For the last 4 years, I’ve tracked my mood with the Daylio app, and for the last 2 years, I’ve tracked my sleep with an Oura ring. I used to tag days as “Rad” or 5/5 if I accomplished by habit goals that day. 2024 was the first year that I started inputting my true mood, because Daylio does analysis on which activities actually improve or detract from my mood; it’s really interesting data!

🔙

In 2024, I had 67 Rad days, 218 Good days, 70 Meh days, 8 Bad days, and 3 Awful days.

🔙

In 2023, I had 27 Rad days, 282 Good days, 46 Meh days, 9 Bad days, and 1 Awful day.

So, it looks like I had slightly fewer Rad+Good days and more Meh days, but it’s hard to compare since 2023 was still a year I was tracking habits rather than mood. I find this data super interesting, since it takes into account impact to mood before or after an activity. Time spent together with Michelle improves my mood every day (great sign :)) while playing volleyball (a new hobby I picked up this year) makes me super happy too!

Sleep is a super interesting one. Some excerpts and thoughts on my Oura data: my average sleep schedule has me sleeping between 12-2am and waking up 8-10am. I average about 8 hours in bed and 7 hours actually sleeping per night. I haven’t been able to knock this extra hour it takes being in bed to actually fall asleep yet. I’m most active around 12pm (makes sense, as I have to get up to eat). My most active month was January and my most active day is usually Friday.

When I look back on all the pictures and things I did in 2024, it stands out that 100% of my favorite things on the list are done with Meesh and friends. I did a lot of travel including Taiwan, Tokyo/Hakuba, Puerto Vallarta, Seoul, Salt Laky City, New York, and Montreal. Turning 30 this year, it feels like we’re on top of the world. We have more means than we did in our twenties and a lot of people in my community are getting more active, deeper in their careers, and our time is spent much more intentionally. I’m really loving life. At this point I feel like I know what I like and want to do, and its just a matter of executing + balancing stacking new habits and systems on top. For years, I’ve balanced my own career, my family, and my relationship with Meesh. In the last two years, I feel like I’ve added more for myself, including exercise (like lifting) and hobbies (like poker, cooking, and coffee). This next year, I hope to add more time for my friends. I think it’ll be a challenge to balance with all the other things that take my time, but I want to be committed to these people, because I value them so much.

2024 Reflections:

Favorite Things in 2024:

🗓️

Excerpted from 2023 reflection:

Not really sure if its recency bias, but I enjoyed the New York trip because we tried a lot of new things and saw a lot of friends through it. Other aspects of the year seem to blur together and might be summed up as “fun weekends” but New York felt very distinct since it was such a long period and consistent adventure. Even the long weekends that I took to visit people and catch up (e.g. boys trip to Austin, BBB Tahoe trip, UW Mafia trip in Joshua Tree) all seemed a bit short. The Asia trip was really fun as well with all our friends and constantly experiencing something new.

Maybe the lesson here is in trying new things. Even though catching up with friends is fun in town or out of state, it seems like the most memorable moments were when I was out of my comfort zone and trying something or somewhere new.

This is so interesting when comparing my highlights of each 2024 month. I loved spending time with friends, making new memories that we can reminisce on later. It didn’t really matter if we were doing new things or not, but it was just time spent together intentionally. This still resonates and I’m committed to doing more of this in 2025 and prioritizing friends higher than I have in the past probably 10 years.

Weddings were great, I loved seeing my friend’s love. Travel was great, novel places with friends is always fun. Large gatherings of friends like my birthday, BBB travels, and Mafia retreat were so good. I love my community.

Least Favorite Things in 2024

Being concussed for 2-4 weeks near Thanksgiving absolutely sucked. Always wear a helmet, always consider safety. Being hungover sucked, reconsidering excessive drinking.

🗓️

2023 Goals, summarized:

🟡Financial: a mix of A (bought a new car!) and fail (spent more in expenses than I wanted initially, but overall I’m not upset about this)
🟢Relationship: B (a trip just the 2 of us). Asia, plus moving in together!
🔴Health: Fail. I was targeting 3x per week (156/year), but ended up doing: Worked out 62x, Stretched 57x, body weight ~150, body fat % ~11%
🟢Fun: Net profitable in poker (+$1K!) and hosted 4x omakase
🟢Travel: B counting my trip to Puerto Vallarta (4/7 of: trip w/ Shawn, ✅ Jasmine/Evanny, ✅Meesh, SanFrands retreat, ✅Mafia retreat, ✅trip to NY, trip to Seattle). Bonus for BBB trip would get it to 5/7 so I count it as a success
🟢Career: A goal (+$1K generated from coaching on Leland!)