2025 Habits and Systems

Here are the habits/systems that are already working for me that I plan to continue into 2025 and some new ones that I want to try out.

• Weekly Relationship Syncs: My wife and I do a date night every week. This is enforced by blocking time on the calendar and trading off the the responsibility of planning the date each week. During these dates we have a made it habit to check in with the other person on how they are feeling about the relationship and give ourselves space to chat about anything that is top of mind. Having this regular space to sync on the relationship has been incredibly important to our marriage.
• Monthly Household Planning: At the end of each month my wife and I set aside 30 minutes to chat about what we want to get done with the following month for the household. This gives insight into what the other is working on, acts a safeguard from taking on too much and helps us to be grateful to the other person. We record these monthly responsibilities in a shared Google Doc that each of us references as a sort of task queue throughout the month.
• Morning Routine: My alarm goes off at 6:30, I walk the dog, I make my wife a coffee, I unload the dishwasher and do any breakfast dishes, I drop my child off at daycare and then I walk to the bus stop. This all flows pretty naturally because if any of these things don’t happen I have an unhappy wife, dog or child. The morning walk to the bus stop provides me a chance to get morning sunlight in my eyes which is highly recommended for improving sleep. Additionally, the bus ride acts as a time for me to settle my mind and plan my day.
• Working Out: I aim to workout 5 days/week. I work out at Orange Theory Fitness at the same time each day. The gym is located between my bus stop and my house. I book a full month’s workouts in advance so that I am forced to pay a fee if I ever skip a workout last minute. The workout class setting provides motivation during the class, so all I really need to do in order to get a decent workout is to walk through the front door. His habit is working fairly well, in 2025 I averaged 3.5 workouts per week — I did not hit my 5 days per week goal, but 50% of days ain’t bad.
• One Caffeinated Drink Per Day: I have an on-again-off-again relationship with caffeine and I have struggled to not ramp up my caffeine intake. Recently I promised my wife that I would stick with one caffeinated drink per day and that has stuck for months now. Since doing this my sleep is better and I am a bit more calm. Being able to promise my partner I will do something for my health is a great forcing function. I think this is one of the many reasons why having a happy marriage is such a good predictor of longevity.
• Habit Tracking Spreadsheet: For years I have tracked habits in a spreadsheet. I have done it a bit differently year to year. But this year I will record habits each week and create a new spreadsheet each quarter. Each habit has a target and a score gets computed based on how I am doing against the target so far that quarter. This helps me to identity the habits that are slipping and gives me a sense of accomplishment when I hit my goal. I divide my habits in three categories — health, relationships and career. In addition to defining habits, I also define 1–3 top level goals for health, relationships and career. These top level goals for the quarter are located in the same spreadsheet I use to track habits.
• Screens off at 9p: As part of my night time routine I aim to have screens turned off at 9p. There three things I do (or plan on doing) in order to support this habit. The first is that I keep the TV unplugged — the cord and the remote stay in a separate room from the TV. This dramatically reduces the amount of TV watched in the house. It also forces me to take the pretty intentional action of plugging the TV back in if I want to break my habit. The second thing I do is that I have an alarm clock in my office that goes off at 9p — this acts as an evening alarm clock to let me know i’ts time to start winding down my day. Finally, I installed a power strip with an auto-shutoff that my monitor is plugged into. This means that if I am working late my monitor will automatically turn off at 9p.
• Books Everywhere: I recently moved to physical books and in order to encourage reading, I am putting books everywhere.
• Freedom: I use a software called Freedom which automatically blocks distracting websites on any schedule you set. I really like Freedom because you can set a mode that makes it impossible to uninstall Freedom or edit the schedule while you are in the middle of a session. I set all distracting websites to be shutoff at 9p everyday.
• Doubling Down on Paper: Last year I used paper notecards as my todo list. There is something about writing tasks down on paper, holding the card with your hands and crossing the task out with a pen that is just gratifying. It’s hard to explain why paper over digital todo lists makes such a difference to me, but it really has. The downside of my 2024 approach was that notecards don’t have any structure to them — there are no weeks, months, quarters or dates on flashcards. So in 2025 I am moving to a paper calendar and a paper planner. I will use the planner to record my top 1–3 most important priorities for the day, to record other random smaller tasks I want to get done, to record habits that will later get flushed to my spreadsheet tracker and to plan out my top 1–3 most important weekly goals. My paper calendar is used to keep track of events and the top 1–3 most important goals for the month.
• Last Two Days Off: I am going to take the last two days of every month off. I will use one of those days to have a Father/Son day with my child. The other day I will use to reflect on the last month, prep for the next month and take some self care time. There are a bunch of random tasks that I need to do once a month (e.g. cut the dogs nails, get a hair cut, schedule my social events for the next month etc…). These two days off at the end of the month give me space to do these tasks without them floating over my head throughout the month. I created a spreadsheet that lists out every once per month task I have, and during these two days I just bang out all those tasks. I know once that list is complete I am all set for the next month.
• Quarterly Blood Tests: I am going to start taking blood tests every quarter. I will measure things like sugar levels, lipids and vitamin levels. The goal here is less about actually finding something concerning and more about bringing my health to the top my of my mind more frequently. In order to make sure these are always scheduled I will just schedule the following quarter’s blood test right after I complete one.
• Chrome Tab Extension: I installed a Chrome tab extension which enables defaulting the new tab page to a specific website. I use this to automatically open my habit tracker Google Doc every time I open a new tab. This acts as a reminder of my goals and an as accountability method to make sure I actually record my goals.
• Night Time Routine: My nighttime routine is — screens off at 9p, clean up the house and run the dishwasher, take a shower, make sure I have recorded daily habits in my planner, charge my electronics, brush my teeth, make a cup of herbal tea and read 10 pages of my book.
• Family Relationships: I aim to have regular connection with my brother and both my parents. I have already established a habit of calling my brother every weekend. This has been going smoothly and the habit is automatic at this point. In order to make sure I keep my commitment to spending time with my parents I told them both about my goal to have regular hang out times with them and as part of my end of month task queue I make sure the plans for the following month are on the calendar.
• Deep Work: Last year I indexed a little bit too highly on the amount of code I was writing and not highly enough on the amount of deep work I did. I aimed to do one hour of deep learning each day and to commit one PR per day. What I realized is that at the more senior levels code output is less important than high leverage code. High leverage code is either code that others cannot write or that you think will be educational to write yourself. So in 2025 I am doubling down on focused work time by increasing for a one hour daily target to a three hour daily target and I am moving from tracking raw PR count to counting only meaningful PRs. A meaningful PR is one that involves complexity or coding in a new area.