Doing the final tally of what I hoped to achieve and did achieve relative to my 2025 Aspirations. I think overall I did pretty good in ticking them off.
Health & Wellness
My goal for 2025 was 350 workouts and 325 iFit sessions using the treadmill, bike, and elliptical. According to iFit’s year-end recap, I exceeded both targets.
I raised the number of workouts in November to 400, thinking I could get to it since I was doing double and triple-incline workouts to train for Tiger’s Nest. Unfortunately, at the end of the year, (add list of excuses) due to a weak internet connection, jet lag, and walking 25,000 to 35,000 steps as a tourist, the best I could do in the system was 385. I did bring gym clothes on recent trips and have managed to fit in body weight workouts either in the morning or evening. With all the walking and hilly terrain, I definitely got exercise! If I loosely count those then I did hit the adjusted goal of 400 workouts.
I continued to focus more on non-scale achievements that make me feel healthy and strong. My main non-scale goal was to comfortably trek to Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan. It seems “comfortably” is a relative word because it was far from comfortable, but I made it to the monastery. The round trip took five hours to hike the 10k in elevation, which is about average for tourists who stop for lunch on the way back down. As my guide said, it is not a race, and we have all day to complete it. Even better, my wife joined and motivated me!
Share Knowledge and Experiences
I did not have a fixed objective other than to write and share as much as possible. I wrote 18 articles for Search Engine Journal, weekly posts on Substack Sighal and Friction, and blog posts and company website content. According to Grammarly, my best week was 376,000 words, and I have written consistently for 99 weeks.
Towards the end of the year, I did start falling short on writing goals. Most of my writing has been for myself to clear my head and capture thoughts, which has pivoted into those thought leadership articles, and a good chunk of time has gone towards two books the KPI Trap, which is a cross between my classic rants of why things don’t get done and how to maneuver in a ever more fractured digital landscape. The other is more of a how-to process book on Web Effectiveness.
For my next series of articles for Search Engine Journal, I’ll aim to balance writing about what the industry needs to hear with what it wants to hear. It’s always a challenge—the gap between how people should think and where they want to go. So that’s where I’m at—trying to align personal goals with professional demands while staying true to what I believe the industry needs.
Visit 10 New Countries
I will fall short of this aspiration to reach 10 new countries, reaching only 7. I have added Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Gibraltar, Morocco and Bhutan. All we amazing adventures. Despite not hitting that goal, I did do a lot of traveling – we spent time in the Andalusia region of Spain and in Naples/Pompeii, Italy. We also had work trips to Japan, Dublin, and Poland.
Our Bhutan trip was an adventure, taking 3 days to get there, with stops in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Bangkok, all to reach Kathmandu. We hopped over to Bhutan, then back to Bangkok to connect to Tokyo for New Year’s. As I noted, bagging multiple new countries is a challenge when trying to balance work and adventure with new cities in countries we have already visited.
For 2026, I am not setting a new country goal, as that was a bit too much pressure to try to squeeze in something adjacent. We are trying to work out a trip to Bolivia, Madagascar, and Saipan, with our ever-pushed-out 5 Stans and Antarctica.
Spend Quality Time with Family and Friends
I still need to improve in this area. I am hoping to do my annual fishing trip with my good friend Marty, or I may swap it for astro photography in the Bolivian Salt Flats and bring my son along. I have reached out to more friends than usual this year with a New Year’s greeting and would like to take a fun trip to a few regions to catch up with them. Let’s see how the work travel aligns. Some of my best moments have been impromptu dinners or wine tasting with friends when I am in town.
