My 2025 Theme – the Year of Strength

It is time for a new yearly theme! Note: I don’t buy the journals, but Myke and CPG Grey popularized the idea of creating yearly themes.

What is a yearly theme? Here’s a summary:

Instead of setting resolutions at the start of the year, you set an overall idea of how you would like to approach each year or season. This then becomes a guide for your personal and/or professional life throughout that period.

This is my six yearly theme. Looking back over the past five:

• 2020: The Year of Less
• 2021: The Year of Accountable Improvement
• 2022: The Year of Daily Better
• 2023: The Year of Mornings
• 2024: The Year of Language

2024 Theme Postmortem

2024 was almost a complete bust. About this time last year Julie and I wrapped up a month of intensive Spanish language class in Madrid and I had grand ideas of an ongoing year of improvement. While we were in Spain for another 2 months I was good about maintaining my Busuu work, but upon return to the USA the struggle got real. I didn’t avoid the struggle – I was aware and did continuous tweaks to attempt to encourage myself back into a good routine. Example 1: in March I added a quarterly review of the theme in an attempt to force myself to adjust habits and make progress. Example 2: in May I tried to give myself some space and lowered my daily habit tracking to “hey just try to do some Spanish work once a week.” No surprise to me: maintaining a once-a-week habit is even harder than a once-a-day habit.

I’ve got a few theories as to why this turned so poorly:

• I did not bake in any accountability after the paid-for class ended. I anticipated this, insisting that “I will leverage accountability and professional help”. I vaguely recall searching online for some live language coaching options but never followed through on it.
• I didn’t ascribe enough meaning or purpose to the outcome; my subconscious kept reminding me “this isn’t important enough to give your attention.” We don’t have another Spain trip planned, I don’t need this for work or leisure, it is just a personal desire to be a capable Spanish speaker. Maybe I like the idea of achieving this, but am unwilling to put in the work required?
• Maybe this is related to my fear of trying hard?
• I likely have latent doubt about the benefit of app-based language learning via Duolingo, Busuu, etc. Busuu seemed better than Duolingo, but I still remain doubtful that it will give meaningful benefit. The biggest strides I’ve made have been during immersive experiences: language class for four hours a day, living in Spain, etc.

A natural conclusion from all this is that if I want to revisit this goal, it will require joining a class or hiring a teacher. Both bring the accountability and required conversational engagement that I didn’t put in place in 2024.

2025 Theme

I look at the prior years and I want to make all of them my theme! They are still good, still relevant. Also, they all appear to be different sides of the same coin; I guess most New Year resolutions and themes are.

I want to ride the wave of some recent success in physical fitness and make 2025 my Year of Strength. After settling here in Napa in early November, Julie rejoined Planet Fitness with a Black Card membership. This allows me to visit with her as her guest, as often as I like. Since mid-November I’ve hit the gym for strength training at least three times per week, every week. My partner for this (besides the awesome accountability that Julie brings) has been FitBod (that link will get you two weeks free as of January 2025), the best strength training app I’ve used so far. I had previously used the Strong iOS app, a solid tool but really just a tracker and not a guide. There are three things I love about FitBod:

1. It builds workouts for me, solving for the dual constraints of time (I’m going to work out three times per week for 45 minutes each time) and strength training targets (I want to workout every muscle group while also ensuring adequate rest from the prior workout).
2. It has awareness of what strength training tools I have available for me. So far I have it configured for our local Planet Fitness (which doesn’t have free-weight barbells) and body-weight only. When I return to Keuka I can teach it about my home gym setup there.
3. When it builds the workout for me, I can easily swap in a different exercise and even tune the FitBod recommendation engine (“recommend this less” or even “don’t show me this exercise again”). I’m not into doing handstands, so please don’t show me that again thank you!

I don’t have more detail to add to this theme other than “maintain a solid strength training routine.” There will be some gaps in the year: I’ll be backpacking in Patagonia in March (I can count that as strength training, right?) and spending two weeks with a bunch of family and friends in Scotland starting in late June. I’ll maintain my pushup routine (150 per day, 6 days a week) throughout.