2020: A Groundhog Year In Review

5 min readJan 25, 2021

How 2020, a year of shelter in place, was pivotal in building a system of habits to be a better version of myself every day and the resources that helped me get there.

A groundhog year

In many ways, 2020 was full of Groundhog Days. According to folklore, Groundhog Day is the day in winter when a groundhog emerges from its burrow to see if spring is coming. If the groundhog sees its shadow, it retreats, an indication that winter will persist for six more weeks, and if not, then it knows that spring is around the corner. In March 2020, COVID became the dark shadow that engulfed the world, and many regions mandated shelter in place to flatten the curve. Like the groundhog, every few weeks, I’d wonder if the shadow had lifted. With nowhere to go, every day was similar-meetings over zoom, watching TV, Facetime with family, and following the news. In many ways, I felt I was living in Groundhog Day — the movie.

In the movie, the protagonist — Phil, is stuck in a time loop. In one of the loops, his producer inspires him to use the time loop as a blessing instead of a curse. He uses the loop’s knowledge to change himself and learn new things. He starts learning to play the piano, sculpt ice, and speak French. Eventually, Phil gets out of the loop, and he is all the wiser and prouder for having lived through it. Inspired by the movie and with a wealth of resources to guide me, I leveraged the repeating routines to establish a personal system for healthy and sustainable daily habits. This system has proved to be foundational in helping me reach my personal goals.

System over goals

“I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.” — James Clear.

I’ve always set goals for myself at the start of each year. However, the probability of fulfilling them was more like a flip of a coin. In 2020, I turned a corner by building the foundational block — a system for a routine that I can follow every day. It keeps me accountable to hit my personal goals for eating healthy, working out, spending time with family, reading books, writing, working, and learning to excel in my career.

Everyday being similar made it easier to do experiments. For example, for a week, I tried working out first thing in the morning. I quickly learned it was hard to stick to that routine. Given that I do the 16:8 intermittent fasting, work out in the morning, and have my post-workout meal at 8 am, I needed to stop eating by 4 pm. That was hard to maintain with my work schedule. I eventually found doing the workout at 5 pm was my sweet spot. It was a straightforward transition to declare my workday is done and start on my evening routine.

I started small and built up. First, I focused on getting in 8 hrs of sleep. When that settled, I added a 30 min workout. In figuring out the ideal time to work out, I also had to iterate when I slept. As time progressed, I got into a rhythm and started stacking on habits one at a time. Each time, I took the time to shuffle around set habits until they all fit together again. Kind of like shaking a snow globe so that new patterns are formed and the snow can settle again. I now have several daily habits that just fit together. Over a few months, the iteratively built system helped me be a better version of myself every day. I am healthier, more present, and have learned new skills without compromising my effectiveness at work and time spent with family.

While my routines will continue to evolve, here’s a current snapshot of my typical day:

It took a few tries to get into this sustainable routine. The groundhog-style year helped keep a lot of variables constant, which allowed me to keep experimenting. I achieved this routine after iterating through 8 significant experiments and several small ones. In addition to personal monitoring and tracking, there were a few critical resources that were pivotal in influencing my journey to iterate and learn last year. Sharing them below, I hope they inspire you as they did me.

Resources

Books:

Atomic habits: This book changed my outlook on how to create new habits. If you are looking to form new habits, this is a must-read. For me, this book was a strong foundation for making the most out of 2020.
Deep work: This book is a must-read for finding time from your busy day. The book recommends a few strategies: have a small number of ambitious outcomes, schedule downtime, avoid multitasking, embrace boredom, and complete work by 5 pm.

Apps:

As I read books and consumed high-quality content, I needed a way to capture insights and retrieve them when needed. Two apps that made my life easier:

Readwise: This app automatically saves your highlights/notes from different sources.
Roam Research: Roam Research takes note-taking to the next level. It is powerful and simplifies how you organize your content. Roam is a little hard to get started so if you are interested in trying it out, reach out to me; I’d be happy to do a quick demo.

Twitter:

While the books gave me frameworks to build habits and the apps helped me easily reference them, Twitter gave me the knowledge and inspiration for the habits themselves. In 2020, I focused on health and leveling up my professional skills. These people influenced me the most:

@shreyas tweets powerful insights on various topics relevant to anyone in tech.
@nickcald paves a path for younger leaders sharing how to scale organizations from 0 to 500+ on YouTube.
@lethain goes deep on engineering strategy and maintains two high-quality blogs lethain and staffeng.
@jenistyping is influential in the hiring circuit focused on DEI and startup culture.
@tzhongg focuses on internet culture, creator economy, and Gen Z trends.
@david_perell shares his learnings on how to start writing, including 50 days of writing email series.
@robbieCrab is a lawyer turned full-time speech coach who shares his tips on being a good storyteller.
@tednaiman shares a simple approach to focus on high satiety food over high energy (carbs or fats) food in his book ‘ The PE Diet ‘ launched in 2020.

Communities:

Last but not least, I’d like to call out that having communities you can belong to is essential, especially during these times:

Ondeck: I joined the Ondeck Writers fellowship last fall and believe they are one of the best-run communities. They are paving the path forward for what the future of education will be. In addition to “Writers,” there are 12 other programs. You can find more information here.

Looking forward

To a large extent, I believe 2021 will continue to be a Groundhog year as the world finds its new normal. I hope you find my recommendations useful and leverage them to build your personal system for sustainable daily habits. Wishing you all a fulfilling new year. See you in a future post.

Originally published at https://anandmariappan.substack.com.