2018 in Review - The metrics of my life: Number of miles ran, biked, and books read
Miles ran and biked, and the number of books read in a year are three metrics to measuring my happiness and fulfillment in life. There’s no point in financial independence if you don’t have a framework for how to achieve happiness.
How many miles did I run? 1,164.7 mi
It was a light year for running. I didn’t have any big races and had a big move in life. Lets hope I can get this metric back on track in 2019.
How many miles did I bike? 1,301.7 mi
I bought a new bike in 2018 and started riding off road more. Off road lowered my miles, but so did the amount of travel I did in 2018. Working in startups I felt like I was on a plane constantly. This kept me away from my bike. I’m okay with low bike mileage, because cycling is my escape. When I do it too much the magic wears out and I start to get too competitive.
Mileage is a good measure of my social happiness and my current social happiness is a too low.
How many books did I read? 72
Sixty books read in 2018 was my goal and this year I blew it out of the water! I purchased over 100 books in 2018. I couldn’t be happier. I couldn’t be smarter. I learned a ton this year and all of that reading brought me to hackerfinance.com and the pursuit of financial independence. Structuring my life more efficiently and building the life I want. I can’t tell you the exact number I read, because I drop finished books off on a park bench during my morning walks and don’t save them. That means I don’t have a good record of when I read a particular book. Sometimes I’ll have notes I took of the book on my phone and that’s how I counted this year. I also have a substantial number of Audible books, which are much easier to track when you’ve finished.
My feeling is 60 books per year is the perfect number. I read around 40 books in 2017 and that helped me define 60 as my 2018 stretch goal. I wont’ try to increase my goal from 60 books in 2019, but based on the number of books I already purchased “to-read” in 2019, I’ll likely blow past 60 books again. The reason I won’t increase my goal number from 60 is reading at this pace places a ton of knowledge that I could be putting into better practice.
There you have it. My mileage was low for 2018 and needs a major improvement in 2019.