2024 Reflections & Lessons for 2025
2024 Reflections
The holidays is a time for reflection. Away from the typical distractions of the first 50 weeks of the year, I can sit back to take stock of how the year went and how I want the next year to go. 2024 felt especially like the start of a new chapter in my life and was largely defined by two exciting life developments - the arrival of Serena and the start of a new job.
I also turned 35. As the midpoint of my thirties, 35 felt a little more meaningful than your typical post-30 birthday. Knowing that half of my thirties was over, it was a reminder that the clock is constantly ticking. It’s easy to lose track if you don’t pay attention. At the same time, I still have another five years of my thirties to go. A lot can happen in that time. My life has changed a lot over the last five years. I’ve changed a lot over the last five years. I’m excited to see where the next five years take me – more travel, more marathons, and maybe more kids (jk jk jk. if you were quiet, you might’ve been able to hear Tiffany screaming NOOOO through ether).
2024 was also full of reminders that personal growth is hard. Improving yourself and building lasting, consistent new habits takes time. You measure yourself over the course of months and years, not days and weeks. In 2022, I was smoking every night, going to bed after midnight, and sleeping in nearly every day. In 2023, I pivoted HARD the other direction and attempted my best David Goggins-lite impression trying to wake up at 5 am every day. In 2024, I settled somewhere in between. Life with two babies is hard. You have to constantly adjust, stay flexible, and make it work. You go through different seasons in life, each with its own requirements and challenges. You do your best and try not to hold on too hard to the past. Some days you just need the extra sleep. Instead of berating myself for being a lazy POS for sleeping in, I practice some self-compassion and try to make the best of the rest of the day.
Growth.
Lessons for 2025
One of the questions I ask myself at the end of every year is “what new lessons have I learned this year?”
This year, I found the most pertinent lessons were not new. They were rehashes of the same lessons from years past. This told me a few things (i) there are only a handful of important, worthwhile ideas out there. Consume enough self-help / productivity books or podcasts and you’ll have been exposed to most of them. (ii) Mastering them is really, really, really hard.
Poet William Butler Yeats beautifully put it:
“Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward”
You try, you fail, and you try again. It’s repetitive but that’s the only way those lessons ever stick. Every step takes you higher up and around the spiral staircase where you inevitably face some form of a problem that you thought you had figured out before. As you level up, so do your problems. You never fully get rid of them, but you can learn to deal with them a little better from a higher perspective every time.
Here are the top lessons I re-learned in 2024:
Don’t compare: You’re never going to win this game. There’s always someone with more money, a faster race time, a [insert anything...] The only person you should be comparing yourself against is you from yesterday. Focus on being a little bit better than that person.
Give up your need for control: Life with kids is an exercise in being flexible. The more you try to exert control, the less likely you are to get what you want. This applies to children and life generally. You’ll be surprised at how much easier life gets when you loosen the grip on the steering wheel a little bit.
Less is more: Shiny object syndrome is a major problem for all of us. It’s easy to think that adding more will improve our lives. But the opposite is often true. We need to remove the unnecessary and create space to do less, better.
Life is flux: Change is the only constant in life. Everything you’re going through, the highs and the lows, will eventually pass. You never know where the journey of life will take you. All you can do is buckle down and enjoy the ride.
Consistency over intensity: When starting a new project or venture, it’s natural to be highly motivated up-front leading to a lot of early gains. But it’s hard to maintain that initial intensity and you’ll eventually lose steam. Instead, long-term success comes from the boring day-to-day consistency of showing up every day and doing the thing you said you were going to do. Instead of consistently great, try to be great at being consistent. Consistency compounds.
Good things take time: Be patient with anything that you’re trying to achieve. This doesn’t mean you should procrastinate or waste time. It just means that you don’t need to be in a rush as long as you’re doing the thing and being consistent. Trust the process and give yourself the time it takes for great things to happen.
Appreciate the little moments: We’re all busy. It’s easy to let the endless responsibilities overwhelm you and take you away from the things that really matter. Every day is filled with countless little moments that can bring joy if you only remember to pay attention. Whether that’s spending time with your kids, a leisurely walk with your dog, or diving into a hobby that you love. Those are the moments that make life worth living so don’t miss out.
Wish everyone a 2025 full of joy and success!
Get after it.
Kevin