1. Less Than 500 ‘Strikes’ (Strike is any Item of Junk Food)
2. 2000 Servings Vegetables & 750 Servings Fruit
3. 250 Days Meditation (10 Minutes Minimum)
4. One Month No Caffeine
5. Qualify For Ironman World Championships (70.3 or 140.6)
6. 500 Hours of Exercise
7. Get Jacked (100 Day Muscle Build)
8. Krispy Kreme Challenge
9. 200 Mile Ultramarathon
10. Mountain Bike 25 Miles
11. 10 Lethal Engineering Videos & 10 LethalTri Videos
12. Build R2D2
13. <100 Hours Wasted Time
14. 48 Weeks Beeminder
15. Python Book (and project)
16. 3D Modeling w/ Fusion 360 (and project)
17. Donate 10% of Income (post tax)
18. Solve World’s Largest Rubik’s Cube
19. Volunteer 100 Hours
20. Learn to Make Steak, Salad, Pizza
21. Get Instrument Rating
22. Buy A Plane
23. Wisconsin Airport Passport (42 Airports)
24. SCUBA/PADI Certified
25. Complete White Puzzle With One Piece Missing
26. Mine Cryptocurrency
27. Roark 10 Swim Lessons
28. Read to Roark 10 Minutes for 300 Days
29. Massage Class
30. Visit Two National Parks
31. Surprise Goal From Zach and KT
32. Gig Work For A Day
33. Radical Life Change
34. Design an Escape Room

I’ve decided that blogging is dead. Video is the future. So I made a YouTube video about my results:

…but if you prefer reading here’s the rough, unedited script from the video

33 Before 33 Results, every year for the past 9 years I’ve made a list of goals to accomplish for the following year, with the number of goals corresponding with the age I’m going to turn. I’m a goal oriented person so I find this habit of setting and pursuing goals to be very fulfilling.  This year I completed 10 full goals and a handful of partial goals. Let’s jump into it.

Completed

#27 Get Pilot’s LicenseProbably the coolest goal I’ve every accomplished and one I wouldn’t have pursued without this list. I knew nothing about flying 12 months ago and now I can fly a plane anywhere in the country. Appx 275 hours all in flying, studying, before and after flight stuff. Only 80 hours was actual flying

#3 750 Servings of Fruit
755. Almost exclusively in smoothies, and the avocado from the chipotle burrito bowls I eat almost daily. Yes, avocado is a fruit, don’t put it in a fruit salad.

#9 KT Challenge
Running challenge named after my friend KT, who tried a training plan one mile run and added one mile each run. She got up to 13 miles. I told her that was an idiotic way to train, but wanted to see how far you could go with this ludicrous training strategy. I ended up making it to 25 miles. Really wanted to make it to the marathon mark, but starting to get injured.

#12 $1M Revenue
$1.2 million over the past 12 months. A pretty significant increase from the previous year. Been in business a little over 7 years. Reflection of increased knowledge and capability of everyone who works here as well as the trust we’ve built with the guys we contract for, allowing us to take on larger projects.  

#13 Setup SIMPLE IRA For Business
I said getting my pilot’s license was the coolest goal I’ve accomplished. This is the most boring goal I’ve ever accomplished. It’s like a 401k plan but for small businesses. All employees of Golden Spike Signal have a retirement plan.

#10 12 Lethal Engineering  / Lethal Tri Videos
12 videos total, 9 of which were about my flight training. LethalTri YouTube channel. Zero videos created for the much more popular Lethal Engineering channel

#5 One Month Continuous Glucose Monitor
Meant for diabetics, patch latched onto your arm with a tiny needle inside. Blood glucose was pretty stable, time of day, stress, and even the order of consuming food can allow or prevent unhealthy spikes. Main takeaway was how bad soda is for my blood glucose. Switched over to drinking diet soda.

#25 Donate 10% of Income to Charity
Perhaps the most important goal on this list, but the one I most apathetic about. I only do it because 1. It’s a goal and 2. Good people donate to charity, so if I want to be a good person then I should donate to charity to. I think that’s called virtue signaling.

#30 Fix Up Yard and Landscaping
This is where my yard was originally. Much better now. Not great, still needs work, but I put a lot of work into getting it to this point. Big shout out to my father-in-law who helped my remove these bushes and install a vinyl fence one weekend.

#33 Surprise Goal From KT and Zach
Did the Hot ones Challenge. Very creative questions for me but I didn’t have very creative answers. Really enjoyed it. Not as bad as I expected. More exhilarating than anything.

Partial Completion

#2 2,000 Servings Vegetables
1,730 – including 745 servings of kale. Kale chips go to way to get a lot of vegetable servings. If each serving is two cups, then that means I ate 93 gallons of kale. Put that in perspective, this is a 55 gallon drum and I ate 1.7 of those worth of kale.

#7 750 Hours of Exercise
274 Hours. Almost exclusively Running and ‘Other’. Good results in the races I entered. 3^rd Place in the Frozen Otter and seven minute PR in a half marathon we did. Here’s my exercise totals for the year compared to previous years. Good year for running but a truly abysmal year for cycling and swimming.  

#11 Build R2D2
Soldered together dome lights. Despite having a degree in electronics engineering, I soldered about 200 LEDs backwards.

#14 10 Hour of Productive Time for 200 Days
160/200. Ties into the goal below.

#15 200 Days No News/Social Media/YouTube/Netflix
119/200. Gotten into the habit of tracking my time everyday, so I can tell you that I had approximately 684 hours of wasted time . Could of accomplished 2.5 goals similar to learning to fly with that time.

#16 48 Week of Commitment Contract
33/48. Beginning of the year, I sent goals every week to my ‘life coach’, aka, my mother-in-law. Failing so frequently I stopped for 4 months. Found an app called Beeminder that I update daily. Really effective for longer term goals. Currently only use it to track my fruit and vegetable consumption as well as my exercise but should add more goals to it for my 34 Before 34 list.

#29 Volunteer 100 Hours
88/100. Entirely through big brother’s big sisters. Really proud of my little brother, he got all A’s last semester. Took him flying. Hot one’s Challenge.

#23 Win 100,00 Ticket Prize at Dave & Buster’s
Currently sitting at about $75k tickets. The only 100k ticket prize at Dave and Buster’s is a roomba, and we currently have two of them. I think it’d be fun to give all the tickets to my little brother’s little brother, who is like 7. But don’t tell him.

#32 Read to Roark 10 Minutes for 300 Days
191/300. The goal I’m most disappointed I didn’t complete. Need to make it a nightly habit. Read to a daycare.

What About The Rest of Your Family?!?

Really big news is that Alexis matched into a Pediatric Surgery Fellowship at the University of Iowa. That’s the hospital they wave to at the end of the 1^st Quarter. I’ll be sure to get her a big husker flag to hang in the window anytime Nebraska is in town. We hope the huskers can have some better success against the Hawkeyes than they’ve had against the Badgers in the 6 years we’ve lived in Wisconsin.

Wrap It Up!

Abysmal year on the goal front last year good to bounce back. 10 full goals and 5.7 partial for a total of 15.7. Getting my pilot’s license as well as the $1M in business revenue were pretty big goals that I’m proud to accomplish.

My thought was to make this a monthly update, but I completely skipped last month, and I’m three days late on this month.

#1 Less Than 500 Strikes

291/500. 118(!) too many.

#2 2000 Servings of Vegetables

363/2000. 327 Servings behind.

#3 750 Servings of Fruit

197/750. 62 Servings behind.

#5 One Month Continuous Glucose Monitor

Complete.

#7 750 Hours of Exercise

62/750. 196(!) hours behind

#9 KT Challenge w/ Zedweblog

In progress. Completed the 14 mile run yesterday. Will be traveling next week so will need to plan ahead to get the runs in.

#12 $1M Revenue

$439,194/$1M. $94k ahead. Finally, a goal I’m doing well at!

#13 Setup SIMPLE IRA for business

Complete.

#14 10 Hours of Productive Time for 200 Days

62/200. 7 days behind.

#15 200 Days No News/Social Media/YouTube/Netflix

55/200. 14 days behind.

#16 48 Weeks Commitment Contract

14/48. 3 weeks behind

#25 Donate 10% of Income (post-tax)

10.19%/10%. 0.19% ahead. Another goal doing well at!

#27 Get Pilot’s License

I feel like I’m currently stuck getting landings dialed in. It’s all we’ve practiced the last 7 lessons. I think increasing the frequency of the lessons would be helpful with mastering landings.

#29 Volunteer 100 Hours

25/100. 9.3 hours behind

#32 Read to Roark 10 Minutes for 300 Days

70/300. 34 days behind. Despite receiving another shipment of children’s books from the tremendously thoughtful KTR2BURN, I’ve been slacking on this goal.

What a boring update! But in writing this post I created a tab on my ’33 Things Tracker’ that auto-calculates how far ahead/behind I am on all these goals.

A day late on this post. Let’s nail it out quick.

#1 Less Than 500 Strikes, #2 2,000 Servings of Vegetables, #3 750 Servings of Fruit, #7 750 Hours of Exercise

117/500, 209/2000, 106/750, and 21:14/750:00. Waaaay behind on all these year long goals.

#5 One Month Continuous Glucose Monitor

Complete! I think a second month would be beneficial as I never tried to optimize my diet to minimize glucose response. Also, I never completed any long endurance activities while wearing the CGM. It would be interesting to see what a ‘bonk’ looks like in the actual blood sugar readings.

#8 Get Jacked (100 Day Muscle Build Routine)

Fell off the wagon. I’ve only lifted 5 times in the last three weeks when the goal was 15.

#13 Setup SIMPLE IRA For Business

Complete! First contributions came out of last month’s paychecks.

#12 $1M Revenue

$154k/$1M. Still working on that large multi-phase project. Submitted a phase of it earlier this month, which we’ll get paid for in another week.

#14 10 Hour of Productive Time for 200 Days

33/200. This goal is directly time to goal #15, in that when I avoid distraction, I tend to fill it with productive things. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

#15 200 Days No News/Social Media/YouTube

31/200. The Pavlok band that I mentioned in the last post bit the dust for good after giving my son a bath. After relapsing with numerous hours of News/YouTube, I purchased the much more stylish (and waterproof) Pavlok 3. Only two of three buttons work on the version I bought, but it delivers a reliable shock. I even installed a Chrome extension so that it auto-shocks me I unconsciously stray.

#16 48 Weeks Commitment Contract

8/9. I’m doing well making the weekly goals that I send to my Life Coach (aka Mother-In-Law), but not so good on actually accomplishing them. I think I need to increase the financial penalties each week to encourage accomplishment of the goals.

#27 Get Pilot’s License

The goal I’ve made the most progress on this month. I’ve had six lessons so far and we’ve already worked on stalls and take offs and landings. They supposedly let you fly by yourself with just 10-15 hours of experience (but it takes a minimum 40 hours to get your license and fly other people around). Learning to fly is both exhilarating and terrifying. I’ve also found myself wanting to use the phonetic alphabet when talking on the phone. Whiskey – Romeo – Oscar – Bravo – Echo – Lima. Pretentious, right?

#30 Fix Up Yard and Landscaping

My quest to grow grass where grass does not want to grow continues. I’ve spent far too much time moving the hose and sprinkler head around my yard to ensure that newly planted grass seed remains moist. I’ll be working on a cheap automated watering solution later this week (aka a janky above ground sprinkler system)

#32 Read to Roark for 300 Days

39/300. Reading to him isn’t difficult. It’s just remembering to read to him that I struggle with. Need to develop a routine

Wrap It Up!

Two goals complete this month is good progress. This month I’ll work on developing routines that will allow me to accomplish this plethora of goals. Based on a suggestion from my Life Coach, I’ll make sure I have a time blocked schedule.

Update over.

After reading update posts from fellow nBn‘ers ZedWebLogTitle and AssIsGreenCom, I’ve decided to hop on the bandwagon with an interlude of my own. I’ll aim to put these out monthly as accountability for goals that take several months to accomplish.

#1 Less Than 500 Strikes

61/500. Yikes! 20 strikes ahead of where I should be.

#2 2000 Serving of Vegetables

85/2000. Zoinks! 79 servings behind.

#3 750 Servings Fruit

42/500. Crikey! 20 servings behind.

#7 750 Hours of Exercise

11/750. Blimey! 50 hours behind.

Well, I’m significantly behind on all the long-term health goals. I’ll work on developing some habits and routines this week to get back on track.

#5 One Month Continuous Glucose Monitor

At this moment, Ive had my CGM on for two weeks. So far I’ve learned that I need to avoid high-sugar beverages like soda, but high sugar foods do not seem to be much of an issue. Overall, I seem to have good blood sugar control. I’ll experiment the next two weeks to see if I can’t optimize my diet for blood sugar levels and also see what the effects of long bouts of exercise are on my blood sugar.

#8 Get Jacked (100 Day Muscle Build)

I’m 14 days into this goal, replete with ‘before’ pictures so I can hypothetically make an inspirational YouTube video with jacked ‘after’ photos for all the other skinny-boiz that garners millions of views and thousands of comments about how poor my lifting form is.

There are three pillars to this goal: lift 5 days a week, eat 180 grams of protein per day, and eliminate junk food. I’d give myself a B- in adhering to those pillars. I’ll work this week on developing a less haphazard lifting routine and removing my evening libations of Cherry Coke.

#13 Setup SIMPLE IRA For Business

Got in contact with the folks at Vanguard and finalized everything. First contributions will come out of this month’s paychecks. I know small business retirement plan updates are what bring all the boys to the yard.

#12 $1M Revenue

$135k/$1M. Finally ahead on one of my goals! We’re working on a large multi-phase project to replace the signal system from Texarkana to Little Rock.

#15 200 Days No News/Social Media/YouTube

12/200. Only 4 days behind. I started wearing a Pavlok band earlier this week and have been administering electric shocks to my wrist whenever I feel the urge to go to one of those wasteful sites. It’s been surprisingly effective. Unfortunately the generation of band I have does not appear to be waterproof and quit functioning. I might replace it with the much cheaper canine variety.

#25 Donate 10% of Income Post Tax

Donated $7,000 to GiveWell. Another goal I’m ahead on! I say ‘I’ when I should really say ‘we’ as it’s also my wife’s money that’s being given away. For this year, we’ll try to make donations throughout the year, rather than one large donation at the end. It’s easier to swallow the decrease in net worth that way.

#30 Fix Up Yard and Landscaping

This is the goal I’ve been working hardest at. I laid down some topsoil and grass seed in some dead spots on the lawn and have been watering vigorously. With the assistance of my father-in-law, I also removed these giant bushes and replaced with a privacy fence. Over 30 hours have been spent the last month on this goal.

#32 Read to Roark 10 Minutes for 300 Days

20/300. 4 days behind. We received a slew of children’s books from Goal #9 namesake KT Norterburn. Thanks KT!

Update over. Any grammatical errors are the result of getting this post out before I had to change the title.

You’d think I’d have trouble coming up with an additional goal every year, but this year I had a surplus of ideas. Most of these were reused from last year due to the abysmal results.

Health

1. Less Than 500 ‘Strikes’ (Strike is any Item of Junk Food)
2. 2000 Servings Vegetables
3. 750 Servings Fruit
4. 8 Week Mindfulness Meditation
5. One Month Continuous Glucose Monitor

Fitness

6. Qualify For Boston Marathon
7. 750 Hours of Exercise
8. Get Jacked (100 Day Muscle Build)
9. KT Challenge w/ Zedweblog

Lethal Engineering / Lethal Tri

10. 12 Lethal Engineering  / Lethal Tri Videos
11. Build R2D2

Business/Productivity

12. $1M Revenue
13. Setup SIMPLE IRA For Business
14. 10 Hours Productive Time for 200 Days
15. 200 Days No News/Social Media/YouTube/Netflix
16. 48 Weeks Commitment Contract
17. Acquire A Second Railroad
18. Develop Formal Training Plan, Processes, Job Aids, Metrics, Objectives, and Incentives.

Learning

19. Python Book (and project)
20. Machine Vision (OpenCV) (and project)
21. 3D Modeling w/ Fusion 360 (and project)
22. Complete Two Khan Academy Physics Classes

Other

23. Win 100,000 Ticket Prize at Dave and Buster’s
24. Mountain Bike 25 Miles
25. Donate 10% of Income (post tax)
26. Solve World’s Largest Rubik’s Cube
27. Get Pilot’s License
28. Get Another Tattoo
29. Volunteer 100 Hours
30. Fix Up Yard and Landscaping
31. Clean/Fix Up House Like Ready to Sell
32. Read to Roark 10 Minutes for 300 Days
33. Surprise Goal From KT and Zach Norterburn

This was an impulsive decision. As of 30 minutes ago, I had barely made a dent in my goal of donating 10% of our post tax income to charity. But then I read an article my wife wrote about the lack of diagnostic healthcare in the developing world.

Giving away a chunk of money and completing one of my goals seemed like the most obvious thing to do, so I donated some of our investments to Give Well, an organization that studies the most effective charities and distributes money accordingly.

I really hate donating money to charity almost entirely because there is no positive reinforcement. A couple of mouse clicks and poof, my investment account is down several thousand dollars. There’s no warm fuzzy feeling usually associated with charitable giving, just some auto-generated thank you email. I get some brownie points for heaven though, right?

God: John, I know you haven’t believed in me your whole life, but I’ve decided to look past your lack of faith and liberal use of my name in vain since you donated all that money to charity.

That’s how I imagine it happening at least.

I don’t like completing this goal, but that’s exactly why I need it. The loss to me is so evident and I may never see the direct benefit, but I know that the minor anxiety I feel now doesn’t hold a candle to the benefit gained by those in need.