My 2024 Year in Review

Every year, I write a post reviewing the year that was and thinking about how I did. As such, there is much more navel-gazing than usual (I hope, anyway). Back to our regularly scheduled program next week.

Speaking of which - the new and improved Dan's Secret Society officially gets going tomorrow with our first live lecture of 2025. Join a fun, supportive community where we share what we're working and make each other better. Pay what you want, and get access to all the recordings if you miss a call. Sign up today!

2024 felt transitional to me.

In so many ways I took multiple steps back this year. I made a little less money. I kept less of what I made. I started up a bunch of experiments that didn't seem to go anywhere. I wrestled with a lot of the same personal issues I'd been wrestling with - conflict avoidance, inattention to detail, loss of focus, believing I had it all figured out, pushing myself too hard.

But I don't feel like this year was a failure. In fact, I feel more confident than ever. I feel ready.

That's because all of those difficulties, failures, and struggles seemed to culminate in some kind of understanding - even if it was only understanding that certain aspects of my personality, or the world around me, ain't changing anytime soon.

The biggest wins this year weren't numeric - they were conceptual. This was the year I really started using process behavior charts day-to-day and dove head first into learning about statistical process control. I never would have done that were I not struggling with persistent issues over at AdWords Nerds.

I switched my focus from hypnosis to coaching after getting nearly the same piece of advice from multiple successful people from very different walks of life: "If your target market is people who can't get their shit together, you can't expect them to get their shit together to pay you." Confronted with the reality of what my schedule would have to look like to make the kind of money I was hoping to make, I bowed out and resolved to work on something else.

That decision led me to team up with a friend, which led me to teach a class, which led me to realize how much I love teaching, and how much of what I loved about hypnosis was really teaching in disguise. I ended up doing much of the same work, but in a different context (and for much more willing participants).

So many of my issues, even the ones that seemed purely financial, ended up being emotional. I avoided certain types of work, or certain conversations, or certain realizations, because they felt scary. This process of learning to avoid that to which we attached negative associations - what LessWrong deemed an "ugh-field" - can be very difficult to spot in real-time. It never seems like you're making an emotional decision; too often, it doesn't seem like you're making a decision at all. You're just doing what makes sense, until one day you wake up and realize there's a gigantic blank space in your mental map of the world.

If that all sounds a bit vague, we'll get into the numbers in a moment. The big thing for me in all of these disparate issues was that they all ended up pointing me to the same place. Whether I looked at an issue cognitively, rationally, emotionally, semantically - I always ended up coming back to same conceptual hole in my understanding of myself and the world around me. It was like I could sense something hiding just beneath the veil, but what?

And then, just like that: things clicked into place. The conceptual hole in my understanding was filled in, and it all seemed obvious.

What I was missing was agency.

My sense of agency - the ability to act, the belief and and willingness to act - had become subtly diminished. I was accepting the world's terms, assuming that they way things had been was the way things would always be.

I "didn't like marketing myself" because I had, in my head, an image of what that looked like, what it meant. I'd have to be on social media all the time. I'd have to make short, snappy, ultimately shallow content, because no one would watch it otherwise. I'd have to pretend to be someone I'm not. I'd have to talk only about making money, because that's all that people care about, etc.

Marketing must look a certain way, and I don't enjoy that, therefore I don't enjoy marketing - (and if there's anything I've learned about myself over the years, it's that I will not consistently work on what I don't enjoy).

The year was filled with things like this: areas in my life where I'd subtly, often from personal experience, come to believe that things are and must be a certain way. Once you have solidified a mental model of the world this way, it naturally comes to constrain your ability to act: after all, if the world is a certain way, why would you act otherwise? It simply doesn't occur to you - a whole suite of possible actions become unthinkable, invisible.

In this way, slowly but surely, do our potential actions become limited, stereotypic, routine, predictable. And with predictable action comes predictable results. If you find yourself doing the same things over and over, despite not loving the results, then it's likely your mental model has become ossified in this way.

Strangely, I was confronted with this idea both in the beginning of the year and at it's end; first, when I attended the Landmark Forum in February, and in the Fall, when I read Science and Sanity. Both Landmark and General Semantics try to point to similar phenomenon: we form beliefs about the way the world works in an effort to predict how things will turn out, but the world is far too complex for us to understand or even fully grasp. Our theories of how things work, who people are, and why things happen always leave out the majority of what is really "out there." As such, every belief is of necessity incomplete.

Because of this incompleteness, every belief is a limiting belief. That is not to say that beliefs are useless - they certainly are not. I am simply pointing out that no belief, no matter how powerful, truly describes reality; and to the extent that any belief limits the actions available to us, all conclusions become limitations.

The fact of the matter is that we don't need to blindly accept the world's terms. We can act. We can change. We can affect the world around us. In fact, dramatic change, even of highly-interconnected systems, is easier than we think: because, after all, if we change then the systems we are enmeshed in must also change.

Awakening to this idea was like a light going on in a dark room. As a result, I made the choice to consciously adopt a new belief, which is:

Anything is possible, and I have all the tools I need.

The question is: were you to hold that belief yourself, what would become possible? What would you do?

2024 was all about getting here, to the point where I can see that issue for what it is.

2025 is all about figuring out what happens after that.

Let's get into some data, shall we?

First off, you will see lots of process behavior charts below. If you're unfamiliar, check out my blog post about the topic, as well as my tool of choice for creating these charts AND my two podcast interviews with Cedric Chin, who was the one who first turned me on to these things.

Let's look at some of my critical metrics from 2024.

SLEEP

Sleep, as it turns out, experienced only routine variation in 2024. That means that, based on the average amount that I slept, no single day or run of days showed any evidence that something major was impacting me. Overall, things were stable. (Note: when you average things out over a week like I did here, you also smooth out some variation. On a day to day basis I DID have some points where I had statistically significant changes in my sleep; however, I never had an entire week on average hit this level.)

I did note that on average I slept less in the back half of the year than at the beginning of the year, but this is a largely seasonal pattern that has happened in previous years as well.

HRV

HRV (heart rate variability) is a decent measure of how your body is recovering from stress. Low HRV is correlated with negative health outcomes broadly, so I use it as a kind of "generalized health" measurement. I also plan on using it more as a gauge of when I should work out and when I should rest, but I didn't do much of that in 2024.

Here, we have some VERY interesting stuff happening:

In contrast to sleep, my weekly HRV this year showed plenty of exceptional variation (Note that with HRV, high numbers are generally considered good).

Starting the week of August 5th you can see HRV rise until it shatters the upper-bound limit (calculated as three standard deviations above the average). It kicks ass up there for a little while until precipitously falling back to the earth the week of November 4th, at which point it starts to bounce around the average line.

So - what's happening here? Really, this is a story of three systems, not one. We can re-calculate the averages and limits by using dividers on our chart. When we do that we can see the three different systems quite clearly:

We have:

• System 1, which extends from January to July. The average HRV during this time is around 22. There's very little variation in this system, as you can see from the relative narrowness of the upper and lower bound limits.
• System 2, which extends from the week of August 5th through October 28th. This system is defined by significantly higher average HRV (around 34), as well as wider amounts of variation overall.
• System 3, extending from the week of November 4th through the end of the year. The average HRV of this system (24.5) is lower than that of system 2, but higher than that of system 1.

Process behavior charts enable us to zero in on which changes are significant AND to identify when they begin to occur. In this case, something happened between July and August that significantly increased my HRV (good!). But then something happened at the end of October that lowered my HRV (bad!) while retaining a higher average HRV than where I started the year (good!).

So what happened?

I was running.

This year I started running specifically to see if I could raise my HRV. August through October coincides with both the highest number of runs per month (around 11 on average during that period), but also with my longest distances (my peak being around 4.32 miles in a single run on October 21st).

So there you go: running, particularly running longer distances, seems to raise my HRV. So what happened in October?

To answer this question I looked at daily HRV numbers to see if I could spot a decline. As it turns out, I can:

You see that big drop from 59 down to 22 on October 24th? That lines up almost exactly to where we might expect something to be happening.

Generally, with body-stuff I find that changes often have their roots earlier than you think. In general, October was a stressful month.

On 10/3 my wife was sick.

On 10/5 I got both COVID and Flu vaccines. My temperature was elevated (around 99.6) until 10/9 or so.

On 10/18 I changed up my training plan and started doing two longer weight training sessions and three runs every week.

On 10/19, I had cravings for junk food and ate way off my diet plan.

On 10/21 I ran my furthest distance (4.32 miles).

On 10/22 I wrote "Did not sleep well last night. Felt sore this morning."

On 10/24 (the beginning of the sustained HRV decline) I had a rough day at work and was in a bad mood. I went to a local chocolate store and ate a bunch of chocolate at my desk. Then I ordered Taco Bell for dinner.

On 10/26 I worked out and ran but was experiencing significant discomfort. I went out to a Halloween party and drank a bit.

And from that point on, the amount of running and working out I did dropped off a cliff.

I felt completely off my game. Every workout seemed twice as difficult. Running felt painful and I had muscle soreness all the time. I didn't feel motivated and so worked out less, which made it harder to get back into the gym for the next time. When I did work out I got hurt - straining muscles in my lower back and quads, which resulted in sharp knee pain. After that we were into the holidays and I never quite got it back.

I am just now getting back into an exercise routine, albeit with significantly lowered weights and run distances. So the question is: what the hell happened?

My best guess is overtraining syndrome. For one, I was doing one of those Couch to 10k programs that raised my running distance and time every single run. Those apps don't take into account any other training you're doing, however, and I was also increasing the amount of weight I was lifting on a regular basis.

Let's assume that this kind of exercise regimen, although no problem at all for a serious athlete, was a bit more stress than my body was used to handling. Add to that the increased stress of 1.) seasonal changes (each year I tend to have sleep and mood disruptions as we transition from Summer to Fall), 2.) general Holiday stress, and 3.) temporary factors (wife being sick, the vaccine, whatever). It seems reasonable to conclude that the total stress load on my body had increased substantially in a relatively short amount of time.

If I could back in time, I would pay more attention to my daily HRV numbers and, once I noticed the drop off, make sure to plan more active rest time so I could adequately recover. I didn't do that, though - I just plowed ahead. Eventually my body took matters into its own hands and made me take time off - significantly more time than I would have lost if I had just rested in the first place!

This is a perfect example of local optima. I didn't want to miss a workout because I was enjoying the progress I was making. But by optimizing for that workout and that immediate feeling I forgot to optimize for the system as a whole. As a result, I ended up losing WAY MORE progress than I would have otherwise - a very important lesson to learn.

So: pay more attention to my HRV as a gauge of when to rest, rest more proactively, and we should be good, right? I'm not so sure. To see why, let's take a look at this chart:

This chart shows the number of atrial fibrilations (heart arrhythmias that make me extremely lethargic) I experience each month, going all the way back to 2018.

Note that in early 2023 I had an ablation (heart surgery designed to stop the A-Fib). At that point the A-fib rate drops to zero and stays there...until this year.

Let's look at just this year's numbers:

Pretty clear that something is happening here, right? We basically have nothing for all of 2023, and then all of sudden in 2024 we have a slow ramp to a sudden spike through the upper bound limit.

To put that in perspective, my average number of A-fibs per month in the back half of this year is actually worse than it was before my surgery! That's an absolutely massive movement in the wrong direction.

As it turns out...this tracks pretty closely with my running numbers.

They're not an exact overlap, but the shapes look similar, right?

I tag stuff daily in Exist.io, which can then find correlations between tags. When I look at the correlation between Running and A-fib:

So the relationship isn't super strong, but there does seem to be one: the more I run (particularly longer distances, as I was doing towards September/October), the more likely I am to have an A-fib the following day.

This was wild to me - I completely missed this relationship in real time!

Why would this happen? I did a bit of research (below is from Elicit):

Research suggests a complex relationship between exercise and atrial fibrillation (AF). While moderate physical activity reduces AF risk, intense endurance training may increase it (Morseth et al., 2018; D'Ascenzi et al., 2015). Endurance athletes, particularly young men and joggers, show a higher AF risk (Aizer et al., 2009; Mont et al., 2008). The mechanisms behind this association remain unclear but may involve increased parasympathetic tone, atrial enlargement, and fibrosis (Sorokin et al., 2009; Tirapu et al., 2019). Some studies indicate a 2-10 times higher AF risk in endurance athletes compared to the general population (Mont et al., 2008). However, the benefits of exercise in controlling cardiovascular risk factors are well-established (Sanchis-Gomar & Lucia, 2016). The relationship between exercise intensity and AF risk appears J-shaped, with moderate activity being protective and extreme endurance potentially harmful (Morseth et al., 2018; Graff-Iversen et al., 2012). Further research is needed to fully understand this relationship and establish optimal exercise recommendations.

So, a bit of a muddled picture. As best I can guess, some cardio is really good for me, but too much will likely trigger my A-fib in the following 24-36 hours. This is something I can play around with, and will be a target of mine in 2025. I absolutely want to improve my HRV over time, and running has had the single biggest impact on that metric of anything I have done, bar none. But can we get the benefits without incurring the costs? We'll have to see.

BUSINESS

Financially, I both made less this year and spent more. That meant I took on quite a bit of business debt that I now need to pay back.

My mistake was thinking this was a problem I could put off. For much of 2024, I thought I was going to sell my marketing agency. I figured I'd pay off the debt then, and besides, I didn't want to make any significant decisions on expenses if someone else was going to come in and take over. Best to wait.

Of course, I now know that didn't end up happening. Multiple buyers fell through, which caused me to rethink and ultimately scuttle the sale altogether. By that point, though, I'd put off making critical staff and expenses decisions so long that our debt had increased past my ability to pay it off.

And man, do I hate carrying debt. I fucking hate it. I hate it. Did I mention I hate it?

A big part of this was the ugh-field I mentioned above - I don't like cutting expenses, I don't like letting people go, I don't like pouring over the financials and making hard decisions and tightening my belt. Because I didn't like it, I found ways to avoid doing it - for example, working on new projects I was sure would bring in enough revenue to solve the problem outright.

But most new ideas don't work out, and my ideas are no exception. I avoided dealing with the problem long enough that they became far more significant than they needed to be. I should have "strangled the monster in its crib," as it were. But here we are.

I'm not worried about this long-term: I've dealt with this kind of issue in the past and can do it again. But this, in particular, taught me that ignoring problems does not make them go away. Is that a lesson I should already have internalized? Yes. However, some things I simply insist on learning the hard way.

Overall, I let my emotions get the better of me in terms of business this year. Over and over I found myself shying away from what needed to be done in favor what I felt like doing. This was SO consistent, and SO flagrant, that I can only conclude I had become completely burnt out. I simply did not want to look at, think about, or work on my existing businesses; I only wanted to explore new things, interesting things, regardless of whether or not they made me better off financially.

And you know what? That's OK. I 100% forgive myself - I am only human. This is the same lesson I learned from running, just in a different context: push yourself too hard and you will lose more progress than you gain.

Fixing my business problems is a huge priority for 2025, but one I feel confident in. I know what to do, and now, I believe, I am rested enough to come back and actually do it.

MUSIC

This was a pretty active year for me, musically!

First off, I recorded two collaborations:

I recorded backing vocals on two songs for Sam Marandola (Oldest Sea) on her E.P. Judith Slaying Holofernes.

That was super cool and gratifying - Sam is a wizard and Oldest Sea rules.

I also recorded backing vocals and a music video for my friends in Bear Hands on their new record The Key To What.

I loved being a part of it. The whole process of recording the video (out in the middle of the Californian desert with Val and TJ, some of my oldest friends, and new friends Dylan and Ursula) was one of the peak experiences of the year.

HAVE A NICE LIFE, meanwhile, played some of our biggest shows, including coming out on the very silly but also very cool rotating stage at Sick New World:

Peaks for me were playing Boston (which had an incredible crowd and a more intimate vibe) and playing with friends (Mamaleek, Oldest Sea, PFB, Jenny Haniver, A Monolithic Dome, etc) - we really are so lucky to get to play with such wonderful, talented, charming people.

The HANL shows this year:

April 27 - Las Vegas Festival Grounds - Sick New World

July 19 - Washington, DC The Howard - W/ Planning For Burial, Oldest Sea

July 20 - Philadelphia, PA Union Transfer W/ Planning For Burial, Locrian

July 21 - Boston, MA The Paradise Rock Club W/ Planning for Burial, Oldest Sea

August 30 - Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern W/ Mamaleek

August 31 - San Francisco, CA The Regency Ballroom W/ Mamaleek

September 1 - Seattle, WA The Showbox W/ Mamaleek

September 8 - Hamden, CT at the Space Ballroom w/A Monolithic Dome

SOME OTHER ASSORTED PROJECTS

For one, I brought back Better Questions!

I just missed it, to be honest. And I still think that having a forcing function for putting my thoughts out into the world is important - it accelerates the rate at which I learn and internalize things like nothing else.

What's more, I realized this year that I need a personal brand. I don't even like the term "personal brand," but I made a mistake with my first business in entirely associating myself to what the company did. If I want to build new things and start new projects, but not need to completely start from scratch each time, I need to be known beyond the immediate scope of each project. That means, in essence, having a personal brand, and the blog is a powerful medium for that.

In a similar vein, I started the Dan Barrett Show, my new podcast. Podcasts are an incredible way to meet influential people and form new relationships. I also just love talking to people and learning about what they do. As a result, the show is a bit of a hodge podge, united only by the idea that everyone I talk to is incredibly talented and interesting. So far, I've done interviews with the ex-CEO of Blockbuster and 7/11, the best business blogger of his generation, the most successful business coach in the world, a classically-trained French Pastry Chef, a hypnotist, the singer of Chat Pile and many others. I am BEYOND excited about doing the show this year. It's pure fun for me.

Finally, I decided to make Dan's Secret Society a recurring thing. That means weekly lectures on the best of what I learn, a community of awesome and creative people, and generally trying to make the world a better place. You should join, if you haven't - it's completely pay-what-you-want.

OK - that's a lot of talking about myself. Before I log off, though:

A lot of people I've spoken to seem to think that 2024 was a rough, or at least challenging, year. I would tend to agree: there were any number of things happening in the world that I would describe as deeply upsetting, disturbing, or dark. I don't tend to talk about those things here, but suffice to say: they are on my mind.

But I've also had a lot of people express optimism about 2025. I know that many point out that the "new year" isn't really new at all; that there's no difference between January 1st and December 31st that would somehow make change more possible.

But humans are symbolic animals. Symbols mean things to us, and change our behavior in ways we don't fully understand. I think the new year is a new start, if you want it to be. So here's to a powerful, and agentic, 2025.

Yours,

Dan