Jan 2, 2023 10 min read

2022 Annual Review and 2023 Goals

Somehow we find ourselves at the end of 2022 and the start of 2023 already. What a year it's been.

I've spent a lot of time reflecting on 2022 and the unique opportunities I was presented with. This time last year there was simply no way of predicting the turns life had in store for me. In a lot of ways 2022 turned out to be my best year yet with very few regrets in the way it turned out. I write that with some sense of trepidation because I'm conscious of unintentionally coming across like I'm bragging about how rosy my life feels right now, especially considering the ongoing cost of living crisis.

A Year of Adventure

2022 turned out to be a year of adventure for me. I was fortunate enough to travel the world for extended periods of time. I spent a couple of weeks in places like Macedonia and the United States and then spent over three months in Australia. I learned a whole bunch about how to travel long haul and what life could be like living on the opposite side of the world. While all of this travel was work related, I did manage to spend a bit of time on holiday in Australia getting lost in Sydney. Prior to going to Australia I never really understood why so many British people are drawn there. Having spent those three months there I now totally understand why people relocate. I could imagine life down under quite easily and I would never get bored of the beauty of Bondi and surrounding beaches either.

Whole week in Sydney already, such an amazing place ☀️ pic.twitter.com/yDFQXIVOvW
— Tom Ross (@tmrss_) May 11, 2022

Coming home to drizzly Manchester after spending all that time in Australia did make me reevaluate whether this is a place I want to continue calling home. Whatever I decide I know for sure that I want to be close to the ocean. It's a feeling that's hard to explain and even harder to beat. Even though my time in Australia was spent during their autumn and winter, and our spring and summer, the weather was typically warmer and nicer than it was here in the UK. I can only imagine the heat of that part of Australia during their actual summer - Perhaps this would change my sentiment towards the country.

Australia allowed me to feel the most isolated I have ever felt. While my girlfriend did travel with me for a few weeks, the rest of the time I was on my own out there. I was in a completely different timezone in a city where I knew nobody. On the surface this may sound daunting and bad - Who wants to be isolated after all? But the reality was I found this to be freeing. For the first time I understood why people travel solo. I no longer feel awkward when wanting to eat out alone and I can sit in a place and enjoy the moment on my own. I also now truly understand how comfortable I can be in my own company. I love experiencing new places with other people, but now I would no longer feel uncomfortable with doing this on my own if it were a place that other people didn't want or weren't able to go to.

Sometimes in life you know you're experiencing something unique and special, an opportunity that's unlikely to happen again. You know you need to be in the moment and fully experience it because it may not happen again. It's bittersweet but makes you appreciate it more.

Health and Wellness in 2022

Having turned 30 in 2021, I became more conscious of the fact that I need to make more of an effort with my health. While I didn't and still don't have any major health issues, I also know that if I look after my health properly I will avoid a lot of the health issues I've seen people a little older than me plagued by. All of this is obvious of course, but it's knowledge that we take for granted.

For the first half of 2022 my efforts for my health were inconsistent and lazy. My goal for 2022 was to build consistency and routine and this was hit and miss. I spent a chunk of time while in Australia enjoying swimming and hitting the gym, but this wasn't consistent or with any goals in mind. Work was a convenient excuse, but I started to see the first signs that not all was well within my own body. After I got back from Australia I knew I needed to take my health more seriously so I decided to hire a personal trainer to course correct the trajectory I was on.

This has turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made. Since starting this in September I have built gym and health consistency for the first time in my life. There's something freeing and liberating about being able to outsource all the thinking to someone else and the accountability of needing to show up and get it done is extremely motivating. I'm getting stronger and I'm looking and feeling a lot better too.

At the start of 2022 I also made the decision to go vegan. I was a little nervous about this because of the associated stigma and I was unsure of my own willpower. This has mostly been straightforward. There's been some instances where it's been difficult to find something to eat, like in Macedonia, but I always managed to find something. Alongside this I just feel like I have a clear conscience when it comes to my own impact on the world and animals. I haven't seen any detrimental impact on my diet as a result of this change, but I haven't looked under the hood and had any blood work done. Admittedly this wasn't just a health conscious change, this was something I had to do for my mental health and my conscience. I'm certain that removing some of the unhealthy foods I was eating has been a net positive.

For 2022 I wanted to sleep more. This was inspired by a number of Andrew Huberman's podcasts on sleep. For 2021 I averaged 7 hours 12 minutes and in 2022 I averaged 7 hours 8 minutes. A very slight decrease which is disappointing although I'm not surprised. It's difficult to get a good, consistent nights sleep when you're travelling around and have that feeling of being relentlessly busy. In some sense I'm actually quite pleased I managed to still maintain over 7 hours sleep despite how busy I was in 2022.

The Reading Challenge

Every year I set myself the challenge of reading 30 books throughout the year. Unsurprisingly for 2022 I didn't quite hit that target again, but I did manage to finish reading 28 books. I'm pretty happy that I managed to get so close to my goal of 30 books as it's my best ever since 2013 where I managed 29.

Looking at the data, I'm averaging about 2 books per month when I need to be reading on 2.5 books on average to meet my goal. This is a 20% additional reading I would need to introduce to achieve my goal.

We can see in the graph above that there's certain months, namely May and June that my reading fell off a cliff. This was when my travelling was most acute and work was at its most intense. I simply had very little desire to read. A late rally in December, where I had two weeks off for Christmas and plenty of time to get stuck into some books, wasn't enough to hit my goal.

Looking at the books I read in 2022 there's a real eclectic mix. Unlike previous years, I didn't read a single book that I thought was rubbish. I've either become better at picking up books that I think I'm going to like or I took less risks when it came to trying new books.

I did want to read 5 fiction books but only managed 2.

I had 5 books that I gave 5 star reviews. I reserve 5 star reviews for books which either shift or alter my thinking in some profound way and tend to stick in my memory for a long time to come. Those five books are as follows:

Self help books were evidently the best way to get to a 5 star review in 2022... In all seriousness I found all of the above books to be inspiring, thought provoking and have recommended them already to close friends and family.

2023 Goals

My goals for 2023 are iterations on what I had been working on in 2022. These are evolutions rather than revolutions that I want to implement.

The Blog

I didn't publish a lot on this blog in 2022 but when I did it was something that was at the forefront of my mind or something people had been talking to me about on a regular basis. I made the decision early on that I didn't want to publish something for the sake of it, and will continue this into 2023. In fairness I didn't actually set any goals in 2022 for publishing here because it just hasn't been something I have wanted to set a target on. All my favourite blogs I read have inconsistent publishing schedules and only put something out there when they have something great to share.

Separately I am going to stop publishing and using Medium and instead crosspost my content onto Substack. I will do a separate post on the reasons behind this, not that it matters all that much. The short answer is that I just don't think Medium is a good platform anymore and Substack is far more accessible and useful to read and discover content.

Health Goals

Last year I didn't really have any proper goals for my health beyond building consistency in the gym. This year I want to change that and have a mixture of habit and outcome focused goals.

At this point working with my personal trainer we've devised three goals to turbocharge the first twelve weeks of the year, which are the following:

Strength -> Bench 100kg.
Movement -> Average 10k steps a day every day.
Weight Loss -> Lose 10kg to reach goal weight of 100kg.
Myfitnesspal -> Ensure daily logging of all food and drink consumed.

After those twelve weeks we will reassess where we're at, whether we achieved those goals and then set some longer term goals for the remainder of the year. I'm not sure whether it's possible to gain enough strength to beck 100kg while cutting that much weight in twelve weeks, but I want to aim for it even if I miss the goal.

Separately I've become acutely aware that I haven't actually been to the doctors for a check up in 5 or 6 years, and that check up back then was my first in fifteen years. It's safe to say I'm a little neglectful when it comes to health check ups. I don't know why, I just forget to get it done.

This year I want to get a check up and also get a blood test, something I've never had done before, just to see what's going on under the hood and make sure everything's ticking over okay. This may seem like an odd thing to put on a publically readable list of goals for the new year, but I think putting it out there visible to the world is good for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I feel accountable to whatever I write in these posts, whether I achieve them or not. I don't really want to get to this time next year and have to explain that I never went for a simple check up. That seems silly.

Secondly I feel like men in general are pretty bad at just going to the doctors. We carry minor injuries and ailments for years without addressing them. Women seem to just have a much healthier relationship with their doctors and getting checked up. If by speaking up about just going for a check up helps other guys just go and do the same, I think that can only be a positive thing.

Another Year of Adventure

As I said at the start, 2022 turned out to be a year of adventure. It's hard to say what 2023 will have in store in that way. What I know for sure though is that I want to make space for time-off from work. I want to take a proper holiday in the country side or a holiday in the sun somewhere. Someplace where I can recharge mid year and check out from the mania of daily life. Alongside this I want to be better at taking pictures and capturing videos without feeling oddly self conscious about it.

2022 turned out to be a blast and I loved every minute of it. If 2023 turns out to be even half as good as 2022 then I will be in for a great year.

Tom