🌟 About This Newsletter

This is a personal newsletter I send occasionally to about 86 people I want to keep in touch with. (That’s right, intimate)

You can un-subscribe here any time and I won’t be notified!

Year In Review

Before planning 2026, I like to figure out what even happened in 2025.

I asked a few friends for guides to follow. There are so many.

I got everything from Tim Ferriss’s blog to Year Compass to Private Notion templates and more.

You could spend a month pontificating over 2025. But, nobody has that kind of time. I think doing this over a coffee one morning this week is all you really need.

Here are the 9 most helpful questions I found:

1. What are you the most proud of (accomplishments, etc)?

2. What were your most meaningful moments?

3. What things gave you energy?

4. What things drained your energy?

5. What were you not able to accomplish that you wanted to?

6. List your 3 biggest challenges from last year here. What did they teach you?

7. Where are the biggest areas of waste in your life (time, energy, money, attention)?

8. What did you learn about yourself ( 💡 Pro Tip: If you journal, throw a few entries into an LLM and ask it that)

9. 3 Words To Describe 2025

Honestly, the entire point of this is to figure out what you should repeat in 2026 & what you should kill.

Start. Stop. More.

The way I think about goal setting is simple:

1. What new thing should I start doing? New things are fun. And I’m guilty of usually putting too much in this category. But I try to keep this bucket really small. Everyone thinks they’ll be a new person coming out of this week. Then life happens & the idea of sending newsletters or picking up a hobby seems 10x harder.
   

2. What thing have I been doing that I should stop doing? These are the things that drain your energy (from the last section) or make it impossible to start / do more of your new thing.
   

3. What am I already doing that I should do more of? This is the best category. It’s the most realistic. You’re already doing it today! And it doesn’t require some superhuman willpower to get started. Find things in the “Things that gave me energy in 2025“ bucket.

Goals For 2026

I love sharing goals publicly.

It’s cool, because usually people will hit you up saying they’re doing the same thing and you get a little accountability buddy + someone to bounce ideas off of throughout the year.

I have very specific numbers (dollars, pounds, reps, miles, etc.) with all of these goals. But I’ll share the big buckets for now:

In the MORE category:

1. Build more community in NYC (this was the #1 thing that gave me energy in 2025)

2. Lift more weight. Run more miles. Walk more steps.

3. Make more money in the companies. Sign more clients. Sell more products. Rent more storage.

On the START Category:

Spend More Time On Creative Outlets – Mainly writing & drawing.

I get so much dopamine from making progress at work.

Growing teams, Winning deals, Hitting records.

But I love writing & drawing for the sake of the activity itself. And so I’ll be spending time in 2026 doing more of these things for the sake of doing them. Probably going to sign up for classes on each as well.

On the STOP category:

1. Stop Sleeping In – This feels so clichè, but when I boil down all of the reasons I’m not spending time in the buckets I want to, it’s because I feel like I don’t have the time. And I’m typically not waking up early to make the time for it. This really mainly applies to Monday-Friday.

2. Stop Working Late at Home – I noticed in last year it became very easy for me to let work creep into the evening. When I work 18 inches from my couch, it feels hard not to. There will be times when I need to work a lot, but doing that from an office or late night cafe will be my goal.

The Big Goal

I have no idea where I heard this, but thought it was good:

Someone texted a mentor and said "Goals for 2025?" and he responded saying "Same as in 1985.

Find the things I love to do, let em kill me!”

Till next time,

Connor