2025 in Review

Traditionally, at the end of the year, I'm doing an in-depth yearly review where I go through many questions and reflect on everything that happened throughout the year.
Similar to the past two years, I'm also sharing the highlights here.
I'll keep a very similar structure and only switch out sections or categories that don't make sense this year.

Events

Let's start with a timeline. The following list is an incomplete collection of my most important trips and events.

• January 3 – 7: Started my year with another retreat with a group of three.
• January 26: Played a concert with my orchestra, including 2 movements of Dvorak's Symphony No. 9.
• Feburary 25: Published my first YouTube video (new tab).
• March 21 – 25: Went on another retreat with a small group of people.
• March 28 – 30: Spent a weekend in nature with a friend and just my hammock.
• April 09: Hosted my first book club reading Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (new tab).
• April 25 – 27: Kickstarted training to become a licensed mediator with a 3-day on-site workshop in Berlin.
• May 09 – 11: Went on another hike with a friend in our beautiful home area.
• June 05 – 09: Organized our bi-yearly scouts camp with more than 800 participants.
• June 18 – 22: Went on a scout hike with two friends and barely any equipment at all.
• August 16 – 23: Went on a vacation to Tuscany, Italy with my wife and five friends.
• September 12 – 14: Held another scout singing gathering in the ruins of an old castle and performed my two newest songs.
• October 19 – 24: Went on a scout sailing trip with a group of 24 people.
• October 27: Probably the worst days of this year. Caught COVID and was laid up for almost two weeks.
• December 01 – 12: Joined Ketryx (new tab) as a senior product engineer. Traveled to Vienna for 2 weeks of onboarding. Additionally, my wife joined me for the weekend.

Achievements

Looking back at my goals for 2025, I'm proud to say that I achieved over two thirds of what I set out to do. Some goals obviously changed over the course of the year, but I'm still happy with the results. Here're the most important ones from categories such as business, health, relationship and personal development:

• Celebrated 2 years without alcohol
• Started my YouTube channel (new tab)
• Published 7 long-form videos and 25 shorts
• Started my own book club
• Hosted my first Advent of Growth
• Increased my estimated VO2max to 53
• Walked more than 10.000 steps every day on average
• Read 28 books across a wide spectrum of topics
• Published 12 articles on my blog
• Shared 14 newsletter (new tab) issues, including 2 special editions
• Hosted 2 retreats with a small group of people each
• Went on 12 A–Z dates with my wife, one letter each month
• Saved more than 6.000€ by cutting back on expenses
• Completed a no-spend challenge for a full month
• Learned a lot about filmmaking and video editing
• Built a SaaS app for document generation and automation (launching soon)
• Grew my monthly Google impressions by 2.400%
• Grew my monthly Google clicks by 2.100%
• Launched my first coaching program
• Launched the productivity score test
• Launched the core values test
• Launched a glossary with 69 entries so far

Learnings & Insights

I regularly share my biggest learnings and insights with my newsletter (new tab) subscribers. Here're the most important ones from this year:

1. You always have a choice.
   In the past, I used to reject Valentine's Day entirely, until I realized I could ignore the parts that don't serve me and still keep what I enjoy. Now my wife and I make it our own: a calm evening, a favorite restaurant, no pressure—just intentional time together. This is true for every aspect of life; you always have a choice.
2. I process emotions very different compared to most people.
   This year I realized I don't "read" my emotions in the usual way. For me, feelings often show up as patterns, tension or confusion first and only turn into clear labels later, if at all. I wrote about this in Emotions Without a Map, because naming it helped me build better coping tools, communication and self-compassion.
3. AI isn't going to replace us anytime soon.
   AI is getting absurdly capable, but most real work still lives in context: judgment, taste, responsibility, relationships and knowing what matters. My takeaway: learn the tools, but double down on the human parts that compound.

Fails, Mistakes & Regrets

Everyone makes mistakes and everyone fails once in a while. It's easy to share all the good stuff and get praise for it, but it's much harder to admit the mistakes and share them publicly. But, instead of hiding them, we should embrace and learn from them!

1. Procrastinating on finishing my first novel.
   My biggest creative regret this year was how inconsistent I was with writing my first novel. I had a few strong streaks where the story felt alive and effortless, but I also lost momentum far too often and let "later" win. The frustrating part is: every time I talk about the book, I immediately want to share the story with other people. Definitely something I need to work on next year.
2. House construction never started.
   I massively underestimated how long it would take for our house construction to actually begin. We had assurance that everything would be ready by March and I built my expectations around that timeline—pretty naively, in hindsight. Instead, the entire year went into planning, approvals, coordination and getting things into a truly "ready to start" state. The silver lining: we're finally there now and the kick off is scheduled for 6th of January.

Top 3s

On to my favorite part: rankings.
As promised last year, I extended the categories from last year and added movies as well as games to the mix.

This year, I read 28 books, mostly philosophical non-fiction and fantasy following my personal effective reading framework.
Runner-ups are Tasting Sunlight (new tab), The Will of the Many (new tab) and The Tao of Pooh (new tab).
Also, I think Onyx Storm (new tab) is heavily overrated.

I also greatly enjoyed all three Knives Out (new tab) movies.

I mostly watch anime and documentaries, so this section is usually very straightfoward. If not already listed under movies, I'd have also listed Demon Slayer here.
Also, I was surprised how good the latest Witcher season was—despite Cavill leaving the show. It was definitely closer to the books again.

I enjoy playing with friends and thus most games are multiplayer.
However, I also re-played GTA 5 (new tab) and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (new tab) this year.

I only went to 4 concerts this year, two of which were Buntspecht and Black Sea Dahu.
Runner-ups are Konny (new tab) and Pomme (new tab).

Year in Numbers

To finish it off, here are some random numbers and facts for this year. The first three are derived from my daily journal and are measured on a 1-5 scale. Everything else is a mix of health data, memory recall and or other data points form services I use.

Movement, mindful and workout days are new and derived from my habit tracker.
Values that I already shared last year, will also show the difference in percentage.
For example, my average mood increased by a total of 8%.

Conclusion

Overall it was, once again, quite a nice year for me. Looking at the numbers, I managed to increase most of my key metrics while still enjoying my life and spending time with my family and friends.
I learned a lot about myself and made progress in many key areas of my life. I can't wait to see how 2026 unfolds.