It’s the end of Q1-2024 and I’m finally posting my 2023 Year-In-Review. I’m late but within the swirl of all my travels, I’m finally able to squeeze in some time to write this out.

In 2021, I read a book called The Amazing Development of Man. It’s actually a dating advice book for women. The book highlights multiple stages of life men go through, offering advice on how a woman should approach a man in certain stages. The dating stuff was less relevant to me. BUT, I was searching for a framework to understand male development, and i found it right here.

The book outlines four phases: The Paige (aka “pre-pubescent boy”), The Knight (aka Party Boy, Explorer), the Prince (the builder) and the King (sharing wisdom). The Knight and Prince were most relevant. A knight (typically in his 20’s) has an intense desire for adventure, exploration and fun. A Prince has an intense desire to start building his kingdom.

When I think back to my 20’s, getting black out drunk in 30 degree weather and waking up in jail, listening to the symphonic snoring inside a dusty hostel room, raving till I was cracked out at the light of dawn. Yes, I was definitely in my knight phase.

Toward my late 20’s, I started questioning that life. Shallowness didn’t fulfill me, depth did. I wanted to invest deeper in my relationships rather than make new ones. I wanted to double down and become world-class at whatever I did.

A knight dabbles. A prince commits. Fulfillment follows an exponential curve, but the returns only come from consistent effort:

As I evolve, how do I build that kingdom? What does it mean to commit? That’s what I’ll attempt to answer in this review.

2023 Highlights

SLC Ski House

In January, I spent 6 weeks in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’ve already noticed the pattern in my favorite experience: friends & sports. SLC was all about friends & sports. We’d all work during the week. On weekends, we’d ski the powdery bowls of Snowbird. All equally smart, ambitious people, bonding over the love of skiing/snowboarding.

El Salvador Surf Trip

Similar to the ski house, this trip had the same formula: friends & sports. We’ve also made this a yearly ritual where the guys would get together and go surf somewhere. We signed up for coaching and we all definitely got significantly better at surfing:

Leaving Spotify to Netflix and seeing the impact I made on others.

In July, I switched my job from Spotify to Netflix. When I left, my team was devastated. One particular direct report I had was distraught. He had joined my team as a new Data Scientist. Over the course of two years, I’d groomed him into a Top Performer. Me leaving was a huge blow for him.

But I left feeling full. The only thing better than becoming great myself, is helping others become great. That’s why I love to teach. The purpose of becoming better myself, is to help others become better, and hopefully that spreads, and EVERYBODY levels up.

Key Lessons Learned

My Happiness formula = Sports + Friends.

Every year I write this review, my highlights always consist of some type of physical activity and friends. If we sprinkle on some “skill development” that’s the perfect combo for me.

Pursue Growth Areas Sequentially.

In the Big 5 personality test, I scored very high on “open to new experience.” I’m always interested in trying something at least once. This natural curiosity toward life, allows me to build an interesting life. However, this tendency also causes me to want to say yes to everything.

The biggest mistake I made in 2023, is saying yes to too many things. I said yes to BJJ, Surfing and Snowboarding, all concurrently. I said yes to building an ML course business. I said yes to building yourmove.ai. I felt friction, because I care a lot about being excellent at what I do. However, it’s difficult to be excellent, when I’m pursuing too many things.

While I believe its possible to do all of these things, I don’t believe it’s possible to do all of these things at the same time while still doing them all well. I do believe I can maintain areas of my life while I pursue growth in others. However, the key, is I only pursue growth areas one at a time.

Somebody is always defining my life. I need to be the one to do it.

The NYC social vortex, gobbles up people’s calendars with plans, parties & social events. It’s incredible. Sweaty NYC summers fill your afternoons with sunny park days, while parties fill up your summer nights.

I get why people say NYC is the greatest city on earth. But living in NYC, means I don’t spend time thinking about my life, as my life is swept up by social plans. Around September of this year, I felt like I no longer had control of my life. I started to feel like my life was controlled by others’ invitations to things. Others’ ideas on what we should do. I no longer had control over my time.

And the key to being intentional with my life, rather than reactive, is to spend time thinking, reflecting about my life. What do I actually want to do? What would make me feel fulfilled? Who do I enjoy spending my time with? Actually spending time to sit down and think, is what allows me to grab my life and steer it in the direction I want.

Priorities in 2023

A key learning: It’s hard to build a business, be good at your job, have great relationships and intense hobbies at the same time. There are a few key insights I’ve learned while trying to juggle these areas:

Don’t try to juggle this. Pick fewer things and focus more.
But… if I do…..at work, the key unlock is I need to get to a point where I can deliver immense value with minimal effort. Most people will deliver immense value but with significantly more effort. The key to delivering immense value with minimal effort is to join a team lacking in the exact skill you’re strong at. It’s probably not hard to do something simple.
It’s easier if I pick one thing in each bucket: career, relationships, fitness. I SHOULD NOT do more than one in one of those buckets.
Dating requires A TON of mental effort & energy. A relationship requires significantly less. Therefore, it really depends on the stage I’m in.

Life Area Review

Fitness

When thinking about this bucket, there are two pieces:

Longevity: I want to be able to play with my kids and play sports when I’m old.
Athletic Performance: I want to be able to perform athletically to the best of my ability.

When thinking about longevity, there are basically three workouts needed:

3x to 4x - Zone 2 Cardio Workouts
3x - Strength
1x - High Intensity

I’ve loved sports since I was a kid. But I get bored if I’m not “working on something.” For the upcoming winter season, I’ve already committed to snowboarding. Learning from last year, I’m going to maintain focus and exclusively focus on snowboarding.

For 2023, I integrated running significantly more into my life. I was also practicing BJJ for most of the year. I felt like I stayed pretty healthy through the year. I did decently on the longevity piece. However, athletic performance suffered because I lacked focus. I was not able to perform at a high level.

Dating/Romantic

For the last 4 years or so I told myself I was ready to find marriage, but I don’t think I truly wanted it. I told myself I wanted it before, but I wasn’t willing to pay the price. I wasn’t willing to spend the time, energy to cultivate the relationship. I always had a trip planned somewhere. I said yes to side-business opportunities. I said yes to new hobbies. I wanted to “enjoy NYC” or I was leaving a place soon whenever someone wanted it to go deeper.

I know myself. When something is important enough, I’ll find a way to make it happen. Everything great in life comes at a price and usually when I don’t meet a goal, it’s because I wasn’t willing to pay the price.

My thinking here shifted from how do I improve my dating life? To how do I find someone that’ll make me happy in the long run? The questions differ, in that I start thinking about value alignment compared to dating abundance. A great dating life is a life filled with dates with attractive people that make you look cool. But being happy in the long run, means less abundance, more focus and doubling down. Completely different questions. On a long enough time scale, superficial things wash away, only leaving your principles & core values.

[2024 EDIT] - While I’ll keep the details private, I have a new girlfriend!

Friends

My level of happiness is directly determined by the quality of my relationships, both romantic and friendships. What I love about NYC is it’s SO easy to make friends. Since the city is so dense, serendipitous connections & parties occur all the time. And especially during the summer, where social events are filling up every hour of your calendar.

But it’s not about just making friends. It’s about building a community. In NYC, I found run club, which became a base for many of my new friends in NYC. The main thing missing, when I did BJJ, was that I never felt like I was part of a community at my gym.

I’ve noticed the keys to building a strong community are:

Recurring, Standing Hangout: It needs to be a hangout that occurs regularly, without any planning. It typically takes multiple hangouts for people to build familiarity with each other.
Activity/Interest-Based: It needs to center around an interest or activity that can easily bond everyone. If there’s a common interest, then conversations are easy.
Hosting/Invitations: The key to solidifying a community, is to then host or invite people to do things, outside of the recurring hangout. It could range from throwing a party, but to as small as just inviting someone to eat with you.

All my communities (surfing, snowboarding, running) had all three of these elements.

Career

I see each company as a puzzle. The puzzle has differing levels of difficulty. And there typically is a “key to the puzzle” that unleashes your success. The puzzle is defined by the company’s values, the people you’re surrounded by, the problems you face. On my team at Spotify, I felt like I solved the puzzle and unlocked the “formula for success.” However, it took me about 9 months to figure it out.

So far, what I’ve learned about “playing the game well” are:

Own critical tools for the business. It’s very difficult to get fired or laid off if I own them.
Be great at a valuable skill my team isn’t good at. Become the team expert on X.
Constantly ask myself, if I left the company, what would the team lose?
Be the one to build zero to 1, because you get most of the credit.

What I’ve noticed from people playing the game well at netflix are:

They not only see the problem they’re asked to solve, but they see a larger, more impactful problem to be solved, then solve it.
Everyone is faster AND more thorough with analysis & problems. Teams really value thoughtfulness.
Opinions/thoughts that are well thought out.
The caliber of talent is higher, so it’s more difficult to standout.

I’ve yet to crack the code at Netflix, but my larger goal is to crack the code in 2024.

Personal Finances

As I stockpile cash while working at Netflix, it’ll be important for me to start thinking about where this cash will go. I have vague notions about where it’ll go, but they’re not as intentional as I want them to be.

When I think about it, there are really only a few large expenses:

Home
Wedding
Kids
Work Sabbatical

Key for me is to deliberate decide where my cash is going to go and set up more of a concrete plan on when I should be selling certain investments to enable these large purchases. So the goal here is to research and build a concrete plan with my personal finances.

2024 Goals

Goal - Complete clean frontside and backside 360s on a snowboard: As of 2024, I did not hit this, as I had gotten injured during the season.

Goal - Crack the code at Netflix: At Spotify, I felt like I cracked the code. At Netflix, I feel as though I’m starting to crack the code on making substantial impact at the company.

Goal - Build and learn how to create a thriving romantic relationship: With my girlfriend, building a thriving relationship where both of us are happy, thriving and fulfilled together.

Goal - Become the Renaissance Athlete: For me, the ultimate athlete is someone who’s great at multiple sports, has strength and endurance. Inspired by Physical 100, having strong, functional, all around abilities makes me feel like the ultimate superhero.

Goal - Build a Financial/Investment Plan for my Dream Life: I have a sense of what my dream life looks like. The purpose of making money is to use that money to build my dream life and in order to build that dream life, I need a plan. How much cash do I need saved for a down payment on my dream home? Where do I want to have this dream home? How much money do I need to have certain experiences?

Misogi - Complete a 5-Day Water Fast

Things to Learn

Environment

I love surfing & snowboarding. To do these sports, requires me to be outside, in the ocean and in the mountains. It’s contingent on the environment being there to allow me to do the things I love. For a good chunk of my life, I’ve always had some awareness of environment impact but I had never dove in and actually learned about it.

It’s a politically charged topic as well so this would also give me an opportunity to learn about both sides & perspectives of the issue, to really develop my own opinion on these issues.

Ideally, the outcome from learning about this, is I make informed lifestyle changes that can help support the cause.

Fasting

Ideally, the outcome from learning about this, is I make informed lifestyle changes that can help support the cause.

What Makes a Successful Long Term Relationship

When I was in my early 20’s, I put in A TON of effort in figuring out “how to attract women.” And the question made sense at the time, as it forced me to push my comfort zone, figure out what I liked and disliked and pushed me to become a better person.

Now, it’s no longer “how do I attract women” but rather, how do I pick the right one? How do I pick the one that’ll maximize my long term happiness? And when I do pick the right one, how do I make sure it's successful?

I’ve spent hundreds of hours learning random skills like memorizing cards, reading hundreds of books but I’d barely spent any time actually learning about what makes a successful long term relationship. But it’s literally the single most important decision in our lives and it deserves its due effort.

What this means is I delve into the latest research, books around what makes a successful relationship. How do I pick the right one that maximizes long term happiness? What actually matters? What doesn’t matter?

Things to Think About

Where should I live?

Honestly, it kills me that I can’t grind hard on getting better at surfing. It’s a result of me living in NYC, so naturally, I start to question whether I should live in NYC. When I thought about it, I need three things in the city I live in:

Sports: The city should have the sports I love (surfing, snowboarding). NYC does not have this.
Community: I need to have a community of some sorts to continue to be happy (see above). NYC is excellent for this.
Ambition: The city needs to have people who have big goals, growth mindset and would constantly push my thinking.

Throughout my life, I had never actually given serious thought to the city I wanted to live in. Partially, it’s because I didn’t have the flexibility, I had to go where the job would take me. The other reason is I just didn’t have the self-awareness and clarity around my values to be able to articulate that.