In the 2025 retrospective, I noted that quarterly goals worked better than annual ones — completion rates went from 50-60% to ~70%. But even quarterly felt like too many goals to hold in my head. Q1 had 12 items at ~63% completion. Q3 had 7 items at ~93%.

The pattern seems clear: fewer goals, higher completion. Whether that's causation or just correlation with "having a good quarter," I'm not sure. Worth testing.

This month I'm trying something more minimal. Two systems, one keystone habit, and explicit contingency plans for when things break — because things will break.

The One Thing

In bed by 8pm, 6/7 nights.

The idea is that everything else is downstream:

If any link breaks, everything downstream breaks with it. That's the theory, anyway.

I'm going back to the office 4 days a week in January. The 7:35 train is a hard constraint — miss it and the morning falls apart. To catch it, I need to wake at 4:30. To wake at 4:30, I probably need to be asleep by 8:30 at the latest. So 8pm bedtime becomes the keystone.

I've tried to nail down sleep for four quarters now: Partial Partial Partial —. This time I'm hoping the structural dependency helps — it's not a goal I'm trying to hit, it's a constraint that breaks everything if I miss it. We'll see if that framing actually changes anything.

Track one number: bedtime adherence (0-7/week).

Two Systems, Not Four

I started with four interlocking systems (life ops, health, work, study). It was... a lot. I think I was designing a system I'd admire rather than one I'd actually run. So I'm cutting it down.

Health

Life Ops

That's 6 things. My best quarter had 7. Seems like the right ballpark.

Contingency Plans

The 2025 retrospective said "build in slack for disruption." Q4 got hit by illness and I didn't have a plan for it. This time I'm writing the contingencies down in advance, so I'm not negotiating with myself when things go sideways.

A-Plan (default)

• 8pm bed, 4:30 wake, gym → train
• 5 gym sessions, 2 cardio sessions
• Full Todoist maintenance

B-Plan (sleep slipping)

If bedtime adherence is below 4/7 by Wednesday:

• Thu becomes a rest days
• Weekend is recovery, not intensity
• Focus on stabilizing sleep before adding training back

The idea is to catch the slide early rather than grinding through on willpower and crashing later.

C-Plan (sick/emergency)

If I'm ill or life explodes:

• Only goal: in bed by 8pm
• Gym is optional
• Todoist is paused
• Resume A-plan when recovered

I suspect "life explodes" will happen at least once in January.

Protected Exploration Time

Sunday 4:30am–2pm: Unstructured.

If I'm waking up early anyway, I might as well use the morning. No agenda. No goals. Read whatever, tinker with something, go for a walk, take a nap. The 2025 retrospective noted that the biggest wins — GPT adoption, health transformation, team leadership — weren't planned. They emerged from what I'm calling explore time.

This is a big block, but that's the point. It's hard to stumble into something interesting in a 2-hour window.

Night Shutdown

The morning only works if the night before is buttoned up. I need to pre-plan essentially the entire next day:

• Lunch prepped for tomorrow
• Protein shake ready for post-gym
• Coffee made the night before
• Clothes staged — gym clothes, work clothes
• Bag packed — laptop, food, water

7:30pm: Start winding down. Do the prep.

8:00pm: In bed.

This is why 8pm is non-negotiable — I need the buffer to actually get ready, not just collapse into bed. If dinner runs late or prep takes longer, 8pm slips, and then 4:30am slips, and then the train slips.

Weekly Check-in

Sunday evening. Maybe 10 minutes. Two questions:

1. Bedtime adherence this week: __/7
2. What's the one thing to protect next week?

If bedtime was below 4/7, I'm on B-plan next week. That's the rule I'm setting for myself, at least. Whether I actually follow it when the moment comes is a different question.

What's Explicitly Out

• Work goals — staying in work land, tracked separately
• Study goals — not tracking this month (I can still blog and read, it's just not a target I'm measuring)
• Creative goals — conscious tradeoff, revisit in February
• Elaborate tracking — no 10-cell weekly scorecard

The retrospective asked about creative goals: "do I actually want this, or do I like the idea of wanting it?" I'm not answering that question in January. I think I need to stabilize sleep first before I can think clearly about what else I want.

The Bet

The bet is that if I nail bedtime 6/7 nights for four weeks, everything else will follow. Gym sessions will happen because I'll have energy. The cut will work because sleep regulates hunger. The train will be caught because I'll wake up on time.

And if bedtime doesn't work, I'll know by January 15th — not March. That's the point of monthly goals with weekly check-ins: faster feedback loops.

We'll see.