In my end of year reflection last year (2023), my key lesson was the power of compounding.

It changed my approach to 2024.

Rather than setting goals, I set practices, consciously choosing the ones I want to continue for the rest of my life.

Then I found coaches this year to help me accelerate progress.

It became a new equation: practice x coach.

Over the course of this year I engaged coaches in areas I wanted to work on.

Here they are:

1. Strength and conditioning – Dan Young
2. Personal and professional financial management – Sloan Wilkins
3. Nutrition – Richy Adams
4. Coaching (about coaching!) – Peter Barr
5. Business – Billy Murphy
6. Prioritization – Ferzeen Anis
7. Meditation – Wendy Rosenfeldt
8. Speaking – Kevin Ryan + my AI coach Yoodli
9. Surfing – Shayne Sutherland
10. Swimming – Pete Rosengren
11. Bonus: Parenting – If coaching is a process of observing behaviour and providing feedback, I’ve also come to realise that my parenting coaches live with me – my three girls. When it comes to feedback, they are the least filtered and provide the most real-time feedback of them all!

Does all of that seem like overkill? Perhaps. 🙂

Even my mum commented this year: “Toby, you’re an extremist!”

But my reflections say the approach has worked for me.

2024 has felt like an incredibly consistent year.

And I’m finishing it with a deeply satisfying sense of contentment with both the progress made and what’s still to come.

So a huge thank you to my coaches this year for your assessments, planning, toolkits, systems, structures, support and accountability. It’s been great to work with people I admire and who have walked the path ahead to help me accelerate my own development.

You’ve helped me make progress I would barely have believed possible. Best of all it’s been in a manner that still feels sustainable and has me looking forward to more.

I’ll be doing more of it next year for sure.

But… if I could only choose one word to sum up the lessons of 2024, it would be interconnectedness.

Interconnectedness

Perhaps its been a function of tapping the collective brains of my coaches, but interconnectedness sits at the heart of my lessons for 2024.

Seeing everything as part of a greater system. Eroding the misconceptions like mind and body being separate things and realising the interplay and influence in all directions. Recognising that we are all connected and interdependent.

A bit like realising the power of compounding last year, clearly interconnectedness isn’t a new idea. It’s just feels as though it’s landed in a new way for me this year.

While every area has had its own work to be done in different ways, I’ve noticed just how big an impact one part can have on the whole.

It started to surface as I used a food and mood journal for the very first time about 4 months ago.

It was supposed to be just a quick reflection on a few days of the food I was eating and how it made me feel.

I haven’t stopped keeping it.

It has since expanded in scope to include exercise, meditation, pain, supplementation etc (free template here). I now have over 1200 lines of my own observations and notes. I’ve kept a tab open at work and fill it out through the day.

All useful? No of course not.

But patterns have definitely emerged simply by putting it all down and looking at it. Along with the coaching it’s helped me make change – especially in reducing processed foods and sugar.

The effect that observation has on behaviour is called the Hawthorne Effect in psychology. The Hawthorne Experiment showed that behaviour changed simply from the fact that the participants in the experiment knew they were being observed.

Observing myself and my behaviours through the journal has been a helpful practice.

Beyond the food and mood journal, I’ve also noticed a bunch of examples:

• Feeling stronger and in less pain from gym work, helps me be more present and connected as a husband, dad, friend and coach.
• Swim training on Tuesday mornings with my girls gave me energy for the entire day.
• Seeing my clients have some huge wins has brought me satisfaction and fulfilment.
• Writing The Monday 3 each week held me accountable for the progress I wanted to be making for myself.
• Doing work that fills my cup gives me energy to share.
• Embracing my own discomfort has helped me help my clients and audiences work with theirs.
• Meditation in the middle of my day, rather than being a distraction or trade off, has helped the afternoons feel more productive, focussed and energised.
• A challenging conversation in one part of my life, helps all parts.

Rather than a set of limited tradeoffs, this year has felt more aligned than any previous. Will that always be the way? I hope it will, but it may well not, so I’m trying to fully appreciate it for now.

I mentioned this saying in The Monday 3 newsletter last week:

How we do anything is how we do everything.

As 2024 has played out, it feels more and more like every moment becomes an opportunity to practice aligning my behaviours and choices around values and purpose.

Because if I accept the fact that everything that is important to me is a never ending practice – relationships, health, work, financial management etc – then the choice that matters is the one I make right now.

So here is

My 2024 Annual Review Process

I set aside a few hours and used a 2 part process for my review:

1. I used Kelly Wilson’s Valued Living Questionnaire as the framework for my 2024 reflection (free template here).
2. Once I’d completed that, I reviewed my diary week by week to see what else might emerge.
3. I intentionally didn’t set out to start planning. I’m going to let these reflections simmer over the break and then come back to planning in the new year.

Here are my notes.

2024 Annual Review Notes

A Quick Stock Take

Detailed Reflection Notes

Family Relationships (other than intimate or parenting)

What worked well?

• Tuesday afternoons at Mum’s with my sisters, nieces and nephews
• Taking the cousins to Minjerribah (South Straddie)
• Sibling dinners/catch ups when we could
• Having Luce’s mum living with us was awesome.
• Having siblings and in laws around for Sat mornings and regular dinners.
• Sydney road trips
• Switzerland trip

What could be improved?

• Surf Sundays really didn’t happen – this was going to be a fortnightly catch up with my brother to go for a surf or just hang.
• Sibling dinners were in the calendar but needed a bit more planning to make sure they happened.

What would I do differently?

• I’d love to make Surf Sundays work – maybe reducing the frequency but dialling up the commitment?

Intimate relationships

What worked well?

• Financial coaching definitely helped I think to keep us aligned around that
• Walk and talks were good rather than always going out for dinner.
• Coffee special time – our morning ritual
• Switzerland holiday at the beginning of the year

What could be improved?

• Date nights. We need to enforce these.

What would I do differently?

• Dates – we need to lock them in and not miss them.

Parenting

What worked well?

• The 1:1s with the girls started out well but dropped off
• Swimming with the girls on a Tuesday morning while they trained.
• Good teachers for them really helped.
• Getting along to activities and school engagements

What could be improved?

• Getting more 1:1 time with the girls
• Do more drop offs
• Try to have more fun in the moments – ridiculous songs etc

What would I do differently?

• Reboot the 1:1 time.

Friends/social life

What worked well?

• Yamba surf weekend.
• Straddie weekends w friends
• Combining friends and fitness – swimming, walks etc.

What could be improved?

• Didn’t do the dads and kids weekend
• Make more use of Straddie

What would I do differently?

• Do more active stuff with mates rather than coffees/meals etc
• Book in the dads and kids weekend
• More time with families at Straddie through the year.

Work

What worked well?

• Getting the content rhythm – Monday 3, ~daily socials w help.
• Revenue growth
• More podcast guesting
• More speaking and getting better at it.
• More posting on socials from speaking gigs etc.
• 3 weeks off at Xmas.
• Making an annual cadence with clients (1:1 and group) for reflection, planning,
• Financial practices
• More than doubled emails in my list
• Maintained 50%+ open rates
• Refinement of target client
• Refinement of the programs

What could be improved?

• Tighten # of clients
• Disappointing not to have the V1 of the book done.
• Explore different modalities and structure for the 1:1 program
• Blocking time for writing

What would I do differently?

• Global tour was interesting and intense. I’ll need to consider the tradeoffs if I was to do that again.
• Complete the book
• Dial up networking

Finances

What worked well?

• Coaching
• Way better with financial management and forecasting

What could be improved?

• Investing
• Refining the system as the context changes

What would I do differently?

• Keep going w Sloan to maintain the consistency and systems.

Education/training

What worked well?

• Coaching w Peter

What could be improved?

• Look at additional formal qualifications to continue to develop my own skills

What would I do differently?

• Book a new coaching course

Recreation/fun

What worked well?

• Skiing – absolutely fell in love with it (even after this start)
• Yamba surf camps
• Caloundra for the family holiday, weekends away in Tugun, Palm Beach, South Straddie

What could be improved?

• Not enough surfing
• Live music and theatre
• need to make a conscious effort to have a few more laughs and find those opportunities in the moments that feel more pressured – parenting particularly.

What would I do differently?

• Hold true to the surfing schedule.
• Try to find slots in the week for mid week surfs?
• Bring more board games into the mix
• Live music – good to have some locked in!

Spirituality

What worked well?

• Meditation retreat – new night meditation technique
• Daily practice much stronger – up to approx 10 sessions per week.
• Breathwork
• Renaming my tough stuff to “Toby”
• Loved Ursula K Le Guin’s version of the Tao Te Ching.
• Practicing to make every moment an expression of me.

What could be improved?

• Experiences to deep dive into this eg holotropic breathwork

What would I do differently?

• Book the experiences

Citizenship/ Community Life

What worked well?

• Being president of the Ashgrove Aces Swimming club has been awesome.
• Helping out for the school leadership interviews
• CEO Sleep Out
• Getting back more involved w the Olympic movement

What could be improved?

• Pretty happy with improvement in this area this year.

What would I do differently?

• Not much – want to do more of the same.

Physical self care (diet, exercise, sleep etc)

What worked well?

• Coaches
• Gym consistency – stoked with the strength progress here.
• Nutrition consistency and improvement
• Breathwork and cold tubs on Thursdays for a reset
• Walk and Talks w clients
• Food and mood journal – observation/awareness being the first point of change

What could be improved?

• Sleep.

What would I do differently?

• Get to bed earlier – lights off at 9
• Buy a whoop for further tracking?

Environmental Issues

What worked well?

• Spending time on South Stradbroke
• Donating to Stripe Climate program
• Containers For Change with the girls

What could be improved?

• Killed the worm farm – not so good.

What would I do differently?

• Reboot the worm farm/compost
• Donate services to companies/orgs working on env issues