Ah, last day of this year.
What a nice cosy feeling. One more year has passed and contrary to everybody else, I am not thinking it was a shitty year because life was unfair to me.
Actually, 2015 was a pretty amazing year for me.
I sure hope it was a really nice year for you as well. But even if it wasn’t you might need to sit down and see what exactly didn’t go as planned and what there is to do in order to improve the next one.
As the last post for this year, I decided to let you know about the goals achieved during those 12 months, the goals I failed and which are the new ones for 2016.
Let’s see them category by category.
Health
Health wise, 2015 was a very good year, I improved my eating habits quite a lot, in the sense that I tried to keep an overall well-balanced diet through the whole year.
Health +
The biggest mistake I had been doing in all of the previous years was that I was gaining many kilos during the winter and then I was starving to lose them, so I would be lean during the summer.
This year I changed my strategy and I didn’t gain many kilos during the winter. I could have done a lot better, but compared to previous years, this was a good performance.
Overall I had a well-balanced diet with few cheat meals and tried to keep my protein intake as high as possible. I also improved the quality of my foods, turning more than 30% of my total calories to either bio or organic.
The best proof though, was that I didn’t get sick at all and my overall energy levels were pretty high throughout the whole year. This is a result of many factors but health is for sure a very important one.
My exercise schedule remained exactly the same and I am very happy with it. I hit the gym 5 days a week after I wake up (with an empty stomach) for about an hour in total. Almost half of the time is devoted to weight-lifting and the other half to aerobic exercise.
I have calculated that I burn about 550-650 calories during my training, bringing the total daily expenditure to about 2500-2700 calories on workout days.
My sleep routine is already pretty steady, I sleep very well, at least 7 hours per day and I feel rested and sparky every day. So no changes are needed here.
Stress wise, I am also doing well since I have made a big effort to eliminate stressful conditions from life as much as possible. I have not eliminated all of them though, so this might be a nice goal for next year.
Health –
Apart from the positive ones, I made quite a few mistakes as well.
First of all, I again gained some weight during the winter of 2014 and 2015. Although not much, it made my life difficult during the cutting phase of this summer.
Moreover, I tried to lose the extra weight with a ketogenic diet which was low on protein and carb and very high on fat. Well, this didn’t work well on me because of one main reason. Although I made it right, percentage wise, I was way off calorie wise – and this is never a good thing. What I mean, is that I thought that since I eat the correct percentage of fat, protein and carb, that should be enough.
Which was not.
I lost the first few kilos quite easily but then, I stopped losing the extra fat. I lost more than two months trying to figure out what the hell is going on, resulting not being as lean as I was the previous years. I wasn’t chubby, but I was not happy with my results either.
By the end of the summer, I changed my diet plan again to this one, and I saw immediate positive results. I increased protein intake considerably while lowering the fat intake by a lot.
At the moment, I slowly lose weight, until I reach the point where I feel happy with my body fat percentage.
Health 2016
Probably my most important goal during 2016 is to switch as much as possible of my diet to bio/organic and grass-fed.
Although I don’t eat many calories per day, (almost 1700) still around 70% of them come from non-organic sources. Apart from fish and eggs, all the other protein sources are from common animals. I plan to switch to grass-fed beef, chicken and pork during this year. Apart from the price, one more factor that makes it hard, is to find a good, reliable source of such meat. It’s not exactly a commodity where I live, so I will need to make a lot of extra effort in order to get it. Nevertheless, it’s a must, and I cannot skip it any longer.
I don’t intend to change much on my training program. I might increase my aerobic during the cutting period, but this is something I will decide on the spot.
Relationships
2015 was a very good year relationships wise. I think I worked very much on my social skills, I increased my social circle considerably and I think I got my “game” on a whole new level.
Relationships +
Following the momentum of 2014, I continued pushing my social performance for quite a few months during 2015.
One of the greatest goals I had set for 2015 was to overcome approach anxiety and so I did. With the help of a friend of mine, (who is like a cold approach guru) I made countless cold approaches on the street during day time.
The more approaches I did, the less anxious I felt and the better results I had. After every approach, he was giving me a brief feedback on my body language, my sub-comms and some other technical stuff. After about 698 cold approaches, I can finally say, that I overcame my anxiety once and for all. It became really really easy to approach any girl, no matter what the context is. In fact it became so much fun after some point, I didn’t really think about it.
I wasn’t interested that much in the lay, but I enjoyed the whole process of the game. Needless to say that if you make a few hundred cold approaches on a busy street during the day time, your nightclub game becomes a piece of cake.
Apart from that, I made quite a few “relationships” with girls, but I am not allowed to talk more about it (because they all read my blog and I bet it’s not that interesting either), but they all gave me some very pleasant moments to remember.
But probably the most important achievement from all, was the excellence team I have built together with some friends.
Actually “friends” is a bit demoting word to be honest. Together with these men, we have built a team so strong and robust, which I think we will keep together for many years to come. We push each other day in and day out, we give advice to each other, support, and actual technical help for any matter concerning the three pillars of life.
We have a weekly agenda on issues each one can improve, and once a week we meet up to discuss all these issues. We give actual (hard and cruel) feedback to each other in case someone does a mistake or stays behind on a goal he has set. We give constant re-enforcement and we make sure to keep improving our mindsets day by day.
The total combined value of this team is huge and I know for sure that I wouldn’t have achieved many of my goals if I didn’t have such a team.
Relationship –
After the second half of the year, I gave my full attention to my wealth building process so the social front took a hit. It’s not really easy to keep pushing in every direction, so I decided that money > relationships and as they say in wallstreetplayboys:
“If you could choose between $10M and the love of your life, what color would your Ferrari be?”
I had to do something radical about it, so I lost quite a few of my acquaintances, I decreased my nightlife considerably and my social circle as well. I don’t consider this to be a mistake, and I cannot take a definitive position on whether this is good or bad. It really depends on which phase you are in your life. If you want to make a lot of money (which you should), there are some things you really need to let go.
Especially in my case, where all my business ventures are Internet based, a big number of average people won’t help me a lot.
Relationships 2016
Well, to be honest, I don’t intend to change my model very much. I want to be able to see a few, very few people more often because they have an overall healthy mindset and we can both exchange some value.
Pretty poor goals hah? I know.
But to tell you the truth, I don’t miss nightlife or interaction with average people that much. What I really miss and I would like to improve on, is increasing my social circle with people of better quality.
But this can be done with two ways. Either “hunt them down” and trying to befriend them (which is a totally legit procedure for some people), or raise my value and make my life and the acquisition of such people easier. I will attempt a balance of those two methods (with a bit more effort on the second one).
Wealth
Wealth wise, 2015 was probably one of the best years for me. Scratch that. The best year for me.
Wealth +
Although I cannot say I am rich (yet), I made a lot more money than all the other previous years.
I educated myself a lot, with many books, countless articles, and hundreds of hours to discuss business issues with friends and partners.
Amazon remains my main income stream. I continue to publish books on KDP, and although my income took a big blow with the royalty payment Amazon implemented this summer, I am pretty sure I’ll make it to previous numbers in a few months period.
I have revised all my tactics, I improved the quality of the books I publish and I have new efficient methods to build my audience – more on the Amazon KDP on a future post, stay tuned.
Besides Amazon, I have also started two new blogs, one on the fitness/nutrition niche and one on the wines niche. Both of them have a steady growth, but they are relatively new, and they don’t produce much income, as of yet.
As a leverage, I have implemented all the principles I mention in this post, which increased my productivity many times over. I am fully productive for the biggest part of the day/week and I invest a lot of time on learning and trying new things.
Overall I am very pleased with my progress, considering the extremely bad background from which I started and the shitty social conditioning that was screwing my mind for the last 30+ years.
Wealth –
Although I said I am pleased with my progress, this is not entirely true.
I made some good progress this year, but for my standards, this isn’t enough. There were moments I put my short-term pleasure over my long-term success. There were times I snapped and skipped some quite productive times for some *un-productive* ones.
Moreover, I lost almost a third of the year by socializing too much, and having too many leisure hours during the day. Although, there is not much I can do about those hours now, it’s good to mention here just in case I save some precious hours from your time.
If I had to re-live the whole year from the beginning, I would spend a lot fewer hours on leisure and a lot more hours on being productive.
Wealth 2016
Having said that, I will maintain the current productivity momentum I have at this point throughout 2016 as well. I believe that I am currently in a very good balance between social life (minimum) and wealth building (maximum).
I invest more than 50 hours per week for all my ventures (counted and logged with software) and if you think this is easy (because of the social conditioning you have heard that 80-90 hours per week is achievable), then you should try implementing it.
Working 100% focused on what you do for 50 hours a week ain’t a game. Try it for a week by using some pomodoro software or a timer and let me know on this 😉
As my knowledge increases, I am sure my efficiency will increase as well. My overall decision making and implementing skill will be more accurate, with faster and better results. I don’t expect that to become overnight, but I definitely notice a slow but steady improvement as time passes.
More specifically, I want to grow all these ventures up to a point that will allow me to have a steady stream of income without putting a lot of hours, so that I can build some new ones as well. I want by the end of the year to make 5 figures per month, which I believe is totally achievable if everything goes as planned – stay around for the 2016 edition of the same post to see if I made it or not.
Conclusion
From every perspective 2015, was my best year up to now.
Although I did not achieve all the goals I set, I made a big progress, both mindset and technically wise. I am way better with people, with business and with my health than last year. Actually, I am a better person overall, not in the sense average people think (you know, good heart and all this crap), but my total value is greater than it was last year. Results are improving fast and after some point, compounding will take over and the growth will be exponential.
At the same time, somewhere in the world…
In case you have made a similar assessment, I would really like to hear about it, so that I can make some comparisons and possibly draw some useful conclusions.
