Reducing your surface area should be your top new year resolution

26/12/2024

We often think New Year resolutions are about adding more goals.

More morning runs, more books to read, more ambitious objectives.

I also love new challenges, and it’s hard for me to say no to great projects. But when I was writing my 2024 new year resolutions last year, I realised I had to aim for less.

Less projects, less challenges. More focus, more achievements.

---

Tools for focused goals

If there is one goal I wish anyone to have on their bucket list every year, it is to avoid burnout.

We rarely learn stuff about burnouts before having one. Did you know there are 3 types of burnouts? I feel it’s so important to know them, because they can help us identify areas of our lives where improvement can be made.

1. Overexhaustion burnouts due to excessive work.
2. Depletion burnouts due to lack of rest.
3. Misalignment burnouts by engaging in unenjoyable activities.

[Source: Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal]

If we also look at the 5 types of hard work, we will notice that the saying work smarter, not harder is also verified in the actual strategies to get things done:

1. Outthinking: a better strategy, a shortcut
2. Pure Effort: working longer, intensity
3. Opportunistic: positioning yourself to take advantage of change
4. Consistency: doing average things for longer
5. Focus: saying no to distractions

[Source: Brain Food Newsletter by Shane Parrish]

An interesting video that guided me in 2024 is the concept of Two Tracks Twenties shared by Robert Greene. He observes that most people have 1 track or like 5 tracks (I recognise a lot of overachiever friends and myself here haha). And what Robert suggests is that you get 2 tracks because in your twenties you are open, young, adventurous. To be open to experiences while focusing on a core passion, funneling various experiences toward skill development.

1. A track of adventurous exploration
2. A track of focused skill-building

[Source: The Best Way To Spend Your Youth by Robert Greene]

The lack of rest can of course be solved by making relaxing breaks between bouts of work, but remember that a sufficient amount of sleep is the biggest cheat code out there. To help you improve your sleep, science suggests the following:

1. View sunlight by going outside within 30-60 minutes of waking. Do that again in the late afternoon, prior to sunset.
2. Wake up at the same time each day and go to sleep when you first start to feel sleepy.
3. Avoid caffeine within 8-10 hours of bedtime.
4. Avoid viewing bright lights—especially bright overhead lights between 10 pm and 4 am.
5. Limit daytime naps to less than 90 min, or don’t nap at all.
6. Drinking alcohol messes up your sleep. As do most sleep medications.

[Source: Toolkit for Sleep by Andrew Huberman]

The previous tools where focused on career and personal health. I want to balance that with a brillant short article from Esther Perel. New Year Resolutions are often about routines and ourselves, and Esther suggests rituals about and with others.

1. Inviting the concept of ritual into our daily lives converts the mundane into the significant.
2. Creating rituals together is about establishing a shared reality.
3. Inviting the concept of ritual into our daily lives converts the mundane into the significant.

[Source: Rituals For Healthy Relationships At Every Stage by Esther Perel]

---

My own goals for 2025

I like the idea of sharing two challenges I want to achieve in 2025.

I learn so much from myself and the world every year. Doing the right thing and seeing slow but deep progress is definitely in one of my favorite feelings 🙂

Read 24 books.

When I was a child I loved to read and in my teenage years I lost this hobby. In 2020 a great friend of mine gave me back the spark and I have been challenging myself to read a certain amount of books per year. Here is the history so far:

2020: 5/5 books

2021: 16/12 books

2022: 23/24 books

2024: 22/24 books

I love this goal because it’s feasible with my lifestyle and habits, I am not trying to push more than 2 books per month right now. The key for me is to chose great books and enjoy reading them by making it a special moment for myself. My two favorite books from 2024 are Slow Productivity by Cal Newport and Stop Stealing Dreams by Seth Godin.

Use challengers.world to heal my mind.

It might not be apparent from the exterior but Challengers is actually a great tool for me, outside of networking and trying to build a following.

This year the newsletter helped me get a more healthy relationship with news consumption for two reasons.

First because by curating sport news, I have the reflex to search quality content more often while online. It was very subtile at the the beginning but now I really notice the impact on my digital behaviors: I am always seeking for high quality sport related content. Social Medias is sometimes compared to mental junk food, and this year I gently switched to great news sources like The Athletic, AP News and The Guardian among others.

Second because I used to feel really bad for using my phone and I felt like I was losing time. By changing my habits of consumption and allowing myself to read cool things about sports, my inner monologue has improved: I am more positive and less judgmental with myself.

I am not really dedicated to seeing this newsletter grow right now. It would be a nice thing for sure, but I am starting to accept this is not my priority because I am learning to prioritise my personal life + my professional and sport careers.

I released less podcast episodes this year. It was an intense year, with the Olympic Games, finding an internship and graduating from my master program. I am very grateful for the interviews I conducted and I am looking forward to keep meeting and learning from great people in 2025. I am aware the rithm of 1 episode per month is unreachable.

Finally the journal is the latest aspect of challengers.world I released online. I had so many ideas this years of new paths to take, like curating the most impactful articles that help elite athletes, or write a book to help youth athletes in their careers. But I decided I needed to more time for myself to think, write, learn. And I believe journaling is a great way to do all that.

I imagine one or two journal pages will be about helping athletes find sponsors or improve their branding. Stay tuned!

To my mom, dad, and anyone else crazy enough to read this until the end, I wish you and your loved ones a great start of 2025.

Bonus quote from Shane Parrish

A different take on what makes us feel so busy, stressed, and anxious.

As a rule, the larger your surface area, the more energy you have to expend maintaining it. Of course, when most of us think of surface area, we think of the area of a rectangle or how much grass we have to mow. But there is a surface area of life, and most of us never realize how much it consumes.

If you have one house, you have a relatively small surface area to maintain (depending on the age and size of the house, of course). If you buy another one, your surface area expands. But it doesn’t expand linearly – it expands slightly above that. It’s all the same work plus more.

Friends are another type of surface area. You have a finite amount of time to spend with friends before you die. The more friends you have, the less time you can spend with each one individually.

Money is another form of surface area. The more money you have, the more you have to keep track of different types of assets and investments.

When your surface area expands too much, you hire people to help you scale. Assistants, property managers, family offices, etc. They’re scaling you – but they’re also scaling the surface area of responsibility. This, of course, only masks the rapidly expanding surface area by abstracting it.

Beliefs are another type of surface area.

The thing about surface area is that the more you have, the more you have to defend and maintain. The larger your surface area, the more you are burdened with mentally and physically.

If you think in terms of surface area, it’s easy to see why we are so anxious, stressed, and constantly behind.

We feel like we need more time, but what we’re craving is more focus. What we need is a smaller surface area.

Your surface area becomes part of your identity. She’s the ‘busy person’ with her hand in every project. He’s the guy with four houses.

Competition can drive expansion. Most people want a bigger house to compete with someone else who has a nicer house. We are animals, after all. On a group level, this causes great benefits. On an individual level, it can cause unhappiness.

Most of the really happy people I know have a relatively small surface area. I know billionaires with two houses. Most of my close friends only have 4-5 close friends – everyone else is a friend in the loose sense of the word. Most of the productive people I know at work are focused on one or two things, not 5.

The way to maximize your enjoyment in life is to keep your surface area small. It’s a lot of work but if the happiest people I know are any indication, it’s a lot less work to keep it small than to maintain it when it’s large.

[Source: Brain Food by Shane Parrish]