2026 Goals and Systems

Every year I look forward to this: the slow unwind at the end of the year. It takes a few days to get over the guilt of moving slower and letting go of all the normal things to hyperfocus on. The body needs time to react and unclench.

But now we’re here. And really, what’s not to like? The world is a wonder and life is amazing. There are good trends in progress, some a bit further ahead than others, and post-Christmas is the time to take stock and pick up the slack in a few areas. Let’s do that.

One thing I think of often is James Clear’s line from Atomic Habits: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” For the areas where the goals are a product of habit and lifestyle and long term change, I’m focusing more on the systems than the goals, and differentiating where possible.

Health

Priority number one. I’m not in a bad spot, but not a good one either. I’m just: healthy enough. I’ve spent years at “enough” and wanting more and trying all sorts of things. Let’s try some new things.

System:

• Daily tracking. This is the big one. Every year I try some daily habit and every year I secretly hope it will be the panacea to replace determination and provide consistency. This year it’s daily tracking of what I eat. Doesn’t matter how little or how bad. Every day I will write it down and evaluate against calories and protein.
• Proteinmaxxing. Eating enough protein to build muscle is hard, actually. It means 200 grams minimum. Focusing on that alone is enough to make some changes.
• Don’t eat after dinner. Focus as much as possible on winding down well and getting good sleep.
• Water. Drink lots of it.
• Get the family involved. We all need to make a move away from ultraprocessed food.

Goals:

• 18% BF. Get back to 18% body fat. If I track well, this should happen before summer ideally.
• Soda Cut. A miraculous change from last year was a huge move away from Diet Coke. Olipop and Zevia have mostly taken their place and I plan for this trend to continue. Occasionally? Fine. But the goal is to move “occasionally” to “rarely”.
• There’s all sorts of other markers I care about that aren’t goals at this level, but will improve rapidly. RHR below 60 again, etc. etc. You know I’ll be tracking them.

Fitness

The diet changes are the most obvious need, but it goes hand in hand with athletic activity. I always stray towards strength and away from things like VO2 max. My body is built for one and not the other and I like the rush of success as much as anyone. Fortunately, strength training is ever more important as you get older.

System:

• Daily walks. Up at 6am. 30 min at least 5 days a week. Just make this part of the baseline.
• Workouts 3x week. 3 strength workouts a week minimum. Focusing on 5-8 rep range for compound stuff, higher for accessories, pushing towards failure, supersets for HIIT, etc. etc. I’m loving kettlebells. I love sprints.
• Never miss two days. Missing a day occasionally is going to happen. But don’t miss two days in a row.

Goals:

• 7:00 Mile. It’s been a few years since I got under 7:00. Would like to do it again.
• Keep my strength. No number. Just strong.
• Freestanding handstand. This one’s a little out there! I can do some handstand pushups against a wall, but I’ve never learned to have the balance and I think it would be a fun thing to train for.

Wealth

AI is rearranging our world. If you didn’t feel it in 2025, you will in 2026. AI is still at the level of a conspiracy. Even if a ton of people are using it, they still don’t see its transformative power. That belief is still a much smaller, much more technical group of people, but the revelation is coming.

Systems:

• Keep leaning into conspiracies. I keep seeing conspiracy as one of the keys to changing the world. Companies have a thesis on the future they’re trying to help create. Some are strong, some are weak.
• Focus on AI. Continue to build and be on the leading edge of what’s possible here. I’m convinced that Claude Code is the most important tool in the world right now.
• Agency. One of the best questions I heard this year was: What would you do if you had 10x more agency? It became a meme, but it’s so relevant at this moment precisely because humanity has unleashed new superpowers. It’s important to try them out.

Goals:

• Smooth life transitions. This is a big year for us! We’re doing home renovations and moving our oldest daughter into high school. Making all of this go smoothly without much financial stress is critical.
• Make one dollar from a new project. This is always a goal: side projects that become additional sources of revenue. I started working on a couple of ideas in earnest last year. One codebase is getting mature and another is not far behind. Making this happen is a key barrier for the direction of the next ten years: the threshold is revenue.
• Discernment. When anybody can create anything, the barriers are different than in the old world. Taste and judgement become vastly underrated. Storytelling and narrative value increase too. But these are skills, like any other, and they’re skills I want to focus on developing.

Social and Spiritual

This is the breathe of life. The earlier stuff might mostly make me better, but this is where I get to make me and others better.

Systems:

• Make our house more lovely and welcoming. Part of the plan for our home renovations is more indoor/outdoor living space, because we love being outside. Another is that our kitchen is just old. But the main thing is making open space that’s comfortable for hosting more people.
• Zero’d in focus. Context switching is a delightful skill on a laptop, but not with people. When it’s time to be social, be social. When someone is sitting in front of you, or next to you, that’s what matters.
• More dates. And not just with my wife (but her first!!) A date is simply a planned meeting. Reach out! Make things happen.
• Adoration. I used to love Adoration, then life got busy and it became sporadic. Our Church had a 24 hour adoration during Advent and my hour til midnight was one of the highlight of the season. More of this.

Goals:

• Host more. Let our house be a place for gathering. Friends, family, kids, formal, informal, doesn’t matter. A house comes alive when it’s filled with laughter and talk.
• Be uplifting. Help meaningfully, not because I need something back but because it’s the right thing to do.
• More romance. Does this mean my wife? Yes, yes it does! But also not just her. Oscar Wilde said “the very essence of romance is uncertainty.” Romance also means the serendipity of afternoons spent naming cloud shapes lying in the backyard with the kids or of meeting an acquaitance in a coffeeshop and spending an hour to get to know them more. Romance in the pure send of the world is one of the elements that makes life great.

That feels like more than enough! One last thing, I’m still locked into the next ten years. and I’m starting to think a lot more about 50. Putting this out there now: I still want to bench 300+ and run a sub 8 minute mile at 50.

Now let’s make the year great!