Q4 Review

Q4 = Back to School

We are very close to the end of this Quintile, so I figured I’d do a goals wrap-up!

Here was my original Q4 goals post, and this was my list:

Here we go with some accountability / follow up!

SELF:

✅ Continue Empowered workouts with 2x/week at the gym – yes! I got very used to my Monday/Thurdsay Leg Days at the Gym cadence. (I did upper body work at home on other days).

✅ Go back to macro tracking and focus on protein. YES! I was so consistent with nutrition for all of Q4 (even though some travel) and I really feel like it paid off — I feel good! Yay.

👀 Try a drawing course or book — ehh. I doodled once with a YouTube tutorial!!! That means I am capable, and now I want to do more, but I don’t think I can call this goal achieved.

❌ Pick up the cross-stitch. NOPE! I did not. Oops!

RELATIONSHIPS:

✅ Continue 2x/month date nights. I believe I missed one in September, but otherwise we did well with this! I especially have enjoyed super chill Friday night dates on occasion.

✅ Weekly Sunday family meetings. Yep, we “review the board” every Sunday after dinner. It feel pretty essential at this point.

✅ Reconnect book club (we had a bit of a summer lull). Yes!! We met up twice since I made this list, most recently this week! And we have a date on the books for early Dec.

✅ Visit PHL. YES went end of August (I actually totally FORGOT about this trip! It *was* short. But G & I had fun and I’m glad I went!)

HOME

➗ Go through both C + G’s room (Kon-Mari style). I finished C entirely!!! G . . .we stalled out in a really really busy October. We did complete her clothes + most of her books but let’s just say THERE IS A WHOLE LOT MORE piled up in her room that needs the “does it spark joy?” assessment.

❌ Create fall menu rotation. Oh definitely not. Sounds lovely though!

➗ Move forward with bathroom. WELLLL . . . we are sort of pushing the project forward to 2027, but we did take a trip to Lowe’s and I feel like I now understand what our ‘first step’ tasks are in the project.

✅ Some fall accents. YES! Miraculously. Little things mostly (pumpkins, fall soaps) but this is like a million times more than the zero I usually do.

WORK

✅ Pod pitches including Life Kit. YES! I mean . . .I haven’t had any takers (yet?) but at least I put myself out there. Good to give it a try. I was hoping that my entirely NON-AI GENERATED emails would stick out from a bunch of robot-written garbage but alas maybe not. But was worth a shot!

✅ Create videos for CME version of BLP at Home. YES! ALL DONE! (Labor of love too – I much prefer teaching actual people vs talking to an unresponsive camera!)

✅ Complete course workbooks for all 2027 courses. Finished YESTERDAY and this was quite a feat. Really proud of the effort I put in to get these done a little earlier than usual (it’s a detailed back and forth process with the designer and we started planning this over the summer!)

✅ Figure out where to get CME. Yep, OpenEvidence offers it – didn’t realize! You just have to fill out surveys and I have been doing that.

FALL FUN

✅ Visit Perez Art museum – yes, this was lovely

✅ TJ pumpkin lunch – we made it dinner! But definitely achieved.

✅ See Hobonichis in person. YES, during my Truro/Boston trip!! This was pretty thrilling I have to say.

➗ Try to learn about football. Okay, I probably watched 10x minutes of football compared to other falls, but that is still not a lot of football and I still am not entirely sure what is going on 98% of the time. But I would say there was progress (from zero). I told Josh I am not going to be a real fan that sits there for entire games, but I will sit on the couch next to him, read a book, and look up for interesting plays when he tells me to. And I will happily go to a bar date centered around watching a game. I think that is gong to be the extent of my fan-dom and knowledge, at least for now. Life is short and there are too many books I want to read to spend tooooo long watching a sport I am meh about!

META

✅ Plan winter break. YES, planned & booked (we’re going to Universal Studios for a few days including our first Epic Universe experience).

✅ Plan Cape Cod/Truro — well I didn’t really do it, but Emily did an amazing job (as I should have KNOWN she would) so we’ll just celebrate that it was done.

✅ Book Hawaii. YES! All flights and hotels booked. And I ended up pivoting with one of our choices (from Fairmont Maui –> Hyatt Regency Maui) which I think was a smart pivot in terms of . . . well, not all sharing one cramped room. That did not seem like the best way to kick off our vacation!

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Final thoughts: Q4 was a major recovery season for me after a tumultuous spring and summer. I am kind of proud of how well I used my creative work time. I do feel like some of my newer AI-assisted productivity techniques were helpful in strategically spreading out the work and time blocking my days.

I also feel like I was a little bit overextended. Yesterday, for example, featured 3 hours of “on stage” time, and a ton of other creative work that was time-sensitive. I ate both breakfast and lunch in a frantic 10 minute window. (Actually, dinner was super rushed, too). I had a number of creative days like that in October, and weekends haven’t been particularly restful either (plus, I had to make up some call).

SOOOOOO, hooray for productivity and packing in fun! AND, I am going to really try hard to make Q5 a little bit more low-key work/productivity wise. I want to leave lots of room for the Reflection + Celebration that the season (in my mind) is known for 🙂

Happy *almost* Q5 everyone!