One of my coaching friends asked me to sum up 2024 in a word, and set my intention for 2025 in a word, so I’ll start with that framing rather than the more stream-of-consciousness format from the last few year-in-review posts.

2024: Full
For more context on why 2024 felt full, here’s what I did last year:

• Continued to coach full-time while devoting 10% of my coaching hours to pro bono work (check out the January coaching scholarship offer here). The people who benefit most from working with me are those going through professional transitions, either ramping up as a new executive, or considering a mid-career change. I love hearing from my clients that they are still reflecting on and benefiting from our conversations years after we spoke. Please connect me with anyone who might benefit from talking with me.
• Invested in my personal development with the trauma-informed coaching certification. Check out that post to read how I felt more at ease this year despite taking on more commitments than I ever have before.
• Parented two kids, and then added a third!
• Traveled to Austin, TX in April to see the total solar eclipse and the the Saturn V rocket at the Houston Space Center, plus our standard trip to Bulgaria in the summer to visit the grandparents, visiting the Dominican Republic on the way back.
• Continued to promote my book on podcasts. I particularly enjoyed talking with sisters Mary-Ann and Emily on their Great Noticing podcast, and with Michele Walter on her Gen X Shift podcast.
• Invested more in my physical health to mark my 50th birthday (check out my reflections on that milestone).
• Launched an online class to become a more effective executive (next cohort starts on January 16th!)

When I write that all out, it seems a little more reasonable that I didn’t get to the other plans I had for 2024 (recording an audiobook version of my book, writing more blog posts, investing more in sales and marketing). It’s yet another reminder that I can’t do it all, I can only do what’s most important to me in each moment.

One realization I had in 2024 is that I’m not the deep original thinker I had once imagined myself to be; my strength is more in exploring a wide range of ideas, then synthesizing and integrating them to make them more accessible to others. My favorite bits of writing are trying to distill complex concepts down to easy-to-remember stories or principles, and I similarly enjoyed putting together the material for my new class. Going on podcasts and speaking at events are also opportunities for me to share what I’ve learned in my eclectic career. In other words, I’m a teacher and explainer, not a researcher (which should have been clear when I dropped out of my PhD program). With that clarity about what energizes me, I’m leaning more into writing and speaking and teaching as focal points.

2025 intention: Deeper Integration
I added a lot in 2024 (a third kid, more physical activity, teaching a class), and I think this year will be about integrating those additions to find a new equilibrium and go deeper with them. I want to integrate what I learned about trauma-informed coaching so I can go deeper with my clients, I want to develop deeper connections with my kids (they grow up so fast!), and I want to go deeper with myself to address my limiting beliefs so that I can be more open to deeper connection with others. I’m not sure what that all looks like yet, but it probably starts by saying no to most new opportunities.

That being said, I still want to grow the effective executive class (I’d love to do a private cohort for your company’s new executives – connect me to your HR lead if that sounds interesting), record the audiobook, and maybe start a podcast to interview the effective executives I know to share their secrets (would that be of interest to you?). I’m thinking of these less as 2025 goals, and more as additional options to consider on my menu of what to do next as I choose my next action.

I still aspire to connect with courage and vulnerability (my mantra from the last few years), and I am learning how I block myself from doing so by keeping myself so busy all the time. I may have to let some things go, particularly my need to “prove” my value by doing more, and instead become satisfied with doing less so I can be present and grateful for what I already have.

But let’s now turn to more fun ways to think about the past year.

Best purchase (practical division):
The Urban Arrow family cargo e-bike. My kids started at a new school this fall, which is 2.5 miles away. Rather than spend 40 minutes a day driving them to/from school (10 minutes each way), we invested in this bike, and it’s an hour of exercise for me, it’s better for the environment, and I get more connection with my children on the ride (we spent a week in October looking for houses with cool Halloween decorations). While it’s expensive, it essentially functions as a car replacement for any trip less than 5 miles, and I feel much better with more cardio in my daily routine.

Best purchase (frivolous division):

Best investment in self:
A Functional Lifestyles gym membership. While this won’t help people outside of Silicon Valley, I highly recommend this gym with locations in Palo Alto and Mountain View. I have been going since March and I appreciate that the trainers focus on form and whole-body integrated movements, so I am noticing more often when I get out of alignment. It’s not hard-core toxic masculinity (the membership is majority women) – just a bunch of people getting stronger and healthier together in a supportive environment. Check out this video of me pulling 500 pounds!

Most surprising lifestyle change:
For years, I’ve been told that diet matters. And I said “Yeah, yeah, I eat pretty well”. But after getting a continuous glucose monitor in September, I was able to see how my blood sugar spiked when I had a couple cookies or when I indulged in pasta or rice or bread. With that awareness, I cut out a lot of the bad carbs – no more cereal for breakfast (smoothies with kale and blueberries and yogurt and protein powder instead), no more chips for snacks, no more fast food or soda, no nightcap whiskey. I lost 10 pounds in six weeks, and according to my gym’s scale, it was mostly fat (body-fat percentage decreased 4%). No change in activity, just the diet. It’s not revolutionary, it’s what people have said for years (here’s Tim Ferriss’s Slow Carb diet from the Four Hour Body), but it took seeing the data from the glucose monitor for me to actually execute on it.

The year in books:
48 books read, of which 17 were non-fiction. The best non-fiction books were reviewed on the blog. I enjoyed the fiction books (Dungeon Crawler Carl is a rollicking but long commitment), but the only strong recommendations would be N.K. Jemisin’s How Long ’til Black Future Month, a short story collection that explored truly different alternative worlds, and Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory, which surprised me in a good way with how the plot evolved.

Top 10 LinkedIn posts (by view count):

1. When somebody lamented that their life might be over at 40, I shared how I completely overhauled my life after I turned 40.
2. I shared the principles that I am trying to live by as I entered my 50s.
3. Celebrating the one-year anniversary of publishing my book.
4. Knowing what to do is not enough. Deliberate practice is what allows us to execute when the opportunity arises.
5. My free webinar discussing what mindsets separate successful executives from early-career individual contributors.
6. I shared a story of camping, where I thought I was a novice and turned out to be an expert, as an example of how it’s easy to underestimate our own competence.
7. A July 4th post, asking the reader to reflect on what independence means to them.
8. Reflections on what it felt like to detach for three days as part of a coaching workshop to be deeply present with others.
9. Your team will not be a fit for everybody, and that’s okay. Choose what you will consistently value when you make tradeoff decisions.
10. It can be a good sign when you are criticized, because it means people think you can improve – if they had given up on you, they wouldn’t say anything.

Another (full) year in the books, another year to look forward to. While I enjoy these reflection posts, time is just a construct our brains use to make sense of the world. All we can actually experience is one moment at a time, and all we can control is what we choose to do with this present moment. What will you choose to do next?