Hey there,

Now that we’re almost wrapped on 2023 I wanted to send a super quick email to share my EOY review process. If you’ve been on here for a while, you know I’ve been sharing my annual reviews for coming up to 9 years!

I like to think of annual reflections in the same was as an athlete watching their game tape — seeing where they can improve. If we don't reflect and learn, then we could end up living the same year, year after year.

Journaling questions

• How am I different from a year ago?
• What were my top milestones and memories of the year?
​(Pro Tip: my memory is terrible so I like to go through photos on my phone and note things down for each month)
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• What did I do this year that made me proud of myself?
• What habits & behaviors do I want to start, stop and continue
• What relationships will I be prioritizing?
• What area’s in my life did I experience the most growth?
• What new things did I experience this year?
• What was the most difficult challenge I faced this year and how did I grow from it?
• Looking back, what am I most grateful for about this year?

👉🏻 Here’s a full template of questions I use that you can try out.

One recommendation is that you don’t try to knock the whole thing out in one sitting, take some time on both reflecting and planning for 2023.

Make it fun so it doesn’t feel like work! My wife and I have booked a staycation tonight to start working on ours, because trying to do it with a baby around is mission impossible 😅

What’s next?

In my last email I shared that I'd recently sold my business 🥳. I'll be sharing more on that in upcoming emails and some thoughts around that decision.

Every time I've told someone I've sold they are asking me what's next, or “What are you doing now?” Firstly, Chill brah it's been like a month. So far I’ve had to say “nothing… yet”. It's a weird feeling to not having a current "thing".

Since I was a teenager I've never not had a job or specific focus — whether it was school or business. That's a long time of constant moving and working. Especially given I started my first eBay business at age 13 😂.

That's why rather than jump in and start something out of impatience for action, I need to take a pause. Last thing I want is to commit to something I don’t want to spend the next 5-10 years of my life on. I did BestSelf for 7 years.

That's like getting divorced after seven years and someone asking "well are you engaged yet?". The only thing I know I'll be working on in the new year is this:

👉🏻 Becoming recession proof

If you want to guarantee success, you need to be evolving and upgrading your skills. Want to win 2023? Forget your resolutions, focus on skills.

A book I learned this from years ago was ‘How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big’ by Scott Adams. He says “Every new skill you learn doubles your chance of success.”

Compound yourself.

I've talked before about treating your life like a video game, which is a gamified version of this idea. With that in mind, ask yourself — what skills am I going to improve so I can reach the next level?

Some area’s I’ve been wanting to either get better at or learn about:

• Copywriting (and writing more in general)
• Filmmaking & Storytelling
• Programming (so I can bring ideas to life in pixel-form)
• AI
• Real estate
• Woodworking

Now these are area’s I’ve been curious about for a whileee and have even bought a bunch of courses around that I’ve not had the time (read: made the time🙃) to sit down and go through.

Here’s what’s on my curriculum (so far):

• ​Great Founders Write (Cohort starting Jan 18)
• ​CopyThat — hone copywriting skills with Sam Parr
• ​Founder Hacker — Learn coding from Ryan Kulp
• ​Nick’s Real Estate Masterclass
• ​Explain Ideas Visually — great way to communicate ideas
• ​A 4-Week Class with Casey Neistat — filming & storytelling

(if anyone wants to do any of these alongside me let me know 👊🏻)

Now you don’t need to buy courses to learn this stuff. Join the library, borrow books, look on YouTube, ask ChatGPT — the information is out there for free so don’t use money as an excuse.

Once you know what you want to learn, block it in your calendar!

‘If you work with your mind, rest with your hands’ is a phrase I learned from Nathan Barry that I love and want to do more of in 2023. To me that looks like woodworking or making things in general.

Cathryn @cathrynlavery Started doing some woodworking classes last year. Finally finished my first piece, this walnut C-Table 👇🏻 How it started: How it's going: pic.twitter.com/ySLugz7ka8 June 17th 2022 0 Retweets 52 Likes

That’s it! I hope your holidays were great and your 2023 will be even better than 2022! Be back soon with my public 2022 review!

Best,
Cathryn

P.S. Fun Opportunity! Are you based out of Austin and looking to create more content in 2023? I’m opening up my office space for 1 more person who wants to use it to film and record from. More info here. Reply to this email if you’re interested!

Happy New Year friend, see you on the other side!

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