Volume Goals: 260 miles, 12 essays, 21 dates, 365 daily notes
Last January, I wrote my 2024 update, titled "587 Miles, 803 Meetings, and 14 Dates", a year in review through the lens of the systems of my life. This year's update should hold fewer surprises.
In 2025, I worked out 250 times, ran 260 miles, lifted 70 times and hit a 275 lbs benchpress PR. I lifted well over 1M lbs for a second year. I wrote 12 essays, which resulted in over 300k cumulative views. I hosted 6 shabbat dinners, the Gowanus trivia tour, and the Brooklyn Quarter Marathon. Kira and I went to 8 weddings, 6 concerts, and went on 21 dates (up 50% YoY!). My parents both turned 60. Kira caught her 100th baby. There was a lot to celebrate.
I'm particularly proud of my writing this year. I wrote 12 widely circulated essays in 2025. Select posts here:
- 587 Miles, 803 Meetings, and 14 Dates: My completely sane system for personal analytics (): A personal essay on building a lightweight "life metrics" system and what I learned from it.
- Train & Weather Tracker with Raspberry Pi & E-Ink (): A build log for an e-ink dashboard that shows train ETAs and weather at a glance.
- The month fintechs embraced stablecoins (): A timeline and synthesis of the spring 2025 wave of stablecoin announcements and why they mattered.
- How stablecoins become money: Liquidity, sovereignty, and credit (): A framework for how stablecoins evolve from a payments tool into "money" (liquidity, sovereignty, credit).
- Two Career Tools: The 45/55 Decision and Preparing Harder (): Two mental models for career decisions: acting on a 45/55 edge and upping preparation intensity.
- Things I Recommend in 2025 (): A roundup of products, services, and habits I genuinely recommend.
- Three Questions That Helped Me When Seeking Career Advice (): A framework for getting actionable career advice and picking a career.
- Stablecoins unlock the bank ledger (): My submission to the a16z big ideas package on how stablecoins will help banks move beyond old core ledger systems.
Unfortunately, I traveled 156 days including a stretch of 2.5 months where I was home only 17 days. Despite seeing friends, family, and working with excellent founders, this was not fun and I plan to never repeat it. I also got injured 2x, which I believe is the result of travel, prolonged sitting, and fatigue. I did not have calf issues this year, which I worked hard to prevent, and my wife has said my calves "look awesome."
I fell short of my social following goals (the vanity!), although I feel good about my results: I almost doubled my following on Twitter and LinkedIn (3,784 → 7,118 and 3,720 → 6,586 respectively). I had also aimed to lose weight while getting stronger. Stronger I did, but lose weight, I did not.
Ultimately 2025 was a year of beginnings, progress, and culmination. I feel incredibly grateful for Kira, my family, my friends, and my professional community. Each of these people contributed to me having a happier, more fulfilling year. Thank you.
Volume Goals: Measure your process
After last year's post, I received many thoughtful direct messages (thank you to those who reached out, this was sincerely appreciated and encouraging), but also three recurring questions:
- Isn't this all very hard to manage?
- Why do you do this?
- Why and how do you create such specific goals?
Isn't this all very hard to manage?
No, not really, but I already have the habit of working at a computer every day. And every morning I need to get organized. Some people might have a calendar app, my mom keeps a little folio, my wife is a notes app girl. I have the Daily Note.
The daily note is where I track my meetings, notes, to-dos, and Daily Questions on one page. When I open a new daily note, the daily questions are sitting there at the top. Between meetings, in the morning, or when procrastinating, I'll notch a "win" by answering the questions. I estimate I spent less than 10 minutes on this in 2025.
- Workout: Lift
- Location: Home
- Meetings: Adam, Standup, Dorian, Arianna
- Finished Book: Lords of Finance
- ...
I devise annual goals that can be tracked through daily questions. I track goal specific metrics with apps (primarily Strong and Strava) that let me track specific annual goals. For monthly goals, I still record the goal in a daily note. The daily note is a reminder to attend to the monthly goal.
Then I have a dashboard where I can see my progress towards my annual goals in one place, compiled from these daily notes. I struggle to keep multiple priorities in my mind if I can't see them in one place… the dashboard helps.
Why do you do this?
I want to do many things, I want to do big things, I'm easily distracted, I am not inherently talented at keeping multiple priorities in focus.
I've always been jealous of the notes app folks who can keep it all together, but that's just not me. I am deeply aware I need a bicycle, maybe even an exoskeleton, for my mind.
This system creates one place where I can see my annual goals, a scoreboard, that measures and reinforces my process. With this system, I can keep many priorities in focus.
Why and how do you create such specific goals?
Because I want to measure things that are specific and big, and I want to see my results in one place. I want a daily habit that reminds me of my goals and a process that is resilient to change, off days, or obsessive behavior, but requires consistent effort. Therefore I create big goals, measured in aggregate, with multiple routes to success, and tie them to outcome I care about.
I call these volume goals, I use them to measure my inputs and evaluate my habits
- Inputs: reps I control
- Routines: how and when I do the work
- Outcomes (impact): the result or growth I ultimately want. Correlated with the volume goal.
Meet 500 founders, lift 1M lbs, workout 250 times, run 250 miles, publish 12 essays, etc. Volume goals don't measure the outcomes I need (best founders, $1B deals, get stronger, don't get injured, become a better writer, improve how people think about stablecoins) and they don't prescribe a routine (morning runs, evening runs, daily writing, weekend writing) - but progress towards volume goals is an excellent proxy for solid inputs and effective routines. When life changes or inputs lag, the specific routine can evolve.
If I lift 1M lbs, I'll get stronger. Maybe not "as much stronger as possible", but 1M lbs will get the job done. And these goals are resilient: they survive a bad workout, they survive bad data (e.g. I don't include pull ups), I can't finish the goal by March, I can't catch up in December.
Volume goals give me a simple scoreboard that evaluates the daily grind of doing big things. When a volume goal stops serving the outcome I care about, I change it.
Importantly, volume goals allow me to avoid unstructured outcome goals. I tend to fail at outcome goals, in large part because there's no daily habit, no daily reminder, and no process.
Volume goal → inputs → routine→ outcome (impact)
Not all outcomes are the same, though.
Volume Goals and Two Types of Outcomes
Consider two types of outcomes:
- Self improvement: I'm a better writer, I'm stronger, I'm better at doing deals
- Results: I wrote a great essay, I lifted this weight, I did this great deal
Results must be high quality, but many outcomes are about self improvement.
Self-Improvement Outcomes
I was talking to my wife and a good friend about New Year's goals, and they were saying, "We both want to be more thoughtful and creative." They thought journaling would be a good way to do that. I said, "Why don't you make it the goal to fill out this journal by the end of the year? Hopefully aim for three entries a week, but make it your goal to fill 100 pages." And they said, "Well, I only want to do the journal when I have that spark, when I'm really in the mood."
"Not in the mood? Mood's a thing for cattle and loveplay, not fighting."
— Gurney Halleck
This provokes three ideas:
First, consider how you'll accomplish the outcome you want. Sometimes you must manufacture the creative mood, if creativity is an outcome you want. Creativity does not have to be a priority, but if you want to be more creative, and before you were only being creative when the spark hit you — and in those moments, you could only capture the creative spark sometimes, because you've got other things going on — then you might need to manufacture more moments where you feel creative.
Filling out a journal will guarantee that at least on some days, you capture that pure spark. On others, you capture nothing. And the real benefit is the third category, where you didn't have it, but you created it, and you get better at doing so. If you have an outcome you want, consider creating a volume goal that ensures you get there.
Second, acknowledge that it's okay to have junk miles or junk entries in the journal. For me, I accept junk workouts in the gym. I had one this morning. But these workouts do accumulate to something.
This morning, my hip hurt and I lifted ~2,500 pounds in the gym, approximately 1/10th of a typical workout. If I did 100 of these low quality workouts, I'd be nowhere near my goal for the year. But I went to the gym, I stretched, I did PT, and I did push 2,500 pounds closer to my goal. These little efforts make a difference and I keep building the habit that moves me towards my goals.
Junk miles are part of the process: managing the ebbs and flows of energy and life, while developing the skill of discipline.
There is a third point though, which is that if you want to be truly great at something, you probably need to be intentional with every input. For me, this does not apply to weightlifting, it does not apply to running, and it does not apply to hosting events.
Some outcomes need great inputs. Most outcomes need consistent inputs. The hardest outcomes need both.
Results and Volume Goals
With all this said, results cannot include junk. Junk writing is useless writing, a junk memo is a useless memo, a PR does not happen on a junk workout day.
But results happen after self-improvement. I shape volume goals around self-improvement, knowing that the tangible things I accomplish are the result of putting in the work.
Ultimately, this is the balance. Volume goals align with the real goals of self improvement or results. I regularly evaluate if I'm throwing too much junk into my volume goals. And I hold myself accountable to high quality results for the results that matter outside of the system that tracks improvement.
Next year
In 2026, I may need to move portions of my system away from Obsidian, although I'll likely keep my daily note, goal tracking, thinking, and personal notes. I'm nervous to do this, given how much success I've had using Obsidian, but my teammates need to see more of my thinking, so a local-first system isn't quite cutting it.
I think I'll ultimately shift my Obsidian to focus on a narrower scope of goal tracking, thinking, and personal notes.
I do have some new volume goals for this year, which will be added to my daily question. Hit inbox zero 250 times. Post 250 times. Publish 12 times. I have personal and professional goals as well, which I'll keep to myself for now, but plan to share more soon.