A Complete Revolution Around the Sun
Open Goals 2025#04
Last year, at the beginning of April, I committed to get into my best shape ever.
Now, one complete revolution around the sun and 120 running sessions later, I do feel in my best shape ever. When I kicked off my goal, I hadn’t run since 2017. That’s 7 years of sedentarism that worsened after work-from-home became the norm.
I made some efforts to stay in shape—daily walks and intermittent fasting—but that was all. I just maintained my rusty shape, which was on a downhill trend.
For context, my watch was telling me that I had the vitality of a 55-year-old man. Thus, from the fitness point of view, I was 20 years older than I looked. 😅
The daily walks didn’t really help me improve my fitness. Funny enough, my phone even suggested at one point I should introduce some hills in my daily walks if I wanted to see further improvements.
That’s when I decided that I wanted running to be part of my lifelong identity and that I should use it as a strategy to improve my overall health, fitness, and vitality.
Most importantly, I want to become an example for my loved ones.
Monthly Challenges
Sugar-free for one month,
Read daily at least 10 minutes.
This was the second month in which I challenged myself to stop eating sweets, but the success rate was lower than the previous month: only 32% (10 days out of 31) compared to February, when I had 61% (17 days out of 28).
I must acknowledge that 10 days without sweets is still a success, considering that before these challenges, I would eat sweets extra sweets daily.
I will roll over this challenge to April because I want to get rid of the habit of buying sweets or snacks when grocery shopping. And to be a fair game, I will make the exceptions explicit: sweets cooked at home are ok since they are only a fraction of the added sugar, as long as I don’t eat more than a portion. Oh, and 85%+ dark chocolate is also on the white list since it is good for my brain. 🧠
Regarding my reading challenge, I read 14 days out of 31, with a success rate of 45%. Again, this is fantastic progress because the months before have passed without reading anything.
I finally finished The Extended Mind by
and started reading Quiet by (recommended to me by ).I will also keep this challenge in April, with the goal of regaining my daily reading habit. I have to say, I really missed it.
Health Updates
Objective: Get into my best shape.
Key Results:
✅ Run 500k
✅ Run 1000km
✅ Run 2x10K competitions
✅ Finish a 10K run in under 59min 59sec
❌ Finish a 10K run in under 49min 59sec
✅ Increase my VO2 Max to 44
❌ Increase my VO2 Max to 48
Results
I am proud to have crossed the 1,000km running milestone since I committed to a goal that looked impossible last year.
In fact, initially, I thought 500km was stretching enough to run in a year, but by month 9, I realized 1000km was actually doable, even though winter was right around the corner, and I had never run in cold temperatures before.
The ultimate goal is to make running part of my lifestyle and keep doing it for the rest of my life, no matter where I live or travel. The second goal is to be a role model for my son; kids learn more from what we do than from what we tell them to do.
Regarding my key result for running 10k under 50 minutes, I will mark it as failed since my best time was 55 minutes and 12 seconds. I think I underestimated the effort it takes to jump from a pace of 5:32 to 5:00 per kilometer.
I will use the running competition in June to achieve this KR. For the moment, I am content with what I managed to achieve. 😌
My vitality, measured by VO2 Max, has stabilized at 46 for the last three months. Like my previous key results, I initially hoped to bump it to 44 from 38, but when I managed to cross this threshold in month 8, I decided to bump it up to 48.
Apparently, the Pareto principle applies to my health goals as well. Only 20% of my effort was required to achieve 80% of my key results; to go from 46VO2 Max to 48 requires 80% of the effort.
For perspective, if I had the relative fitness of a 55-year-old man when I started, now I have the vitality of a 26-year-old guy. This means I feel like I’m 10 years younger. 🤩
Initiatives
I didn’t do anything more significant than in the previous months. I simply used the same old strategy I talked about before: run at least 3 times per week, no less than 5k.
However, on weekends, when I have more time at my feet, what happens is that I set myself a running target, but by the time I reach it, I extend it a little bit, and so on, ending up running more than I planned.
That’s the case for running my best 21k two weeks ago when I started to run 10k; then, I extended it to run to the top of the hill and then to the other side of the hill.
Eventually, I reached my 10k goal but had to run another 10k back, so I decided to go for the 21k total.
Lessons Learned
If there is one thing worth taking away from this experience, it is that the key to success is consistency and a stubborn focus on the goal.
I’m sure I’m not the first one to reach this conclusion. However, it’s clear that going forward, I want to become more obsessed with my goals and show up daily.
Business (Newsletter) Updates
Objective: Slick Newsletter.
Key Results:
🚧 Write daily for 10 min
🚧 Receive 100 meaningful comments
🚧 Grow Substacks recommending me by 4X
🚧 Donate 200 EURO
Results
This was by far the worst month when it came to my 10 minutes daily writing KR. I only wrote about 50% of the days in March. However, in the days when I wrote, I wrote for more than 10 minutes.
Does it compensate? Maybe. But if I want to make it a habit, I need a better way to keep track of my effort.
Regarding the meaningful comments, in March, I only received 3 comments. It might be because, compared to February, when I sent out 20 newsletters, I only published 8 issues this month. 🤷♂️
Although I don’t consider it currently a meaningful metric, I also noticed a drop in the number of views. If by the end of February, I had reached as many as 4600 views in 30 days, by the end of March, that dropped to 2350 views.
It’s clear that publishing daily skyrockets your reach and engagement. Looking back, I might also have missed a massive opportunity to gain more readers if I knew how to convert them to subscribers.
There are now 28 publications that recommend me (+3 since February). This is slow progress—I would say too slow. Thus, I will look for more initiatives that will hopefully accelerate this KR.
I also have my first paid supporter, which means that I reached 2% of my goal to donate 200€ by the end of this year. 🙌
Initiatives
Do you remember the guest newsletters that I mentioned in my February Open Goal newsletter? They were published in March. If you are interested in reading them, here are the links:
The Radical #1 Reason Your Open Rate Drops (and What To Do About It), published by
in .Five Reasons I Maintain an Open-Source Project, published by
in .
Also, I recommend checking out Kristina’s and Adler’s publications. You might find some great content. 😉
In March, I had the courage to experiment more with chats. On Sundays, I start the new Sunday Sparks ✨ thread, where I encourage my readers to share one valuable idea or lesson that might help others improve their lives.
Every Monday, I start an accountability thread for the paid members, encouraging them to check in on their goals and engage with the other members for collaboration, support, and keep each other accountable.
I initially started this initiative as a separate section of the newsletter called Engineering Mastermind 🚀. However, it added a lot of noise overall, and I think the chat is a better place for accountability check-ins because it facilitates easier communication.
These were my Open Goals updates for March. I look forward to seeing you in the next issue. Cheers!
—Alex