How to make the most out of 2025
Making the next year the best so far as a founder or investor
The beauty of time is that we all have the same amount of it. The difference is how we use it. Consider how an typical western life breaks down:
The average person lives 78 years. We spent 28.3 years of our life sleeping. That’s almost a third of our life but 30% of us struggle to sleep well. We spent 10.5 years of our life working but over 50% of us want to leave our current jobs. Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money but you can never get more time. We spend 9 years on TV and social media. We spend 6 years doing chores. We spend 4 years eating and drinking. We spend 3.5 years in education. We spend 2.5 years grooming. We spend 2.5 years shopping. We spend 1.5 years in child care and we spend 1.3 years commuting.
Subtract all these buckets, and you end up with only 9 years left to your disposal. Luckily you don’t have to live that average life. But how to break out of the default?
Here is what I believe: Successful businesses run on protocols. Sales teams follow qualification protocols. Product teams follow sprint protocols. Quarters and years are reviewed with review protocols.
Yet when it comes to personal development, most people largely operate without systematic protocols or any standardized review processes. The most common way to set personal change is through New Year’s resolutions, often brainstormed on the 1st of January.
During my 20s I kept my New Year’s promise often very simple: Make the next year the best I’ve ever had. It worked for the most years. Only in my 30s I started to think more strategically on how to achieve that.
Having experimented with different review protocols over the last five years, this post will examine:
A systematic way for your annual review
Key exercises for new long-lasting memories
Mental models to leverage
How to know when to make a jump
My personal systems blueprint
I am sharing these both in the hope that you might some of it helpful in the next weeks as you wrap up 2024. But I am equally keen to learn about your favorite personal protocols.
I tried to keep this as short as possible, but while some of these sections reference each other, they are mostly self-contained and can be read individually if you prefer so.
Today, 95% of 2024 is over. Let’s get started.
How to Learn From 2024 With a Year-In-Review
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” - Meg Wheatley
Think of a yearly personal review like pausing during a mountain climb. Maybe you've chosen your peak, plotting each switchback and rest stop with care, calculating the supplies you'll need for the ascent. Or perhaps you're still here at the valley floor, studying the different summits that call to you, each one promising a different view of the world.
Either way, it’s a great idea to pause to read your map, check your compass, and decide whether your current path still leads to where you want to go.
There is no need to spend days on it. But in the end, each year has 8,760 hours and it’s time well invested to make the most out of it. The structure I’ve been using for the last years takes me something between 6 to 8 hours to complete. That's about 0.1% of your year. Pretty good ROI for potentially changing the direction of your life.
There are plenty of templates out there that help you run a yearly review. I’d recommend to pick one that aligns the most with your preferences in time invested and outcomes, and adapt it to make it truly yours.
The structure I’m following is based on the Ultimate Annual Review by former VC turned coach Steve Schlafman. His protocol follows these five key steps:
1) Plot Your Moments & Milestones: Most people sprint through life without looking back. That's a mistake. Memory is unreliable and years blend together unless you take stock. Map out what actually happened this year. You'll be surprised by how many significant moments you've forgotten. The trivial ones tend to occupy our immediate memory, while the meaningful ones often need excavation.
2) Capture Your Reflections & Lessons: The interesting thing about experience is that having it isn't enough. You have to process it. When you examine your successes and failures systematically, patterns emerge. These patterns are valuable. They tell you what actually works for you, not what's supposed to work according to conventional wisdom.
3) Assess Your Current Life: Most people don't know where they stand. They have a vague sense of whether things are "good" or "bad," but that's not enough for meaningful change. You want to be more precise.. Look at each area of your life - work, relationships, health, whatever matters - and be specific about what's working and what isn't.
4) Identify Your Intentions: This isn't about New Year's resolutions. Those fail because they're usually performance art - things we think we should want rather than what we actually want. Instead, ask yourself what you'd work on if you had to spend a decade on it. The answers that scare you a little are usually the interesting ones. They're scary because they matter.
5) Set Your Goals & Action Plan: The difference between intentions and results is usually a good system. Don't just set goals - design the conditions that make achieving them probable rather than merely possible (more on that below). What are the top 3 goals for the next year? What needs to be true for you to succeed?
If you’re interested in following the same structure, you can find the template here and a deep dive (scuba mode) into conducting an annual review on Schlaf's Medium. Note: I am using a previous version as the 2024 update was just released this week. If you’re interested in checking out other templates, there are plenty of alternatives, like the ones from Chris Guillebeau, Sahil Bloom, or an entire Notion template gallery.
Before jump into it, here are three quick tips I’ve found effective for me to reflect:
Going through personal artifacts like calendars or pictures can help your recall and help reflecting. For me, these are iPhone photo library, my calendar, and my diary.
There are several psychological biases that trick our memories. Emotional memories change intensity over time, so logging my mood on a daily basis helps me to rewind without biases like Fading Affect Bias, Rosy Retrospection, or Memory compression.
Lastly, but not least, celebrate this time. Brew your best coffee, wear your favorite clothes, turn on some calming music. As the Canadian psychologist Paul TP Wong says, time spent in self-reflection is never wasted - it is an intimate date with yourself.
The take-away; Most people mistake motion for progress, but real growth happens in the deliberate pauses. Spend some time for a structured annual review in December to reshape your life’s trajectory.
How to Create Long-Lasting Experiences
When asked what’s the biggest mistake we make in life, the Buddha replied: The biggest mistake is you think you have time.
Our time on earth is limited. Consider it a maximization problem: how can you maximize your life fulfillment while minimizing waste?
Some books are straightforward but still profound. ‘Die With Zero’ by Bill Perkins is one of them for me. Bill is an infamous hedge fund manager known for his lavish lifestyle. In this book, he looks at life as an optimization function of positive life experiences.
His key premise is that life is the sum of your experiences. Experiences don’t necessarily mean travel; he rather implies deciding what makes you happy and converting money into those experiences that make you happy (could be building your own company).
Despite Perkins’ ideas and work being inspired by concepts like life energy (translating $ earned/spent into hours worked for it) and the book ‘Your Money or your Life’ - both instrumental to the FIRE movement - he ultimately recommends a very different approach compared to FIRE.
His key ideas are:
1. Maximize your positive life experiences.
2. Start investing in experiences early.
3. Aim to die with zero.
4. Use all available tools to help you die with zero.
5. Give money to your children or to charity when it has the most impact.
6. Don’t live your life on autopilot.
7. Think of your life as distinct seasons.
8. Know when to stop growing your wealth.
9. Take your biggest risks when you have little to lose.
Even if you disagree with his conclusions, living on autopilot is a horrible idea for anyone with a growth mindset. The book offers a wide range of reflective questions and exercises to shape your life proactively.
I have captured all these exercises in a free Notion workbook for you, which I’ll drop in the upcoming weeks. By the end of the workbook, you’ll have a view on which experiences you want to get out of your life and how they should correlate to your work and spending. Grab your copy here.
The first 5 exercises from the workbook are the following:
1) Create Your Experience List: The first step is simple: write down everything you want to experience. Not what you think you should want, but what really excites you. Try to reflect on what gives you joy, and don’t limit yourself to dreaming big. Be specific - bucket lists are usually too generic.
2) Estimate Your Life Span: Here’s an uncomfortable truth: we systematically overestimate how much time we have left. Not just in years but in years of high-quality life where we’re capable of doing what we want. Getting a realistic number isn’t about being morbid - it’s about creating urgency.
3) Distribute Your Life Buckets: Many people might have a list, but no strategic timeline. This is critical, though. Some experiences have natural timing - they require certain physical capabilities, specific ages of kids, or levels of wealth. Map your experiences against these constraints. Many great experiences have a surprisingly narrow window of opportunity.
4) Estimate Your Peak Net Worth: Most financial planning starts with “How much can I accumulate?” instead of “How much do I need for optimal experience?” Your peak net worth should be like the apex of a rocket’s trajectory - high enough to achieve your mission but not so high that you carry unnecessary fuel.
5) Determine Your Spend Curve: Rather than aiming for steady spending, your spending should match your ability to convert money into meaningful experiences. That ability isn’t constant - it peaks at different times for different experiences. The goal isn’t to die with zero dollars - it’s to die with zero regrets about experiences you could have had but didn’t.
The expanded track I’ve also included in the template contains over ten additional exercises, from simple ones like installing a timer on your phone showing how much time you have left to more intensive ones like doing a time audit.
The takeaway: Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have time. Work through these reflective exercises on what you want to get out of life, and update them every few years.
How to Thrive Next Year Using Mental Models
Making the new year a great one isn’t first and foremost about grand resolutions; it’s about growing how you think and act.
Most successful founders and investors don’t rely on willpower — they build systems that align with how the brain works. Mental models, drawn from psychology and decision-making research, offer shortcuts to navigate the year with clarity and purpose.
These are my top 5 mental models to leverage:
1) The Compound Effect: Most people overestimate what they can do in a month and underestimate what they can do in a year. As most startup founders and investors know: tiny improvements compound in non-obvious ways. A 1% daily improvement compounds to nearly 38x improvement over a year. Most people can’t stick to dramatic changes, but anyone can get 1% better. Prioritize consistency.
2) Fresh Starts: There’s a fascinating feature in human psychology: we love clean slates. The start of a day, week, or quarter acts like a mental reset button. My favorite way of using this is by breaking each day into quarters. Had a bad morning? Still 3 quarters to go. The key is to build systems that survive initial contact with reality. As Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Good systems bend but don’t break.
3) Macro and Micro Mood: Most people conflate their daily mood with their life trajectory. That’s a mistake. Think of it like weather versus climate. You might have a stormy, rough day at work (today’s weather) while your career trajectory (life’s climate) remains excellent. Technically, micro mood is your day-to-day or moment-to-moment emotional state while the macro mood is your overall life satisfaction and direction over weeks/months. Be especially wary of the fact that both influence each other. A sequence of a few more minor inconveniences (first missed the train, then ruined your shirt) will lower your macro mood. But likewise, you’ll take these smaller issues lighter if you’re in a great macro mood. Apply a 20/20/60 rule: 20% is circumstance, 20% is recent events, and 60% is your foundational patterns. Focus on those 60%. That’s where the leverage is.
4) The Power of No: Most people say yes to too many things (including me). They spread themselves thin across many priorities, which means they have no real priorities. There are multiple ways to combat that:
Think about the opportunity cost. Every yes is a no to something else.
Say no to everything that doesn’t align with your primary goals.
Add the Power of One: Focus on adding one habit rather than five new ones simultaneously..
5) Process Visualization: Most people got visualization wrong. We were told to focus on the outcome, imagining ourselves crossing the feeling of finishing that marathon. Unfortunately, recent studies show this makes it less likely to reach this goal. We underestimate the way to get to success and give up early. Even worse, focusing only on success can create complacency. Visualizing the end goal can give your brain a premature sense of achievement, tricking you into feeling satisfied even before you’ve started taking steps toward that goal. It’s more important to visualize the struggle. Use the WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) model instead of visualizing just the success. It’s more effective because it forces you to contrast the desired future with current reality. This creates psychological tension that motivates action.
The takeaway: Don’t try to rely on willpower in 2025. Reflect on the patterns that fail you and start incorporating science-based mental models to improve how you think and act.
How to (Not) Waste Your Life Comfortably
Thinking about making the jump in 2025? Changing jobs or maybe starting something yourself?
In her essay How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time, Apoorva Govind lays out a framework to reflect on career changes and reasons why staying too long in a job is one of the most common and costly career mistakes.
Sticking around can lead to skills stagnation, complacency, limited future opportunities, and missed learning experiences.
But don’t get automatically nervous if you’ve been at the same company for years already. Time is a bad metric. Better ways to think about job tenure are growth and objectives.
What’s particularly interesting is that the cost of staying too long is usually invisible. It’s not what happens; it’s what doesn’t happen. Growth options not taken. Skills not learned. Short: Opportunity cost.
So how do you know when it’s time to leave?
Run an “Am I Growing Complacent Currently” check regularly like the one that Apoorva suggests. Your alarm bells should ring when the total score of positive dimensions is 40% or lower. Her dimensions are:
Accomplishment: Have I done anything noteworthy these last three months?
Impact: Would I write a line in my resume about the work I have done over these three months? Would I value this specific work experience if I were hiring for my own company?
Growth/Future alignment: Have I acquired valuable insights or skills? Are these skills aligned with my future goals?
Challenge: Have there been days when I was thinking about a work problem in the shower so profoundly that I forgot if I used the soap or not?
Community: Am I excited and happy to go to work every morning and see my teammates? Do I believe in the mission, vision, and leadership of this team or company?
Of course, these questions only target your career. That might not be your primary focus. Be clear on what to optimize against in the first place, and adapt it to your liking. For example, I don’t need to separate Accomplishment and Impact and have adapted the framework that way. The key here is to reflect regularly, even if the result is uncomfortable.
One of the most frequently asked questions I get from people looking to be first-time founders is when to start their own company. The objection I often hear is, “I’m still learning things.” Sure, but at what rate? Learning something new occasionally isn’t the same as being in an environment that forces rapid growth. I’ve never heard a founder regret their journey, even if it failed miserably.
The takeaway: Growth stagnates invisibly - what matters isn’t how long you’ve stayed, but whether you’re still being challenged in ways that matter to your future. Use the AIGCC questions to know when to move on.
There are endless ways to pursue our lives. It all depends on what you want to optimize for. Let me know if you’d like to see my personal systems blueprint in a future edition. And if you’re a founder or investor, I’d love to learn what works for you.