We have officially closed the door on 2017, which means it's time to

share my Annual Review with you. This will mark the fifth year in a row
I have conducted my Annual Review, and I've found the process useful
every time.

As always, this Annual Review will answer three questions.

1. What went well this year?

2. What didn’t go so well this year?

3. What did I learn? 

If you'd like to spend some time reflecting on your year, you're welcome
to use a similar format for your own Annual Review.

1. What went well this year?

Okay, here's where I succeeded this year.

Book writing. I wrote a book! (Well, mostly.) In last year's review, I

shared that my biggest failure during 2016 was not finishing my book.
Naturally, completing the manuscript became my primary area of focus
for 2017.

I finished the first draft of the manuscript in November, and we're

working on edits now. There are still many improvements to make and,
truthfully, a few months of work left, but it feels really good to see
literally years of work all coming together.

Writing this book has been the most challenging professional project of
my young career. My brain seems to be good at doing things on shorter
time scales (e.g. going to the gym each day, writing weekly articles), but
maintaining focus on the same project month after month is not natural
for me. I've learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses during the
process, and I'll be sharing more about that once it's all said and done.

Systems building. Because I spent nearly all of my time writing the

book, I had virtually no time to work on the other aspects of my
business, which, you can imagine, also happen to be fairly important.
Thankfully, my business still had a great year because, with the help of
my assistant Lyndsey, we have built a variety of systems that enable the
business to run without constant attention from me. These include
systems for selling The Habits Academy, sending out email newsletters,
driving new traffic, and more.

As a result, we had a great year. Here are some quick stats…

 216,415 new email subscribers this year

 327,105 total email subscribers as of December 31, 2017 

 9,333,641 unique visitors this year

 26,044,115 unique visitors since launching on November 12, 2012

I work on this business every day, but some of these numbers still
surprise me. Twenty-six million people have read my writing in the last
five years. That seems impossible. Of course, before I get too self-
congratulatory, I should point out that I have friends who get more
visitors in one month than I got all last year, so there is still plenty of
room for improvement. But still. I never thought my ideas would have
an audience like this. It's crazy.

Weightlifting. Exercise is a core part of my life. Regular readers will

know that I have a background as a college athlete and that I've been
training regularly in the gym for almost a decade now, but this past year
was my most consistent year yet.

In 2017, I exercised 188 times for an average of 15.7 workouts per

month. My typical training session lasts about 45 minutes to 1 hour. My
focus remains on building strength, and every training session includes
lifts like the squat, bench press, deadlift, and clean and jerk. I've written
about my process for recording my workoutspreviously and I'm still
following that format.