I've Crossed the Finish Line: Heading to a New Start
Open Goals 2025#05
I’ve made it.
After one year of running, I crossed the finish line for my first semi-marathon competition.
I ran 21.1 km in 2h 6m 7s. That’s 5m 58s per each km.
For context, I ran my first 10K competition in 1h 5m 34s last year, which is 6m 33s per km.
This is the power of tiny gains, compounded over time by showing up daily. This is what consistency looks like.
Not only have I improved my pace by about 10%, but I have also doubled the running distance.
However, this is only half the story. Running 21k is about both physical endurance and mental grit.
And I’m more proud of myself for my mental grit than my physical endurance.
When I entered the last 5 km of the race, which was uphill, knee pain started to kick in. It hurt so much that I was ready to quit. But I didn’t. I kept running slower, and I’m glad I did so.
I even walked a few times to give my knee time to recover, but I got back on track as soon as the race went downhill.
Speaking of endurance and grit, let’s see how my goals evolved in April.
Monthly Challenges
Sweetless month,
Read daily for at least 10 minutes.
The only thing I can say about my monthly challenges is that I failed to keep up with them.
Out of 30 days, I managed to stay away from sweets for only 11 days, and I read for at least 10 minutes only 6 days. This means I had a success rate of 37%, respectively 20%.
On the positive side, I had days without sugar and days when I read. And that is a good thing.
I have to remind myself that I chose these challenges to help me grow my willpower muscle, and they have to be hard.
I will roll over these challenges to May, aiming for a 50% success rate this time.
Growth Objectives
When I started the Open Goals series, I intended to create a space where I could document my objectives, processes, initiatives, results, and failures, leaving a trail of my success for those who follow me.
Open is a double concept:
On one hand, open for everybody to see what I do,
On the other hand, I am open because I’m okay with others seeing what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.
Now, since I have a clearer sense of what Over Engineering is all about—a manifestation against the hype on the shiny things happening currently in the industry—I will align my open goals to the three main pillars it is based on: Craftsmanship, Productivity, and Well-being.
Well-being
I currently have no well-being goals set. I know I want to improve my sleep quality, but I haven’t yet figured out what it's worth measuring.
At the same time, I want to maintain my current running habit, and I don’t want the new goal to affect it.
So, I give myself until the end of May to think of the objective for improving my well-being.
It might end up not being related to sleep. 🤔
Craftsmanship
This would be a new area in the Open Goals section.
Craftsmanship is about mastering skills that have stood the test of time. I’m considering consolidating some skills that might have weakened in recent years.
Also, I’m considering skills that others might benefit from, and I can write about them in the newsletter or teach them in the Engineering Mastermind initiative.
Like with my well-being goal, I give myself until the end of May to think of the objective for improving my well-being.
Productivity • Business
Objective: Slick Newsletter.
Key Results:
🔄 Write daily for 10 minutes
🚧 Receive 100 meaningful comments
🚧 Grow Substacks recommending me by 4X
🚧 Donate 200 EURO
Key Results
I had a low daily writing ratio this Month—only 30%. That’s about 10 out of 30 days in April. Most of the time, I would write the newsletter in one or two days, just before I release it. 🤷♂️
I have not yet found a writing schedule that I can stick to. But I’m working on it.
To my surprise, I also received five more meaningful comments on my issues, bringing the total to 20. To achieve this KR, I will need at least 10 comments each month from now on.
Yet another small growth also happened in the number of Substacks recommending me, reaching 31 in total (+3 since last month). If I want to achieve my KR, I need to have at least 6+ recommendations each month by the end of December.
My donations were the only key result where I saw no growth this month. The reason is simple: I hadn’t had any new paid readers for the last two months.
If I want to see any improvements on this KR, I really have to step up my game. Not sure how yet, but I must put something more valuable on the table for my paid readers.
Initiatives
At the beginning of the month, I published my 3rd guest post in the series—this time for
by .You can read my 3x Productivity Combo here if you want to learn more about using it.
I also overcame my fear of meeting new people, which is a bit weird given that I’m writing a newsletter, and organized the first Engineering Mastermind meetup.
It was a bit of a failure since I didn’t properly communicate the date and time, and finding a proper time slot across continents is quite a challenge.
To be blunt, the first session was a one-man show, meaning I was alone in the Zoom call. But I’m learning, and I’ve rescheduled the meetup for the beginning of May. It can only go uphill from here. 😆
Another initiative this month was to share my posts on Reddit, and this blew up fast:
188k views
173 comments
170 upvotes
I’m unsure if this is good or bad, viral or casual in Reddit terms. However, it was a pretty unique experience for me. Over one week, this converted into 3k views on Substack and four subscribers.
My question now is how I can convert these views into more subscribers?
Lessons Learned
Until now, I have completely ignored social media. However, the Reddit experience made me think I might have lost some newsletter growth opportunities.
Also, my decision to remove the subscribe button from the newsletters may have reduced the chances of new readers subscribing.
This might reflect my previous issue's low conversion rate of 0,13%.
So I have added it back. Now, how about you give it a try! 👆
Closing Thoughts
These were my Open Goals updates for April. I look forward to seeing you in the next issue. Cheers!
—Alex