My retrospective to 2023 in numbers

Last year has ended and the new one has started with great momentum. I have tried to follow a practice for the past few years, to summarize the year for myself. Both qualitatively and quantitatively. The reason for doing this is to understand and make sense for myself - how am I doing, if and where have I made more effort, which areas have been neglected, and if all this, what i am doing, actually contributes to the fulfillment of my larger goals. Every goal and achievement is a result of habits and constant work. For me, the emphasis is not on single achievements, but on the general goal, in which direction I want to develop and where I'm heading towards. In order not to deviate from the target, various applications are good helpers, which collect information - automatically, during the activities. I will highlight some topics and broader goals and activities to achieve these goals.

If there is also a comparison with the previous year, I have demonstrated the trend with the corresponding icon.

?? - the results this year were more positive ?? - the results this year were lower than last year.

It is also important to note that the years were very different - if in 2022 I was at home for paternity leave for half a year (which reflects well in the significant drop in certain activities), then in 2023 I was mostly on a working wave.

The first major goal - a healthy and long life

To achieve a healthy and long life, it is necessary to pay attention to healthy lifestyles and physical activity that would ensure adequate fitness. At the same time, it is also necessary to deal proactively with changes in health that are caused by genetics, lifestyle, and age.

Among the healthy lifestyles, the following was achieved:

• Steps taken ?? 2 240 516 (?? -33000). This year's step count is based on data from Exists.io.
• According to Suunto, I took an average of 7,884 steps per day (?? - 500), which would be almost 600,000 steps more than Exists.io statistics show.
• Weight ?? +4 kg (??) - the loss gained in 2022 came back by the end of the year. The goal was more like -2, so all in all one of the biggest misses.
• Average sleep ?? - 7 hours and 1 minute (?? +21 minutes), which is exactly 1 minute more than the set goal

Physical activity, which supports and influences the general goal, and is also strongly related to the listing above:

• 450 kilometers were covered by bike ?? (??+356).
• Accumulated 1086 (?? -48) running ?? kilometers. The goal was to get a total of 1000 kilometers, so a small drop is not important here.
• 75 kilometers of longer, high-paced walks??. According to Google, it was 199 km, but I think it also included mowing the lawn and other walks.
• The annual time spent on sports activities was 231 hours and 4 minutes (??+80 hours 52 minutes), which makes a total of 9 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes. My goal was to spend at least 15 hours a month on sports activities, which I exceeded in 4 hours and 15 minutes.
• 2,940 pushups were made last year (?? -5,741), which is much less than the annual goal of 10,000.
• The so-called military physical test - the result of the NATO test was 238 points. The minimum to pass was 180 and the maximum is 300 points.

In addition to the aforementioned sports and lifestyle activities, I would also like to mention the following activities that contribute to the achievement of long healthy years

• During the year, I visited SPAs with my family 2 times.
• Dentist ?? visits and fixing tiny holes.
• Getting the blood pressure right - it had gotten a little out of hand in previous years, and the average blood pressure at the end of the month was 134/76 from an average of 146/93 at the beginning of the year.

Second bigger goal - to learn constantly and get new exciting experiences

A long lifespan can get boring when you lose your curiosity and excitement about the peculiarities of the world and can't enjoy the big and small things around you. Curiosity is something that a child is born with but tends to diminish with age. That's why I have my targets here as well, to feed my curiosity and expand my horizons.

• I read 43 books (?? -1) in ?? year, which were on 11,210 pages (?? - 4000). I set a goal of 40 books, so the goal I set for myself was exceeded.
• Of these, 15 were non-fiction works, and 13 were books intended for a younger target group, although most of them are also suitable for adults, 12 books qualify as - science fiction, horror, fantasy, and 3 were other fiction. At least 5 of the aforementioned books are usually among the 100 most recommended fiction books to read.
• I spent 17 days and 2 hours a year listening to podcasts ?? (?? -140 hours). Since I mostly listen to podcasts with 1.2x acceleration, I saved a total of 4 days and 10 hours (?? -37 hours).
• For 3194 minutes is spent learning french ???? (?? -4294 minutes), i.e. about 53.2 hours. In the process, I learned 2021 words (?? -481 words) and 2131 sentences by doing 750 different exercises. In the exercises, my answer accuracy was 91% correct answers. I fell somewhat short of my goal - to spend about 15 minutes learning French every day - on average, it took less than 9 minutes a day to learn French.
• I went out to eat with my wife 12 times in slightly more exciting places ??? (?? -4 places). 8 of them were at various restaurant and flavor weeks - Maitsev Tartu, Uma Mekk.
• In terms of flavors, I can also respect good beer ??. Last year, 102 different beers were tried ( (?? -37 flavors less). Among them, there were 62 different styles (?? -2 styles). As in the previous year, last year my most noted beer style was Sour-Fruited, and the highest score was Fruits of Endor from Pühastelt - 4.75 points out of 5. The rest of the top five also included: ZEN Out of TEN, Limbo Riesling, Muddis Golden Ale, MUTED SOPHISTICATED. All with a score of at least four. The average score I gave the beers was 3.17 points. During the year I tried beers from 54 different breweries (?? -10).
• We went to the theater ?? 4 times (?? +2 times). The goal was to go to the theater at least twice.
• There were almost no trips abroad, if i don't take into account a short trip to Latvia that lasted about an hour.

The third major goal - is a sufficiently good financial health that would support the previous goals

Economic success and focusing only on it should not be a goal in itself, but an aid to achieving other goals. To live well in old age, you should think about it earlier than when you retire. The sub-activities that support this are broadly divided into two for me: work-related activities and personal financial planning.

• At work ????, I logged a total of 1782 working hours (?? +803 hours). Of this, approximately 70% was related to one specific customer.
• The main communication environment at work is Slack, and a i sent total of 15811 Slack messages (?? +8112 messages) in different Slack work channels.
• There were a total of 39 days off from work, for various reasons (?? -194 days).
• I fulfilled ?? 87% of the goal of my portfolio of financial assets (??72% was the fulfillment of 2022).
• I fulfilled ??? 100% of the goal of the third pension pillar (??100% was also the fulfillment of 2022).
• The goal of setting aside money for investment and saving was fulfilled ?? 100% (??97.5% was the fulfillment of 2022).
• To achieve passive income ?? through dividends, interest - 57.75% of the goal was achieved (??53.44% was the fulfillment of 2022).

The fourth goal - in addition to the well-being of yourself and your loved ones, is to give something back to the world.

When building a castle of well-being for yourself and your loved ones, you should not forget that not everyone has the luxury of allowing such a sense of security, and well-being. Also, without contributing to the world, you may discover that the world is developing in a direction you don't want, and your well-being and vision of the world may be jeopardized as a result of someone's abusive actions or through an unfortunate accident. That is why I have tried to measure and think through the activities, and how I can contribute back to the world and community.

• To ensure the safety of myself and my loved ones and the peaceful preservation of the Estonian state, I have participated in the Defense League for the past ten years. In 2023, I contributed 725.5 hours (??279.5 hours) to the Defense League as a volunteer.
• In total, I also participated in 5 different reserve army exercises, including Estonia's largest reservist training ever - Ussis?nad/Parseltongue.
• I donated blood?? 3 times (?? -2 times). I set a goal of 4, but a couple of illnesses got in the way, which became an obstacle.
• I spent €860 for charity, which was divided between three organizations: the Children's Fund and the Mondo NGO and Ukraine Armed Forces trust fund. The last two are directly related to helping Ukraine ???? in the ongoing war.

I consider my active participation in the activities of the student fraternity Fraternitas Tartuensis as giving back to society. As an alumni, I try to help them as much as I can:

• I made 2 major presentations ???: a speech on the anniversary of Tartu Peace Treaty and a presentation at the guest evening.
• Organizing summer days.
• Active participation in internal competitions: Blue Flower Walk and visiting the monuments of the Estonian War of Independence.
• In total, I visited 148 different monuments related to the Estonian War of Independence during the summer, which makes up nearly 89% of all monuments of the Estonian War of Independence known to me at that time.
• During the year, there was 1 TV appearance ?? and 1 newspaper article ?? that covered the same visit to the War of Independence memorials.
• As a result of visiting the War of Independence memorials, I created 12 new Wikipedia articles and added photos to 54 War of Independence memorials.
• During last year I sent 3456 Discord messages into our Fraternity Discord channel.

In addition to the four major goals, a whole series of other interesting statistics accumulated during the year, which influenced my life to a greater or lesser extent.

• Out of last year's 365 days, 172 were rainy ??? (??+91 more rainy days). I think the most significant thunderstorm hit us during Youth Song Festival.
• It is said that every rainy day is followed by clear weather, but only 17 completely clear days followed ?? (??+4 more clear blue days).
• On average, I rated my mood of the day as 7 on a 10-point scale.
• During the year, I made 92 Instagram posts. (??+28)
• I solved the 33 tasks on my home Trello task board. (??+3).
• I drove with Bolt 18 times ??, 8 of which were by car ?? and 10 times by e-scooter ??. The longest ride was 11 km and the shortest 0.49 kilometers (the battery of the bike ran out). In total, I drove 92 kilometers with the Bolt, which was 228 minutes.
• According to Google, I traveled a total of 12,823 kilometers (??+350km) last year, which would be 32% of the trip around the globe (??+1% more). Of this, driving by car was 11,375 kilometers (??+1666km) and 374 hours.

I can't say that all the goals I've tried to achive qualify as so-called. S.M.A.R.T. Some of them were definitely F.U.N - Fantastic, Unique or Nice, that is, all these goals and numbers should never be taken very seriously, but just as an exciting overview for myself and to reflect back, where i am currently.

You can follow me on the following sites that help to generate the statistics:

M?ningaid profiile ja abivahendeid:

• Exist - software that combines a lot of data sources and creates correlations
• My sports: https://www.strava.com/athletes/112051019
• My Beer in Untapped profile: https://untappd.com/user/maiklnait
• Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/mmikkelsaar
• Mastodon: https://est.social/@mikkelsaar
• Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/mmikkelsaar/
• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/108598602-mihkel-mikkelsaar
• Duolingo: https://www.duolingo.com/profile/maiklnait