Another year down and another chance to reflect on action and inaction. This past year has felt lacking in many ways, at least on the surface. I think this is mostly the case when viewed through the lens of this blog. I certainly didn’t do much with the blog this year, and to be honest, barely tracked my goals. From that perspective, the year was rather meh. However, I think there are still some positives to take away from the year when sitting down to review it. So, without further delay, let’s get into it.
Welcome to another Year in Review post where I spend a bit of time reflecting on what happened last year to hopefully position myself better for the year to come. If you are interested in past years, check out my 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 reviews.
My method
As a refresher, I manage my yearly goals in Evernote with a note titled fittingly `2024 Goals`. I then refer to this note throughout the year, documenting accomplishments, adding new items, and providing clarifications as needed.
When reflecting on the progress of my goals at the end of 2024, I honestly struggle to even remember what they are. That proves I had a fleeting relationship with them throughout the year.
To help with my goals, each year I choose a word that will be used as my core guiding principle or theme for the year.
2024’s Word of the Year: Multithread
This past year my theme was multithreading. The reason I chose this was because coming out of 2023 I felt I had dedicated too much of my professional time to a single client. This resulted in me having too narrow of a focus and ultimately limiting my opportunities and impact.
My intent in 2024 was to go back to supporting multiple clients and providing value across the organization. My role as CTO demanded I commit to more than one client and I intended to make that a reality. When looking back at the year, I do feel as though I did extract myself from the single client mindset and did engage in meaningful work across multiple clients and the company. However, I do feel there are areas I still could’ve improved.
Professional Areas
This section covers both my full-time role in my career as well as the part-time work I do here on this blog and for personal branding.
In 2024 I continued my role as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Dignari, however a major plot twist developed toward the end of the year. At the end of October it was announced that EY had acquired Dignari. The company I joined as employee 2 or 3, and helped build to 300 employees, was sold. I was now facing a new reality in a firm of over 400,000 employees.
While we are only a few months into the acquisition, I’m generally excited about the opportunities ahead. I may talk more about this in coming blog posts. In general, I do feel some of my professional (Dignari) goals were derailed a bit by the acquisition news. Some of the aspirations I had for the company were put on hold as my focus shifted to the acquisition itself and understanding who, what and how the new company did business.
Going back to my multithread theme, in terms of delivery I did find a way to successfully reduce my time at a single client to also provide significant support for an additional client. This allowed me to do both tactical work and strategic work while keeping my hands in multiple technical domains. I also spent a fair amount of time on corporate work prior to the acquisition. After learning about the acquisition, I spent most of my time on transitioning the business.
❌ Achieve an additional technical certification
2024 turned out to be a lot like 2023. Meaning, I didn’t get this one done…again. Client demands and general company commitments prevented me from achieving this goal for the second year running. Adding insult to injury I’m now staring at the recertification deadline for my AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification which I achieved in 2022. So, if I intend to make this a goal in 2025 I’ll have to update it to reflect the renewal of my existing certification instead of achieving a new one.
❌ Publish more than 10 blog posts on personal blog
I dialed back my goal from 52 blog posts in previous years to just 10 hoping that I’d hit the mark. This is the same goal I failed to reach in 2023, and I failed again this past year. However, in 2024 I did publish one blog post, which is sadly noteworthy. This remains laughable and I should really do better.
🟡 Cultivate professional network
The intent of this goal was to get back out there and socialize with industry colleagues. This included attending more industry events and reaching out to leaders at other companies for impromptu discussions and touchpoints.
I feel I did ok with this but probably didn’t live up to the real spirit of the goal. So, I’ll rank this as a “maybe” completed. I attended a few industry events and did engage with folks on LinkedIn, but I could’ve certainly done better. While this may not be a specific goal in 2025, I feel I’ll do much more of this in the coming year, especially after our acquisition.
Personal Areas
Below is how my personal goals shaked out last year.
✅ Maintain healthy lifestyle and complete all annual health checks
This is a recurring goal now that I’m over 50. It’s incredibly important to make sure you have these regularly occurring checks of your health so that you can (hopefully) identify any issues or anomalies as they start to take root. Think of it as proactive monitoring.
cut back on alcohol
The biggest lifestyle change I made this year was to cut back significantly on the amount of alcohol in my life. While I wasn’t planning on going completely dry I did want to cut back on the amount of alcohol I consumed in 2024, purely for the health benefits. I’ve seen a lot of videos and scientific studies on the negative effects of alcohol on your body so I felt it was time I stepped back from the nightly glass of wine (or 2, or 3).
As you can see in the screen shot below from my Streaks app, I did a great job with this one actually.
114 days straight without a drink. That’s impressive. And 327 of 343 days (343 days because I didn’t start tracking until Jan 22nd) without alcohol in 2024 is quite amazing. On the days that I did have a drink, it was limited to only a glass or two for special occasions. I haven’t had that dry of a year since high school.
Here are some of the other health goals I completed this past year.
- Maintain consistent target weight – This is always a struggle at the end of the year with Christmas cookies and all of the snacks, but overall I did really well with this over the course of the year and stayed +/- 3 lbs. of my target weight.
- Go to the dentist regularly – I went to the dentist approximately 5 times this past year. Some were scheduled cleanings while others were work that needed to be completed. Overall, it was good to have that final checkup where they tell you there is nothing else to be done at the moment.
- Go to the gym – I was very consistent with this, especially in the second half of the year. I also went back to my old schedule where I’d go to the gym in the morning before work. I was finding it difficult to motivate myself to go to the gym after a long day of work, especially given the long hours working from home. To fix this, I started getting up at 5 AM every day to make this happen. My schedule roughly looked like this:
- 5:00 AM – wake up and get ready for the gym
- 5:15 AM – check email and look over the work calendar to prep for the day ahead (and drink a cup of coffee to get the juices going)
- 5:45 AM – head to the gym
- 6:00 AM – work out
- 7:15 AM – head home
- 7:30 AM – shower and get ready for the work day
- 8:00 AM – start the official work day
- Health checks – Here are some of the other health checks I accomplished this past year. I have a Google sheet where I track all of these so that I can better analyze my health stats over time and plan upcoming doctor visits. I know, a bit over the top but what else would you expect?
- Shingles shot – I finally got my Shingles vaccination completed! This is one I’ve been telling myself needs to get done but never got around to doing it. Glad that’s checked off.
- Annual physical
- Blood work
- Eye exam
- Full body skin exam
- One that I missed this year is a hearing exam. I already know I’m going to fail it but I have to get this checked off in the new year.
❌ Read 12 books
I typically have a reading goal on my list and this past year I throttled back to only one book per month. Unfortunately, given what I’ve stated earlier about work commitments, I missed this goal. I did read some fantastic books, but I’d really like to find more time to read in 2025.
Here are the books I read this year:
- February – The Innovator’s Dilemma (Clayton Christensen)
- February – Elon Musk (Walter Isaacson) ❤️
- April – Superintelligence (Nick Bostrom)
- September – The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need (Andrew Tobias)
- October – The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel)
- December – Chip War (Chris Miller) ❤️
❤️ = a favorite
As you can see, I didn’t read any fiction books this year. I tend to read non-fiction so this isn’t exactly surprising, however, over the last couple of years I’ve tried to sprinkle a few fiction books in for good measure. In 2025 I’ll try to add some fiction titles to the mix.
All of these books were really good and I recommend them all. Of course Walter Isaacson’s book, Elon Musk, was a favorite. He is my favorite author after all. Re-reading Superintelligence (this time all the way through) was very interesting given the latest advancements in AI. I bought this book many years ago (pre-ChatGPT) and it was intriguing to revisit some of the predictions and paths for AI that were presented in the book. Finally, Chip War is a phenomenal book that any geek should truly enjoy.
✅ Practice Spanish every day
I continued my journey of learning Spanish. I’m not fully committed to this as I only use the Duolingo app (streak of 879 days) and only complete a lesson or two per day. So, my journey will be a long one.
Of note, my wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary this year with a trip to Spain. I was quite happy with my ability to speak some Spanish while on our trip. There’s something quite fulfilling when you are able to communicate with someone in their native tongue. There were a number of times where I got mixed up, or couldn’t fully understand, but I kept putting myself out there and by the end of the trip I was definitely improving. Immersion truly is the best way.
✅ Complete daily habits
As mentioned earlier, I use an app called Streaks to track my daily habits. It definitely helps me maintain accountability and provides metrics on my progress over time. Here are the main habits that I tracked in 2024. Most of these I would accomplish every day while others were more sporadic.
- Take blood pressure meds
- Take Vitamin D
- Walk 1.5 miles
- Skin care routine
- No alcohol
- Vegetarian
- Go to gym
- Walk the dogs
- Learn Spanish
- Read a book
- Learn AI
✅ Make adjustments to financial portfolio
I wanted to carve out some time this past year to review my financial portfolio and make any necessary adjustments. In addition to normal housekeeping and adjusting my investment allocations, I also opened a high yield savings account. I felt this provided a good way to park some of my money and earn a respectable and consistent 4-5% interest. If you are interested, I’m using the Marcus app by Goldman Sachs. This is just one more tool I’m using to make my money work for me.
Summary
There you have it. My look back at the past year.
2024 was a year of major life changes both professionally and personally and I feel I’m in a good position for 2025.
Professionally, the small company where I was the CTO was acquired and I now find myself serving as an executive at one of the Big Four. This will certainly be an adjustment but I feel it does open a world of options for me and in many ways allows me the opportunity to reset and set out on a new course.
Personally I continued to evolve, and I think improve, as a husband, father, and human. I’m happy with where I’m at with my healthy lifestyle, especially my commitment and discipline to effectively stop drinking alcohol. I’ve also checked out of the negative news cycle and limited my exposure to the ebb and flow of sensationalism in the media. I’m much more grounded in facts rather than opinions and find myself much happier in being more selective with what I spend my time engaging with.
With all of the negativity out there, I hope you join me in finding the good within each other and celebrating the amazing advancements of our society. Here’s to a solid 2024 and the makings of an opportunistic 2025.
Cheers!