wim Hof Method (WHM) breathing exercise, which follows these steps:
1. Fully in: Take a deep, relaxed, wave-like inhale that progresses from the belly, up to the chest, then up to the head. The large majority of the inhale should be done with the belly. Don’t tense up your shoulders and neck.
2. Let it go: Release your breath with a short exhale that gets you back to equilibrium, like you’re softly blowing out a candle.
3. Repeat: Do 30 to 40 reps of Fully in, Let it go (Step 1 followed by Step 2 equals one rep).
4. Retention: After the last exhale calmly hold your breath as long as you can.
5. Deep inhale and hold: When you’re ready, take one big inhale and hold it for 15 seconds.
6. Long exhale: Let it all out through a nice long exhale. I usually hum during this part.
7. Four rounds: Steps 1-6 are one round; do four rounds — or as many as you like — every day, lying down, on an empty stomach. Then take a cold shower.
I really enjoyed the daily WHM practice, and I plan on keeping it up to some degree indefinitely. But in July, after reading the books, Breath, by James Nestor, and The Oxygen Advantage, by Patrick McKeown, I shifted my daily practice to a program from The Oxygen Advantage designed to improve breathing efficiency. This program includes the following exercises:
- Breathe through the nose day and night.
- Measure your Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT) score every morning, right after you wake up. The BOLT score is calculated by essentially timing how long you can calmly hold your breath in a rested state. The goal is to get to a BOLT score of 40 seconds; I typically clock in around 20 to 30 seconds.
- Practice the Breathe Light to Breathe Right (BLBR) exercise three times a day. BLBR consists of sitting down and reducing your breathing movements for 10 minutes. The goal is to create a tolerable hunger for air by restricting your inhales to smaller and shorter breaths, while relaxing and extending your exhales.
- Practice BLBR and other breath holds while walking, jogging, and after physical exercise.
For the second half of the year, I consistently measured my BOLT score and practiced the BLBR exercise every morning. To keep improving I need to work-in afternoon and evening BLBR sessions, and get better about incorporating the training-related exercises in that last bullet point above.
4. Take an ice dip at least once a week.
Result: Not Done
Even though I spent more time in the cold than ever this year, after I flew back to the US in March my only consistent cold exposure for the remainder of the year was daily cold showers. Daily cold showers are excellent, but they’re not as intense as an ice bath. Thus, I’m not counting this goal as Done.
Now that I’m settled in Colorado though, the cold exposure opportunities are a bit more common. So far I’ve done a few polar bear runs on snow days, and I have a couple icy creeks nearby pegged for ice dips, which I’ll look to do every week to complete this goal in 2021.
5. Walk around outside for at least 30 minutes every day.
Result: Done
Walking around aimlessly, slowly, for no reason at all is a severely underrated activity. I made it a priority to take a nice walk every day this year. I took long walks while I was traveling to get to know new cities and towns. I took long walks just to get out of the house and break up the day while I was quarantining. And I take long walks now while I’m in school to get to class, to take a breather from studying, or to get some sunshine and nature.
This is one of the best habits to get into, and one that’s entirely worth continuing, with or without a specific goal. I’m going to build on this momentum in 2021 by working in more and more barefoot walks, as part of my ongoing Foot Fight.
6. Do at least 100 push ups every day. Throw in 40 pull ups too, if you can.
Result: Not Done
I was steady through July but once I got busy with school in August, I started slacking off, and stopped tracking my daily push ups. I could have maintained this goal pretty easily but I honestly got bored doing push ups all the time. I still cranked out 50 reps here and there whenever I felt like it, but that’s not enough to mark this goal as Done. Going forward I’ll keep doing random sets of push ups and pull ups, but I probably won’t go so far as tracking my reps or making it another goal.
7. Write every day; publish a new blog post that people will find interesting every week.
Result: Not Done
I wrote a lot this year. My 27 blog posts in 2020 are the most articles I’ve written on this site since its launch in 2010 (I published 30 articles that year).
My top five most popular articles from 2020 are:
- With best wishes to SRP
- The Iceman Cometh or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cold
- Ice baths in Iceland
- My first 48-hour fast
- Collapse in the cold
And here are five other articles from 2020 that I’m particularly proud of:
- The NBA’s Strategy Credit
- Kinetic social bonding
- Bringing it all back home
- Media Diet 2020
- The elephant in the egg carton
My writing rhythm slowed dramatically in the last quarter of 2020 when I went back to school. As such, since I wasn’t able to close out the year publishing strong, and since I certainly did not write every damn day, this goal was Not Done. Nevertheless it was still a strong writing year, and I aim to pick it back up and build on the momentum in 2021.
8. Go ultra: complete a 50-mile trail run.
Result: Not Done
I’ve had this goal on my list since 2016, and it’s going to have to wait another year, or more. COVID-19 canceled any races I may have signed up for. And even though you don’t need a race to complete a 50-miler, that setback took a lot of the wind out of my sails for this goal.
Instead of running, I went all-in on kettlebell training and the Simple and Sinister program by Pavel Tsatsouline. It’s an awesome program and the strength training keeps me in great shape–probably even better shape than if I had been focused on running all year. I highly recommend listening to Pavel’s interview on the Joe Rogan podcast from Dec 2019. It covers everything, including why Pavel doesn’t eat chicken: “Chicken is a weak bird.”
9. Take an epic hike.
Result: Done
I’m counting the epic ice hike through Reykjadalur Valley in Iceland as my big hiking accomplishment for the year. It was awesome. You can read about that wild experience in Ice baths in Iceland.
10. Read 30 books.
Result: Not Done
I read 25 books this year, and they were some of the best books ever. Here they are, in sequential order of when I read them, with my three favorites emphasized in bold, and links to any of my associated book reviews:
- World Order, by Henry Kissinger
- First to Fight: The Polish War 1939, by Roger Moorhouse
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
- Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The Family Moskat, by Isaac Bashevis Singer
- War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
- Waking the Tiger, by Peter A. Levine
- The Meaning of Happiness, by Alan Watts
- In My Own Way, by Alan Watts
- The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot
- How to Change Your Mind, by Michal Pollan
- Breath, by James Nestor
- Fentanyl Inc., by Ben Westhoff
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
- Simple and Sinister, by Pavel Tsatsouline
- The Oxygen Advantage, by Patrick McKeown
- My Struggle Book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle Book 2, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle Book 3, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- The Biggest Bluff, by Maria Konnikova
- My Struggle Book 4, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle Book 5, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle Book 6, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, by Randolph M. Nesse
- Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl