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Another year is upon us, and for me, that means sitting down at my desk to review and do annual planning.

I call it the Personal Upgrade OS, and it's a process that has served me well.

In the past 10+ years, I've used it to build and sell my gym business, grow my social media audience to 3.5 million followers, 8x my revenue, and improve my health and performance.

If you do it right, each year becomes an upgrade. This takes goals from wishful thinking to a solid formula.

Today, I want to share the science-based annual planning framework that's helped me achieve what I have.

You ready? Let's go 🔥

The Personal Upgrade OS

A recent meta-analysis on goal-setting revealed something most people get wrong:

• Process goals produced large improvements in performance
• Performance goals produced moderate improvements
• Outcome goals produced little to no meaningful improvement.​

This doesn't mean that setting outcomes are useless. They help us set a destination while the process acts as your directions, and the performance as your speedometer.

But before setting a destination, you need to know where you're coming from. That's where the first step comes in.

Note: Split your reviews and goals into the buckets of "personal" and "professional". No matter what anyone tells you, balancing both is crucial.

Step 1: Review Your Year

Before getting into the fun stuff, you want to recall your wins and lessons.

Repeat your wins in the new year and learn your lessons so you don't make the same mistakes again.

List out your biggest wins and losses.

For each win, write why it worked so you can repeat it.

For each loss, write out the lesson you learned so you can avoid it.

Then look at your habits and patterns. What served you this year? What didn't?

If you take this seriously, it will take about an hour. This shows you where you made progress (gain) and areas you need to improve (gap).

Step 2: Set The Destination

Choose one to three goals for your personal and professional life.

These should leave you feeling slightly uncomfortable as they stretch your current reality.

Write out 5 or more reasons why these goals matter to you. Make sure these are intrinsic. This becomes your fuel when doubt creeps in.

Finally, set a positive constraint. A boundary to uphold what means the most to you.

Step 3: Set The Performance

For each goal, set a performance metric that serves as your KPI (key performance indicator)

What number signals you're on the path to achieving your target?

Write them out as they will serve as the metric to strive for.

Step 4: Create The Process

The process serves as a set of instructions to turn your goals into reality.

It's the Zen Buddhist saying of "chop wood, carry water".

Your process is the plan you commit to execute, day in and day out, to hit your KPIs.

After you set it, schedule it into your calendar. What gets scheduled gets prioritized.

Step 5: Identify The Bottleneck

For each goal, find the one thing that stands in your way of achieving it.

Use the Theory of Constraints Formula I talked bout here:

1. Identify the system’s main constraint
2. Exploit the constraint
3. Subordinate everything else to that constraint
4. Elevate the constraint
5. Once the constraint moves, repeat from step 1

Step 6: Find The WHO

As Charlie Munger said, "A smart person learns from their mistakes, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others."

Your job is to find WHO can help you achieve your goals in the fastest, most effective way possible.

Their job is to do 3 things:

Help you avoid common mistakes, do the right things, and hold you highly accountable for doing the work.

It could be a friend, coach, or mentor. You want someone who has achieved and taught the thing you seek to create.

This is by far the fastest way I know to go from zero to one. It's rarely about the HOW, it's about the WHO.

The Final Word

As you apply this framework, I want you to do three things:

First, adopt the mindset of: Show up, take massive action, and look for ways to improve.

You can't achieve anything if you don't show up at the arena. When you show up, you must take action and do the work. It's not enough to do the work, you must improve your reps.

Second, find people in the arena who want the same goals as you do. Seek those ahead, at the same level, and beginners you can bring up. Who you hang around is a reflection of the outcomes you're producing.

Last, and most important, understand that you must change along with the goal.

New thoughts. New beliefs. New behaviors that align with the outcome you're producing.

The way I approach each year is looking at it as an opportunity to give myself a software and hardware upgrade.

This process has served me for the past decade. If you apply this and take it seriously for the next year, your life will change.

Onward and upward. 🚀

- Dan

Ps. I put my goal-setting system into a document you can follow along with. Click the link below and get free access to my Personal Upgrade OS, and let's make 2026 the best year of your life.

References

1. Williamson, O.; Swann, Christian; Bennett, K.J.M.; Bird, Matthew; Goddard, S.G.; Schweickle, M.J; et al. (2024). The performance and psychological effects of goal setting in sport: A systematic review and meta-analysis. University of Lincoln. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/lincoln.24399508.v3

Disclaimer: This email is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician.

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