33 Before 33 Results

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.