Read time: 10 minutes (longer one to end the year!)

Welcome to The Ascend Archives, a weekly newsletter where I share a story about a transformation, revelation, or change in thinking that has improved an aspect of my life.

For a year that began with a last-minute flight from Auckland to Houston, it was only fitting to end it with a family vacation last week that we booked 5 days before leaving. Now I’m back in Austin to wrap up an epic year.

2024 was a rollercoaster. I made memories and shared many laughs all over the world. I was challenged physically, mentally, and emotionally. But ultimately the word that comes to mind for this year has been: rewarding.

Last year, I started a ritual of conducting an Annual Review. It includes answering some thought provoking questions, rereading my journals and Notes App, looking back at photos, and rewatching videos. I jot down personal highlights, business highlights, best books/podcasts, and my lessons learned.

I did a lot and wrote a lot this year so this process was time consuming (and still ongoing). But it’s been well worth the time as it helped me appreciate how far I’ve come. From having no idea where I wanted to live or what to do for work to building an incredible community in Austin and the foundation of a business I’m excited to scale going into 2025.

Today, I’m going to share some of my favorite lessons and ideas I learned this year.

Hope you enjoyed some time off this holiday season to relax, reflect, and reconnect with loved ones. Cheers to crushing it in 2025!

1. My priorities have never been clearer

1) Health 2) Relationships 3) Work

Without our health, nothing else matters. This year, I prioritized health by getting in the best shape of my life and completing my most difficult physical feat: an Ironman 70.3 race. I also started to prioritize eating whole foods and limiting processed food and seed oils as much as possible.

What good is life if we have nobody to enjoy it with? This year, I invested heavily with time and money into strengthening my existing relationships and building new ones. This included:

• Dozens of trips: National Championship in Houston, bachelor parties, family vacations, golf trips, and visits to friends and family just to say hi.

• Hundreds of hours on the phone with family and friends to check in

• Being intentional with dating: reading books, listening to podcasts, going on dates, having hard conversations, thinking about it, and talking it all through

• Playing pickup basketball every Tuesday morning

• Going to writing club every Friday morning

• Attending conferences and meet ups in Boise, Portland, and Austin

• Hours of therapy talking through ways to improve my relationships

Finally, came work. More than ever this year, whenever I had a decision to work or do something to improve my health or relationships, I chose the latter. This led to workouts in the middle of the day, impromptu trips, and not making as much money as I would have liked or could have. But I was still able to make ends meet and I’m reaping the benefits of such a strong foundation in those first 2 areas.

2. Spend less time on inconsequential decisions and more time on irreversible decisions

~95% of succeeding in life is choosing the right things to spend time on. So this year I spent less time worrying about my clothes, coming up with with new recipes to meal prep, and other things that don’t move the needle and more time on things like:

• Choosing where to live: I discussed it for hours with my business coach, after coming up with a pros/cons list and deciding to be intentional about moving back to Austin

• Choosing a partner: I read books on dating, wrote about what I wanted in a partner, went on dates, had hard conversations, and talked it all through with a therapist

• Choosing work: I spent hours journaling, reading, and trying new things. Then I’d discuss with my business coach and peers in my mastermind groups

3. Know what is good enough: think of return on effort

I wrote an entire newsletter on What is Enough? back in July.

But it’s important to continue coming back to this question across all aspects of life. One big recent realization was around this newsletter.

I asked myself what am I trying to accomplish with it and do I need to write 2 newsletters every week? My answer is that my goals are to improve my writing skills and connect with people who share my interests. I’m not trying to optimize growing a massive audience or maxing out ad revenue. So writing 2 per week, just to write 2 per week isn’t necessary. A few quality newsletters per month will more than suffice.

4. Be patient and don’t force opportunities that don’t feel right

In March, my buddy Mitch asked me if I would help him launch a social media campaign for his company. It was sort of in the realm of my ghostwriting work but not exactly and it wasn’t a project I was excited about. Instead of taking it just because I needed the work, I recommended he reach out to one of my friends who had expertise in exactly what he was looking for.

Fast forward 6 months, and Mitch came back to me asking if I’d help write LinkedIn posts and blogs for him: my exact ghostwriting expertise. I agreed and it’s been a blast working together on something I was excited about.

I turned down several work opportunities this year that didn’t align with my goals or excite me, which left the door opportunity for better, more aligned opportunities down the road.

5. Get in rooms where your dream day is their Tuesday

I attended a conference with top creators in Boise.

I got invited to play pickup basketball with entrepreneurs and founders in Austin.

I went to book launch parties of authors I look up to (Codie Sanchez and Paul Millerd).

I attended a conference in Austin where I became friends with a NYT Best Selling Author.

I flew across the country based on a tweet to go fly fishing with successful entrepreneurs.

Once I got in the room with these people, I realized they are just regular people too and it makes their accomplishments seem much more in reach for a normal guy like me.

6. I can get different things from different people

Some friends are great for relationship advice, others for business tips, and others just for shooting the shit. They are great individually and don’t have to all be great in all areas.

Same goes for a life partner. While they are my ride-or-die person, just because they don’t have any ideas on how I can get new clients or shave a few strokes off my handicap, doesn’t mean they aren’t a good match.

This is why it’s crucial to have a board of directors with different skill sets and perspectives to help in different situations.

7. The best outcomes are on the other side of a difficult conversation

I struggled with this one a lot this year.

All sorts of conversations from work to personal life got the best of me before they even happened. I’d play all the scenarios in my head, delay the conversation, or try to convince myself it wasn’t necessary. But just sucking it up and having the awkward, imperfect conversation always, always led to positive outcomes and was never as bad as I had played it out in my head.

Note to self: Don’t be miserable in advance by worrying and overanalyzing. Just have the conversation.

8. Sometimes we need to slow down to speed up

Lionel Messi doesn’t run aimlessly around the soccer field. He walks around surveying the field then once he knows where to go, he sprints 110% at the perfect angle to score, pass, or whatever.

That’s what this transitional period of 2024 has been for me.

I slowed down to survey my life and figure out what to go all-in on. That meant taking a big step back from the traditional path of working for someone else. This gave me time and space to try different business ideas, do the activities I enjoy doing, and spend time with people I enjoy being around.

I have surveyed the field and now I’m ready to sprint.

9. I want to be remembered as an action taker

At a conference this year, I was asked to write down what I want people to remember me for when I die.

This is what I wrote:

I want people to remember me as the guy who took action. I didn’t wait around for things. I tried, I failed, I got back up. I lived my life by design and inspired others to do the same. I wasn’t an expert or guru, I just did cool shit and shared my experiences with others.

I feel good about living that out this year and want to continue that the rest of my life.

10. Get rid of binary thinking: it doesn’t have to be all or nothing

I constantly fell in this trap across all aspects of my life:

I either need to be on Hinge going on 3 dates a week or I want to delete the app off my phone.

I need to find a business that’s going to make me $200k a year or else it’s not worth it.

I’m either training for an Ironman or not working out at all.

When I was stuck on a problem, my mind would just default to night or day, black or white. I forgot that there is such thing as dawn or dusk and shades of gray. Through conversations with coaches, therapists, and mentors I was able to see that there were other options.

I could check Hinge once or twice a week and only go on a date if I was really interested in the girl.

My entire income didn’t have to come from one business idea, I could scrap together revenue doing a bunch of different things like ghostwriting, being a research assistant, and hosting events.

I could still run a few times a week to stay in shape without training for a race.

11. I found my north star: I want to do work I love with people I love

I wrote about this in Part 2 of my Fly Fishing Trip.

But a common theme that came up over and over this year was that I haven’t found my people that I love to work with yet…The people that I want to get in the trenches with and build something special. Working solo has given me a ton of autonomy, but there’s something special about being part of a team and working towards something bigger than myself.

That’s what I’m looking for in 2025.

12. It always takes longer than you think

Building the business, lowering my handicap, finishing my book, writing my newsletter, gaining muscle at the gym, even going to the grocery store. Everything takes longer than you think it’s going to take even when you take this rule of thumb into account. It’s important to just accept that and not let it stop me from getting started in the first place.

13. There is never going to be a right time

Quitting the job, starting the business, having the hard conversation, going on the trip, starting to work out, trying the new hobby, or signing up for the race.

[Insert anything I want to do but haven’t done].

It’s cliche and I know there are a thousand reasons that seem very logical as to when it will be a better time to do something. But when I zoom out and realize how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of life and the universe, how logical are those reasons?

We’re all going to die and we don’t know when that will be - not saying it to be morbid, it’s just a fact.

So from that perspective, I just started doing the damn things. Doing these things comes with sacrifices for sure, but I’m not going to have any regrets from taking action.

14. To get more, do less

While this seems counterintuitive to the point before about just taking action, there’s a time and place.

I didn’t quit the job, take the trip, train for an Ironman, and ask out the girl all at the same time. It happens in phases. Also it doesn’t have to be black and white like point #10.

I learned that simplifying things and just focusing on a few things at once will get me much further than trying to do everything at once.

Each day I write 2-3 priorities I want to get done that day. It can be anything from a work proposal to a workout to a grocery store run. As long as I continue making progress on a few things each day, the results will take care of themselves.

15. I am a writer…who knew?

I published 81 newsletters this year.

81 times…I sat at the keyboard, wrote about a topic I was interested in, and shared it with friends, family, and some strangers.

When I said 2024 was rewarding, this was one of the main reasons why.

Back in February, I received a note from a reader saying how for 20 years he didn’t feel like he deserved credit for a major accomplishment in his life… until he read my story. My story made him rethink the series of events and helped him see them in a different light. He finally allowed himself to take credit for something that he earned!!

I still vividly remember the chills going down my spine as I read that email. And I still get them each time I read it. This is a feeling I never got making Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks.

I genuinely enjoy the process of writing so I’m going to keep doing it, but getting notes like that make me even more energized to never stop.

Final Thoughts

While there are dozens of more takeaways from this year in my notes, I’ll stop there as some of my highlights.

Thank you all for being on this journey with me over the past year. I’m excited to see what’s in store for 2025.

I’ll end today with some of my favorite quick hitting quotes I came across this year:

• The ability to choose discomfort is skill we can learn - Shaan Puri

• Do things you love with people you love - Dylan (my fishing guide)

• Being rich is nice but, what you really want to optimize for is (1) an income that exceeds your spending by a healthy margin and (2) a lifestyle that is free from rushing - James Clear

• Have with or without you energy - Daniel Priestley

• When you embrace your own authenticity you give other people permission to embrace their own - Corey Wilks

• Every feeling serves you up until a certain point then it holds you back. - Ali Abdaal

• Train for climbing a mountain by climbing a mountain - Mike Posner

• Who and what is more important than how hard you work - Naval

• Take things with a smile. Again we get to choose how we feel about an event. Why not choose to love it - Ryan Holiday

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew

P.S. If you want to check out my annual review template and see some of the additional questions I ask myself, hit reply and I’ll send it to you!