[antifragile 4 🔥 - New Year Edition 🎉] 8760 hours, personal finance that's actually good, goals < systems < identities, final thoughts from Seneca
#27: a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind.
Before I start; my Intention, my Promise & a Request.
My Intention: To create a system that grows this newsletter to reach 1,000 antifragile dads every week.
My Promise: This particular edition is stellar. As will the following editions this year.
My Request: Being that we’re in the eye of a stellar newsletter hurricane - it’s a great time to send it to your brother, your friend, your coworker, your dad, that guy from your intramural darts team, your cool neighbor, your not-so-cool neighbor and anyone else who fits the mold of a dad (or future dad) who wants to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for an incredible life.
Forward them this email, tell them you love them, tell them that you think they’re amazing and have them subscribe here. The more the merrier.
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Welcome to 2025, and the 27th edition of the antifragile 4 🔥.
It’s a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind. Some weeks will have a theme, others will meander. Expect it every Friday.
This week we’re talking New Year 🎉. Akin to baseball’s Opening Day (for those who observe), January 1st is a day of rebirth. An opportunity to reflect, tweak (or perhaps overhaul), and march forward on a different heading than we followed just a few days earlier.
If December is the most wonderful time of the year, January’s the most transformative. Let’s go.
Here is this week’s antifragile 4 🔥 - New Year Edition 🎉:
an 8,760 hour guide/mind map ⏳ I use each year to review & plan
a personal finance program 💰 that’s actually good
an idea 💡 on goals < systems < identity
a few thoughts from Seneca 🏛️ to remind you of the shortness of life
+ AI Image of the Week 🤖 🎨
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1.) an 8,760 hour guide/mind map ⏳ I use each year to review & plan
Reviewing & planning with Alex Vermeer’s 8,760 Hours has become one of my favorite traditions. This will be my 8th time starting the year with it.
It’s a PDF that offers a simple, mind map-based strategy of both reviewing your previous year and planning your next (both equally important).
Mind maps, if you’ve never used them, are wonders. They’re structured in non-linear, connected fashion - which is closer to how our brains think - and are great for all sorts of things including reviewing all the important areas of your life.
Here’s what my in-progress 2024 Review mind map looks like (I use a program called SimpleMind Pro):
The 8,760 Hours strategy is to split your life into 12-ish categories (mine is 13) and create a short summary of how it went this year that you can then use to map out your goals for the upcoming year. Vermeer provides helpful questions for each category, here are a few examples:
Do I have a sense of purpose and direction in life? (Purpose)
How much do I sleep on average? Am I getting good quality sleep? (Health/Fitness)
What is the status of my assets and investments? (Money)
How is my home life? (Relationships)
I’ve also included the following 4 questions in each section:
What’s going well?
What’s not going well?
What would you liked to have seen more of?
What would you liked to have seen less of?
You don’t need to answer all of these - just whatever feels helpful. I’ve also adjusted my categories over the years to what works best for me and have given each category a rating of 1-7 with a total “score” at the end.
I use the comments section of each category to answer any helpful questions - here’s an example from my “Mental Clarity & Well-Being” section.
This is followed by another mind map, this one pointing to the future. I typically duplicate my Review map and leave only the areas I want to focus on. Here was mine at the start of 2024:
This takes time (you may have assumed that already). And not just any kind of time - but quiet time early in the day with a steaming French Press at the ready ☕️.
But trust me, it’s worth it.
Even if you don’t use this specific method, taking time to look back on the year is the only chance you have of 1.) getting perspective on the direction your life is taking and 2.) doing something about it.
Make time for this. Especially if you have kids.
Reflect on what went well, what didn’t go well.
Figure out what you want more of, less.
And plan out how you’re going to make it happen.
Your January 2026 self will thank you.
2.) a personal finance program 💰 that’s actually good
Money doesn’t solve all your problems. But it solves your money problems.
Naval Ravikant
Money is important. You may have heard.
And for a while, the best way to keep track of your personal finances was Mint.com. But then last year…they were gone.
Where to turn??
I started using Monarch Money, which was founded by an ex-Mint.com employee. It’s not free like Mint - gasp! - but at $100/year ($50/year with New Year promo right now) it’s well worth the tiny investment.
The interface is great, they have a good budget tool that I routinely napalm every month (organic honeycrisps are expensive ok?), they connect to just about all financial platforms (although they were late to the crypto party…no one’s perfect), have a simple net worth tracker and heaps of other interesting widgets.
In sum, if getting a better hold of your finances in 2025 is tickling the back of your mind - Monarch is worth looking into.
3.) an idea 💡 on goals < systems < identity
What New Years newsletter would be complete without Atomic Habits by James Clear?
He writes a great post about Systems > Goals, in which he argues:
The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
James Clear
Good stuff. But there’s a crucial step before this.
At the core of behavior change lies not systems and habits, but an identity. The type of person you want to be. He talks about this as Identity-Based Habits.
So while having a process to eat healthier breakfasts would certainly be helpful, having the identity of someone who eats healthy would be life-changing. Because it informs decisions at every moment, not only in one process-related area.
So as you start 2025, think about who you want to be. Write it down. Figure out what processes that person would create. The goals, as they say, take care of themselves.
Here are a few of the identities I’ve cultivated + are cultivating:
Greatest Dad in the World
Greatest Husband in the World
Competitive Triathlete
Innovative Entrepreneur & Investor
Inspirational Writer
Effective Planner
4.) a few thoughts from Seneca 🏛️ to remind you of the shortness of life
Death is one of life’s great motivators. And few have extolled as convincingly on that topic as the Roman philosopher Seneca.
His On the Shortness of Life is required reading for anyone even moderately interested in examining their own existence (the Kindle version is only $.99).
So I thought ending this New Year Edition 🎉 with a few passages from this book would be helpful.
However, it’s worth noting that Seneca pulls no punches. If you’re not accustomed to thinking about your life through the lens of death…this will be interesting for you.
But what better way to start 2025 than with the reminder that our New Years are numbered? Let’s make this the year we stop just saying what we want to do—and actually start doing it.
Too late they realize what time they wasted pursuing worthless things, and how so much hard work seeking happiness from materialism was in vain.
Life is long and there is enough of it for satisfying personal accomplishments if we use our hours well. But when time is squandered in the pursuit of pleasure or in vain idleness, when it is spent with no real purpose, the finality of death fast approaches and it is only then, when we are forced to, that we at last take a good hard look at how we have spent our life – just as we become aware that it is ending.
But many men are governed by insatiable greed, or by a life devoted to meaningless tasks. Some turn to drink, others are paralyzed by laziness. One fellow is obsessed with his career and spends his days based on the decisions of others. Another, ruled by the love of business and making money, devotes all his energy to the pursuit of the deal. Some are driven mad by rage, and obsessed with violence or being macho, seemingly always hell-bent upon inflicting harm on others or being overly concerned with their own safety!
It is more important to know yourself than, say, the corn business.
The busy man is busy with everything except living.
We all rush through life torn between a desire for the future and a weariness of the present.
Are you not ashamed to save for yourself only the last part of your life, and to set aside for knowledge only that time which can’t be spent on making money?
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Here’s to making 2025 your most engaged year yet.
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AI Image of the Week
“Seneca at a New Year's party extolling the virtues of his On the Shortness of Life”
Two last things for you this week:
Take time to review 2024 and set intentions for 2025. Your future self will thank you.
Be fire and wish for the wind 🔥
With love,
Chris