At the start of 2025, I wanted to do things a little differently. I wanted to intentionally think about what would allow me to have a great year, and in order to do that, I needed a plan.
The idea came from listening to the My First Million podcast with Jesse Itzler. In the episode, Jesse talks about setting an "Epic Year" and walks through the steps for how he goes about it: stepping back, being intentional, and designing something a bit bolder than the usual resolutions and half-kept habits. At the heart of it was the concept of a Misogi. Rooted in a Japanese purification ritual, the modern interpretation of a Misogi is taking on one massive, defining challenge a year that pushes you to your absolute limits. It was something I’d toyed with in 2024 when I had set myself a variety of monthly mini misogis. Seeing as I’d done some mini ones, perhaps going for a full-blown Misogi was a great idea? I loved the joy Jesse spoke with and the contagious energy he had for this process. It resonated with me, so I decided to run with it.
I thought about what I wanted from an Epic Year, what it would look and feel like, as well as the areas I would like it to encompass. I wrote the plan down. I shared it publicly by creating a website. It covered a lot: health, career, family, creativity, adventure. Big challenges and goals sat alongside smaller habits or one-off events. The thinking was that if I was deliberate enough, I could make meaningful progress across most areas of my life at the same time.
I called it my "Epic Plan," which probably tells you something about my mindset going into the year.
Underneath it all was a familiar belief: that progress comes from doing things. It comes from being more intentional, but also by building momentum and focusing time and energy into what matters most. I believed that if I stacked enough good intentions, they’d compound into something awesome. Better fitness. Better thinking. Better balance.
I was looking to build momentum.
Coming into 2025, I wanted to feel like I was moving forward in a clear, deliberate way. I wanted to prove that I could be ambitious and present at the same time. Focused on work without everything else falling away. Capable of holding a lot at once.
What I didn’t realize then was that 2025 wasn’t really going to test my ability to execute a plan.
It was going to test my ability to choose what actually mattered.
What Actually Happened
It didn’t take very long for 2025 to stop behaving like a neat planning year.
Towards the end of 2024, I decided to leave the role I was in. It had been a slow realization. I had been in a role that required a lot of time in the States, working with great people and businesses in areas I enjoyed. But it did not feel sustainable. It was obvious that the job wasn’t giving me the balance I wanted, especially with a young family. I didn’t feel burnt out, but I could see where things were heading, and it wasn’t the direction that was right for me long term.
Not long into 2025, I started a new role as VP of Innovation at Forbes Advisor, working with some familiar faces on an ambitious new project and with the remit to help build a killer team.
That change quietly reshaped the year. New roles have a way of doing that. It’s not to say that they feel overwhelming or all-consuming day to day, but doing something new takes up space in the background: attention, energy, headspace. I was learning new things, building trust with my team and the business, and figuring out how to attack the big opportunity. It was absorbing and interesting in the way meaningful work usually is. But it took more of me, in ways I probably hadn’t planned for at the start.
I was clear with myself that I wanted personal career ambitions to coexist with the balance of being a husband and father. I wasn’t interested in shrinking my own goals or ambitions, just in making sure work didn’t crowd out family, health, or the rest of life. Treating that as a hard line in the sand was a useful heuristic for making the right decisions in the other buckets of my plan.
Alongside all of this, I’d also committed to something pretty hard: a 75km ultramarathon around Lake Windermere, which would surely be both beautiful and grueling.
Training started in January and ramped up steadily. More mileage, earlier mornings, longer weekends. My wife, San, picked up more at home so I could get the runs in. Physically, I felt strong, but I was also pushing pretty hard as the fear of failure compelled me to dive headlong into some grueling training weeks. Most of it was done alone and in the knowledge that I was choosing this over other things. At the time it felt good, like I was really pushing myself. Looking back, and with the benefit of experience, I could have trained with less volume and time, knowing that my fitness and willpower would have been enough, especially given everything else going on!
The race itself was equal parts beautiful, brilliant, and brutal. On a glorious day in June, where I’m not sure if the Lake District has ever looked so good, the race began in the early hours with a mist clinging over the start line and a few hundred maniacs crowded into the start pen. The next eleven hours involved lots of climbing, technical terrain, sunshine, chats, ice lollies, and pizza, with very little room to just switch off and enjoy the ride. I had the fitness but not the technique. Each time we would hit a flat or ascent, I would be able to hold my own, but on the descents, fells, and technical terrain, I was no match for those more skilled who would dash past me as I huffed and puffed my way along. Really, though, the struggle was one in the head. I struggled from around 30 miles in. There was a point where the enjoyment just disappeared and it became a total slog. Painful and unpleasant, just about putting one foot in front of the other and getting through it.
What pulled me out of that wasn’t my elite fitness or mental toughness. It was seeing people, or more precisely, loved ones.
San, my son Bo, my mum, Cara, Soe, Chau, Elliot, Gail, Rocco, and Joseph were all there, perched on a stone wall, homemade signs waving, cheering, completely invested, and with a few timely snacks! It snapped me out of my own head. I was able to carry their smiling faces and words of encouragement with me for the next 15 miles and finished in just over 11 hours, under my original goal, feeling proud, relieved, and totally spent.
By that point, it was already clear that this wasn’t going to be a year where everything from the plan moved forward neatly.
Not because things were going wrong, but because real life was doing what it usually does and reshaping the plan as it went.
What I Started to Notice
As the year went on, I started to feel a bit of friction, not in any dramatic way, just a low-level sense that things weren’t quite lining up.
On paper, I was doing a lot of sensible things. Training. Working. Seeing friends. Spending time with family. Trying to build good habits. But in practice, it often felt scattered. Like I was always context-switching between different tabs of my life (which makes sense if you’ve seen my Chrome window).
One week I’d be all-in on fitness. The next on learning something new. Then writing, then socializing, then trying to keep on top of everything else. None of it was wrong on its own, but taken together, it was a lot. I’d set myself up with too many parallel objectives, all competing for the same attention and energy, and often without a common thread to pull it together.
The daily goals were a good example of this. Individually, they made sense. Collectively, they became oddly paralyzing. When everything wants consistency, it becomes harder to know what actually deserves it.
Around the same time, I noticed something else that stuck with me.
A lot of good stuff was happening (ideas, conversations, time with Bo, trips, time with old friends, and making new ones) but very little of it was being captured properly. Things would surface briefly and then disappear again. Not because they weren’t important. None of it felt wasted exactly, but none of it was really accumulating into something. Other than life, I suppose.
But this bothered me, at least somewhat.
It made me realize that the issue wasn’t effort. I wasn’t short on intent. The issue was that very little of what I was doing had anywhere to go. There was no container for it. I needed a system, whether that meant a dedicated journal, a specific time block for reflection, or simply a mindset shift, to hold these experiences so they could compound rather than just pass by.
Fitness was another place where that distinction became clear. The ultramarathon was hard, designed to fit into the definition of a Misogi as a way of testing how much discomfort I could tolerate. And proving to myself that I could do something genuinely hard. I’m proud of finishing it.
At the same time, it helped clarify that this isn’t how I want to think about health day to day. Going forward, I care much more about fitness that’s functional and sustainable: the kind that builds a healthier, stronger version of me over the long term, rather than just seeing how much I can endure in a single moment. For example, improving my VO2 max, due to its correlation to long-term health benefits, and I can do this through multiple types of exercise.
More broadly, I started to notice that anything I tried to force tended to fall away. Tech-free days. Perfect routines. Highly structured plans for connection. Meanwhile, the things that fit more naturally (hosting friends, traveling together, creative time with Bo) happened without much effort and stayed with me longer.
Looking back, I wasn’t failing. I was learning what to filter in and out.
The Quiet Wins
One thing that’s easy to miss when you look back through a plan is just how much actually happened.
Despite some things falling away, and despite the year refusing to behave neatly, 2025 ended up being genuinely epic. Easily one of my best years.
I did a lot of the things I set out to do. And beyond that, I did plenty that never made it onto the list at all. I met new people and made new friends. I built a new team at work and learned how I wanted to show up as a leader in a different kind of role. I tried new things, took on big firsts, and did things that would have felt daunting a year earlier.
The ultramarathon was one of those. Finishing it mattered. Not because it fitted into a broader lesson, but because it was hard, and I did it, and it gave me memories. The same was true of plenty of other moments across the year: travel, work, friendships, small adventures. These don’t need reframing to justify themselves.
What made the year feel especially full, though, was how much of it I got to spend with the people I care about most.
Time with Bo and San wasn’t something I squeezed in around everything else; it was a constant through the year. Camping trips, stories at bedtime, weekends together, shared meals. These are pretty small things in the grand scheme, but as I think about it now, they are the important things.
Looking back, the issue with 2025 wasn’t that it lacked ambition or follow-through. If anything, it was the opposite. I tried to do a bit too much, all at once. But the intention behind it was right: to have a big, generous, memorable year, and on that front, it absolutely delivered.
I feel incredibly grateful for that. And more than anything else, I feel lucky.
What I’m Carrying Into 2026
I’m not going into 2026 with a bigger plan.
If anything, I’m carrying fewer things forward. I'm also not going to try and do all of the planning for January. Coming hot out of Christmas and into the new year, trying to plan the whole twelve months doesn’t fit right with me. It’s dark, cold, and wet. Generally, I’m a few pounds overweight, and I don’t feel inspired to figure everything out. So this year, I’m going to set some small monthly goals and keep a track over the first three months of the year of what I want to do. Then, in April, I will set out my 2026 goals, which may well be done in 9 or 12 months.
I don’t need to optimize every part of life to have a great year. I do need to be deliberate about what I give my time and energy to. Family, health, friendships, and meaningful work aren’t competing priorities. But we need boundaries, folks!
I’m still ambitious. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is how I want that ambition to show up. I’m much more interested now in leverage than volume, in building things that compound quietly rather than chasing constant novelty.
Health-wise, I want to feel better over time, not just tougher. Work-wise, I want to get back into building and working shoulder to shoulder with people who are focused on the mission. I think I miss this. In fact, I know I do. Creatively, I want to get better at capturing the moments so they don’t just disappear (though I will not capture every drawing of Bo’s, because our house simply isn’t big enough!).
If I can fill 2026 up with things that look like that, a little calmer, a little more intentional, I'll be very happy. Ultimately, an Epic Year isn't about perfectly executing a massive plan; it's about building a life that feels meaningful, sustainable, and true to what matters most.