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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   878 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 31, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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New Year's goals/resolutions.

  1. Work: I had a huge surge of success right before I left for break, so I'm feeling optimistic about finishing my PhD this year. I probably won't graduate until May 2027 still, but I hope to have all the experiments done by the end of this year.
  2. Fitness: Every year I keep saying I'm going to try high volume training and never actually do. I plan to build up to 15-20 hours a week of training, 1-2 of those being mobility work, 2-4 being in the gym and the rest some form of aerobic exercise (swim, bike, run, row).
  3. Intellectual stuff: I want to focus on improving my Italian this year, and having a more professional approach to writing on substack (drafting and proofreading posts before I publish them).
  4. Finances: I have a system I'm happy with set up for investing (1/3 bonds, 1/3 index funds, 1/3 speculation, in retirement account it's more like 1/6 bonds, 2/3 index funds, 1/6 speculation), but need to work on budgeting this year. My sister (who lives in the UK) earns about the same as me, but is able to travel almost every month because she budgets better than me (she spends the money I would invest on travel). For me this means probably reducing sport related expenses (less races, not getting injured and having to go to PT), reducing travel, and limiting eating out to once a week.
  5. Dating: I think I'm going to be celibate for 2026 and put my energy into other areas of life.
  6. Spirituality: Will continue to practice tarot with my ex-roommate over zoom, and want to get into a breath work practice.
  7. Health: After reading This is Natto, I'm way less concerned with trying to optimize my health, which I think paradoxically will make my health much better. I will continue to track HRV and RHR for training purposes, but otherwise just listen to my body.
  8. Community: My tarot draw for 2026 was the three of cups, which is the card of fellowship/community. I want to cook for a friend at least twice a month this year, and hold a social gathering and my house or a third space at least once a month.
  9. Via negativa: All of these goals are going to require time to complete. Some of this is going to come from not tossing and turning in my bed trying to get extra sleep. The rest is probably going to have to come from reducing digital distractions. I'd like to reduce my phone screen time to less than an hour a day by the end of the year. I'm going to do this by adding micro anti-habits every month. The first of these is to batch respond to texts only twice a day in the morning and the evening and otherwise not respond.

Goals for 2026

Fitness

  • Lose 10 pounds. Target weight - 84 kg. Accounts for creatine loading and body re-composition due to increased protein intake.
  • Swim continuously for 10 minutes with no break. I have terrible cardio and am a terrible swimmer. I can be more ambitious, but baby steps.
  • 1.5 plates bench, 2 plates squat, and 7 strict pull ups.
  • Get used to normal sleeping hours

Relationship
Move in together & get engaged or go back to square one. No more long term committed relationship that is almost over the horizon but not quite. Hopefully it is the former and not the latter.

Work
Reach the end of the year feeling secure about my place in my career. Sounds lame, but I have been making feeling anxious about my career for a while despite making good numbers. My salary 3x-ed from 2021-2025, but for some reason I feel like I'm falling behind. Doesn't help that some of my peers have comfortably graduated to 7 figure networth. It's this but worse. Karpathy eclipses me in all technical areas and 2026 feels like it will be decisive year in my field.

Personal

  • Record a podcast episode. I've been saying I will do this. Worth doing it just to put my own will-he-wont-he claims to rest.
  • Do a full day food pop up. I have done enough food events now. I would like to do 1 that goes for the full day.
  • Complete 3 blogs that are half complete in my notion.
  • Start mentoring 2 more people

Lose 10 pounds. Target weight - 84 kg.

Changing from imperial to metric in consecutive sentences? Boys, we've got ourselves a maverick.

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