Reflecting on and scripting your year (2024)
Block your calendars. It's that time of year again.
TLDR: It’s that time of year, for the annual solo trip, reflection, and 2025 plan. Block your calendars.
It’s wild to think that over 100,000 people have read Monday Morning Meeting since inception, but if you’re new here, you should know that there are a few annual traditions on the blog this time of year.
One tradition is to talk about “scripting your year.”
It’s around this time of year that I usually take my annual solo trip, which consists of four parts:
New Environment
Thinking Time
Something Active
Lists > Plans
Thinking time is the core of the experience and the key to scripting your year.
It starts with the annual reflection and revisiting the previous year’s goals. It’s followed by journaling four things: what gave me energy, what drained my energy, what I want to do less of, and what I want to do more of.
I’ll take out my phone and scroll through every photo I took that year, old text messages, events on the calendar, social posts, and anything else that might jog my memory on the important moments.
This can be hours long—usually at the top of a mountain by a fire. And once it’s done, while I’m typically completely spent, I am also in a much clearer headspace to decide what I want to do the following year.
Scripting is a pretty basic concept in that it takes the guesswork out of living a life you’re proud of.
Time flies, and I find that if I don’t script it, document it, and revisit it, then it simply disappears.
Separately from the annual reflection, I will sit down and map out what I want to do the following year across three dimensions: Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
This year I added “Work” as a fourth dimension because I realized that Wealth and Happiness are more about Freedom and Time whereas “Work” is more about my Personal Potential.
Scripting your year is a topic that Jesse Itzler posts about pretty regularly as well. He maps out his entire year with some key principles:
Take Action: If you’ve made it this far, I would strongly encourage you to open up your calendar, pick two days, and block out three hours on each of them. One block will be “Annual Reflection” and the other will “Planning 2025.”
Another tradition is to tell you all how my own year is shaping up.
Last year, we hit 42 of 47 goals, including a 48-mile run that I finished with just hours to spare in 2023. That Misgoi was my first, and doing the 4x4x48 at 7,198 feet was some serious Type II fun — the kind that’s not fun in the moment, but fun to remember and look back on.
This year, it’s looking like 64 out of 80, but you never know what can happen in just a few weeks. Here are some of the 2024 highlights so far:
Misogi - Summited The Grand Teton over a 3-day hike
Monthly Adventure - 11 for 12
Skied Taos, surprised my mom in Florida for her birthday, went to Disney with my Nephews, had a ski trip offsite with two of our top portfolio companies, went to the PGA Championship in Kentucky, visited South Korea for Antler’s Annual Partner Summit, flew to Montreal for a bachelor party, went to Wyoming for The Grand Teton, took weekend trips to the Catskills, Denver, and Long Beach Island, officiated two weddings, went on vacation to Italy, spent time in Atlanta and Boston for work, made it to Miami three times for the nephews birthdays, Scottsdale with friends, the Florida Keys with family, and I’ve got two more in store for December!
Saw my nephews 9 times!
Saw 8 live events including Sofi Tukker, Seinfeld, the Bills vs. Jets, Sebastian Manascalco, and a bunch more
Saw my long distance friends 17 times
Had 8 portfolio companies raise their Seed and 1 raise their Series A
We grew our assets under management >3.5X during the worst year in VC history to fundraise as a venture capitalist; now managing around $150M
And of course I skied too… Taos, Deer Valley, and Solitude, with Zermatt planned for Christmas!
More to come, but for now, just a quick Thank You to all of you who have read Monday Morning Meeting over the past few years. It’s important to punch the clock, the build in habits that compound, and even though my writing isn’t perfect every single week, having you all here is a source of accountability and reactions that makes it all worth while.
Happy holidays, and as always…
See you Monday.
Writing refections are the real source of energy.