My Learn + Growth Report of 2023 🪴
Issue #72: Notes from my 2023 annual review: books, courses, habits, health, money, impact, favorites of 2023. Annual Review + Planning Template.
Happy 2024!
Around December every year, I reflect on my personal learning, growth, and impact.
In this issue, I’ll share a few of these notes with you in the four parts.
Learning: skills learned, book readings, podcasts, courses, etc.
Growth: habits, growth trips, financial, health, happiness, etc.
Impact: of my content on this newsletter, social media, featured interviews, podcasts, etc.
Favorites: books, apps, purchases.
Note: If this cuts off in your email, here’s the online version. Also, here is a link to my annual review + planning template if you want to use it.
🎓 Learning
Skills
I learned (and focused) on these 15 skills.
Roughly invested 319 hours and $11,000 in learning these skills.
Meditation was the top skill that I focused on.
Reading
I read 26 new books and reread 1 book.
Around 7,505 pages and 203 hours of reading.
Average 1 hour reading per day.
Podcast
I learned from 227 hours of podcast listening; the average podcast listening time was ~30 minutes. It’s amazing.
Listening to podcasts during my walk and other mindless activities is the best learning hack.
I never leave home without my AirPods.
🚀 Growth
Habits
I have completed 7 habits 100% of the time.
Since I started practicing energy meditations in the morning, I noticed my nap time had gone down.
I’m on my 80-day streak on my morning habits.
Growth Trips
I had so much fun and learned from my growth trips.
I went to Bali (Indonesia) for the Yoga Teacher Training Program, Dallas (Texas) for my Barista Training, and Nashville (Tennesse) for the Book Reading and Meditation Retreat.
I invested $7,400 and 31 days of learning on my growth trips.
Money
My total net worth grow ~37% in 2023, using my financial planning principles.
I track my net worth every year to gauge my financial growth because net worth reflects the collective performance of our earnings, spending, and investing habits and decisions.
Health
I have been tracking a few health metrics through my Apple watch. I got Oura a few months ago, so in 2024, I’ll have even better metrics to monitor my health.
I walked 230 miles (369 kilometers), which is like walking from Washington DC to New York.
Average calories burned per day: 600.
Average daily exercise minutes: 47.
Average daily flights climbed: 10 floors.
Average daily sleep: 7hrs, 5 mins.
Average resting heart rate: 58 BPM.
Peace
Average HRV: 51 ms in 2023, which is consistent with 2022. However, between 2019-2021, my average HRV was 41 ms. [Higher HRV is an indicator of lower stress level]
I have been tracking my emotional health with the How We Feel App. Three emotions I felt most often: Productive, Inspired and Energized.
Meditation touches both spiritual and mental health. So that was a big focus for the year. I practiced 130 hours of meditation in 205 practices.
Play long-term games with long-term people. All the benefits in life come from compound interest - relationships, money, habits - anything of importance.
— Naval Ravikant
🪄 Impact
In this section, I’ll share the progress I’ve made on my mission to:
🌟 Inspire 100 million people to achieve peaceful growth.
Learn + Grow Newsletter
Learn + Grow is read across 41 US states and 83 countries.
I published 52 issues and wrote 34,604 words.
All my content was read 43,000 times.
Social Media
I published 2 posts/day, ~297 posts total, on Twitter and LinkedIn.
My content was seen 120,000 times on Twitter and LinkedIn.
This was the most popular post, with 2,500 views.
Peaceful Growth Podcast [Website]
I started this podcast six months ago. This was way out of my comfort zone, but I’m very proud of myself for doing it anyway.
By the end of 2023, I have published 20 episodes.
My podcast was watched/listened to by 2,000+ people.
Growth Training
I have been sharing my personal growth frameworks and strategies with my leadership team in my company for the last three years.
I have done 9 workshops, which is 12 hours of training on topics like: Productivity, Life Goals, ChatGPT, Habit Building, Health, Public Speaking, and Meditation.
I have also been leading weekly meditation practice with my employees, hosting ~40 group meditation sessions in the year.
Featured Guest
I’m grateful for a few opportunities to share my work and teachings as a speaker and featured guest on a few shows.
Podcast → What is Multicollab, Realtime Collaboration in WordPress, Gutenberg Phase 3.
Podcast → How Big Enterprises Use WordPress.
Podcast → This Week In WordPress.
Expert Panel → How AI Affected My Agency's Workflow.
Compliments
Here is a small collection of compliments I received on the impact of my content from my readers.
❤️ Favorites
Books
When Breath Becomes Air: Amazing writing. Listening to it on audiobook. Very impactful message on mortality.
Yoga: The Science of the Soul: The best book on Yoga, spirituality, and Meditation. Simple to read and understand.
Buy Back Your Time: It changed my perspective on money and time. Great for productivity, delegation, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Apps
How We Feel: Great design. Fun and easy way to check in your emotions. Short (1 min) video lessons on improving emotional health. Free.
Time Shifter: Best app to beat jetlag. It worked so well during my travel to Bali and India.
Readwise: Read any blogs, PDFs, and email newsletters in a clean, distraction-free interface. Highlights. Offline reading.
Purchase
Opal C1 Camera: Best small 4K webcam. If you have watched my podcast YouTube videos, you can see the quality. The new version of Opal Tadpole is great if you are on the move.
Friant Zone Too Chair: I got this new chair a few months ago. It’s very comfortable. I’m loving it.
Oura Ring: Sleep tracking. Stress Tracking. Great insights on my daily energy and mood. Accurate tracking of a lot of health metrics.
2023 has been the best year of my life so far!
Looking back, I lived by what Mahatma Gandhi said:
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
I really took this to heart and had a great year full of learning and doing things that matter.
Here is my annual review + planning template if you want to use it.
Thanks for sharing.
Inspiring recap. Thank you for sharing.