2025 Review: Systems, Mentors, and the Cost of Intensity
2025 was the fullest year I’ve ever lived.
Not “busy” in the chaotic sense — full in the structured sense: training cycles, deep learning, books that rewired my thinking, real-world battles that forced applied skill, and a few moments so beautiful they recalibrated my internal scale.
This year had two dominant mentors:
- Jim Rohn — discipline, responsibility, building your life deliberately.
- LLMs — a cognitive exoskeleton I integrated into daily life (ChatGPT first, then Claude/Gemini/Grok as comparisons and tools).
The outcome: massive progress.
The cost: a pattern I can no longer ignore.
This post is both the story and the diagnosis.
By the numbers (telemetry, not vibes)
These numbers are approximate — but the shape is undeniable:
- New people (1:1) initiated by me: 0
- Weeks with >2 hard sessions: ~26/52 (≈ 50%)
- Weeks with spiritual practice (outside April): ~0
- Weeks with spiritual practice (total): ~4/52 (April)
Hard, concrete outputs:
- Pulling strength PRs: 22 chin-ups, 17 pull-ups
- Skill milestone: L-sit on bars
- Running: 5K PR 21:50 (May), then 5K PR 21:48 (October); mile PR 6:12 (October)
- Chess: broke 1400+ on two accounts; beat a 2400 bot (engine-rated)
- Blog: consistent publishing and note-taking (posts + notes) all year
- Battles: one major win; two high-stakes fights still ongoing (legal/administrative)
- Work: a meaningful raise and a major reward; better work–life balance over time
- Books read/studied: ~17
If you read nothing else, read this:
This wasn’t “a bit imbalanced.”
This was systematic optimization for what gives immediate, measurable feedback.
Books that shaped 2025
I’m listing these as a personal reference and as proof of scale — because this year was built on inputs as much as outputs.
Philosophy / Spiritual
- Marcus Aurelius — Meditations
- The Gospel of Matthew (reflections, especially around Holy Week)
- Michael Brown — The Presence Process
Learning / Thinking / Mental models
- Josh Waitzkin — The Art of Learning
- Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren — How to Read a Book
- A comprehensive learning course (Coursera): Barbara Oakley & Terrence Sejnowski — “Learning How to Learn”
- Bartosz Czekała — Kuźnia Ekspertów (Experts Incubator) — this one gave me more than Oakley’s course; much more practical, including Anki which I still use daily
Habits / Behavior / Personal development
- James Clear — Atomic Habits
- Robert Greene — Mastery
- Dale Carnegie — How to Win Friends and Influence People
- Napoleon Hill — Think and Grow Rich
- Jim Rohn (daily lectures/audio)
Negotiation / Influence / Persuasion psychology
- Robert Cialdini — Influence
- Roger Fisher & William Ury — Getting to Yes
- Jean-Léon Beauvois & Robert-Vincent Joule — Petit traité de manipulation à l’usage des honnêtes gens (commitment and persuasion dynamics)
Finance / Wealth-building thinking
- George S. Clason — The Richest Man in Babylon
- Morgan Housel — The Psychology of Money
Running / Training
- Jack Daniels — Daniels’ Running Formula
AI / Strategy
- Kai-Fu Lee — AI Superpowers
- Melanie Mitchell (AI reflections and conceptual grounding)
The intellectual trigger: the “reset” that set the year in motion
Early in the year I created an intellectual reset: a structured reading plan through November.
Not “I want to read more,” but: here is the sequence.
That reset gained real fuel later when I discovered Jim Rohn.
He has a brutal clarity about intentional study:
- Want to be wealthy? study wealth.
- Want to be healthy? study health.
- Want to be better with people? study relationships.
And one line kept looping in my head all year:
One book can save you five years of searching on your own.
Once a sequence exists — and you believe it matters — the system runs.
That reading trajectory became the backbone for everything else:
- reflection,
- mental models,
- strategic thinking,
- negotiation skill,
- financial awareness,
- and the AI path.
The year, as it actually happened (month-by-month)
January–February: Physical-first + travel contrasts
Early 2025 was heavily PHYSICAL-first. I trained hard, often without much restraint, because that’s what I know how to do: push.
There were also bright family moments:
- A ski trip with my daughter to Białka Tatrzańska, staying at Hotel Bania — one of those memories that stays warm even when everything else is “optimization.”
- Later: Las Vegas (a very different kind of environment). Coming back from that trip, I ramped training even harder.
In hindsight: the year started with a strong engine and a strong accelerator. Not enough brakes.
March: Mobility enters the system (and my body said “finally”)
March was a real inflection point: I introduced mobility as a serious element, not a nice-to-have.
The effect was immediate and obvious: my body thanked me.
Not in a motivational way. In a mechanical way.
This month also reinforced a rule I kept relearning all year:
If something is not a system, it disappears.
If it becomes a system, it changes everything.
April: The breakthrough month (Stoicism + spiritual intensity + origin story)
April was the “holy shift.”
- I started reading Marcus Aurelius (Meditations) and it hit hard. Reflection, discipline, perspective — not abstract philosophy, but practical mental posture.
- During Holy Week, I went deep into the spiritual dimension: Scripture, prayer, and intense reflection.
The origin story matters here, because it wasn’t random.
I was surrounded by colleagues who took faith seriously — and specifically, Muslim friends whose discipline and daily practice made me realize how shallow my own consistency was.
And one small scene stuck with me:
on a layover in the Netherlands (on my way to the US), I saw an orthodox Jewish man praying intensely right there at the airport.
It was a quiet reminder: some people don’t “believe” as a concept — they practice.
This month proved something important:
I can go deep spiritually and mentally — when the environment and the structure support it.
I also launched NeuroForge — my own carefully designed nootropics stack aimed at building, not “boosting dopamine for vibes.”
And I spent a lot of time with my daughter — school life, routines, shared time. That mattered more than any metric.
May: Final race + “Soldier → Commander”
May was performance and transition:
- I ran the final race and hit a concrete result: 5K PR 21:50.
- I kept reading (Waitzkin, Atomic Habits, Matthew).
- I had a critical identity insight:
I can’t just “push like a soldier.”
I need to lead myself like a commander.
That’s not motivational fluff. It’s operational:
- Soldiers execute intensity.
- Commanders govern intensity.
I also ended the Calisthenics/Calimove cycle for very practical reasons:
- the CNS load became obvious (e.g., brutal high-volume pulling/dipping blocks like 9×9),
- and from practicing L-sit I triggered a strong groin/adductor strain. I stopped because health and long-horizon sustainability mattered more than short-term proving.
June: AI becomes trajectory + recovery support
June is where AI became more than curiosity — it became trajectory.
I went deep: long study days, structured learning, and a serious commitment to building competence rather than consuming content.
I also supported recovery (gut-focused supplementation and general resilience), because performance is always physical in the end.
July: Caffeine reset + mountains as a fitness mirror
July: I did a caffeine reset for the first time in ~15 years. It worked.
Then I started a brutal running block (Amy plan). The body adapts, but it doesn’t negotiate: you either manage load, or you pay.
This month also included something important outside metrics: a week in the mountains with my daughter (and one day hiking with her godfather, Janusz, who had recently started taking care of himself after years of neglect).
The mountains gave me a mirror:
I realized how strong my base had become. Garmin kept showing my effort in Z1 on climbs and long walks — something that would have been Z4/Z5 in the past.
August: Jim Rohn + LLMs become daily operating system
August is when I discovered Jim Rohn and something clicked.
I started listening daily — often during morning movement.
It wasn’t entertainment. It was installation of a worldview.
I also started doing something primitive but powerful: I began journaling in the morning, writing down what I must do, and then crossing tasks off.
Simple. Almost embarrassing.
But it built discipline fast — and now when I look back at those pages, the reaction is just:
wow… I actually did all that.
At the same time, my use of LLMs exploded. This wasn’t “asking questions.”
This was building a daily feedback loop:
- thinking,
- writing,
- planning,
- learning,
- compressing experience into usable models.
At some point it felt like I had been running a multi-volume intellectual apprenticeship in real time.
September: AI deepening + Berkeley begins
September was maximum push on AI.
Reading, studying, and then starting the UC Berkeley Executive Education program in AI — a structured container that increased both discipline and ambition.
A theme began to emerge:
- input is easy when you love it,
- governance is hard when you’re addicted to momentum.
October: PRs, lactate experiments, and the “Fall after the peak”
October was a paradox month:
- I broke performance barriers again:
- mile PR 6:12
- 5K PR 21:48
- I experimented with lactate measurement, trying to be more scientific about intensity management.
- I observed the trade-off clearly:
Increased training load can reduce cognitive performance.
Brain fog is not a personality flaw. It’s a bill.
This was also the period when Dale Carnegie hit differently.
I started noticing something I had underweighted:
Social intelligence and networking are not “nice extras.”
They are leverage.
I analyzed my professional life and my observations from the year and had multiple “wow” moments: it’s often not the hardest worker who wins — it’s the person who understands people, incentives, and relationships.
November: Return to the gym + formal validation in AI
November was a structural reset:
- I returned to the gym after ~17 years (strategically, not randomly).
- I wrapped major cycles (including NeuroForge iterations).
- And I completed UC Berkeley Executive Education in AI with distinction, including an official recommendation letter.
Chess deserves a footnote here because it’s revealing:
I spent very little time on chess this year.
Yet I still improved:
- 1400+ on two accounts,
- a 2400 bot win.
That felt like skills “settling” in the background — and a fresh mind often let me see patterns I’d miss when exhausted.
Cognitive performance is not just training; it’s recovery and clarity.
December: Negotiations, persuasion, and real-world tests
December was intense in a different way.
I studied and applied:
- Cialdini (Influence),
- Fisher & Ury (Getting to Yes),
- Joule & Beauvois (commitment and persuasion dynamics),
…because life presented real challenges where skills matter. Not theory. Real constraints, real stakes, real outcomes.
A quote that fits this month perfectly (and the entire year, honestly):
“Don’t wish you had less problems. Wish you had more skills.”
— Jim Rohn
This year included major legal/administrative battles:
- one significant win,
- and two ongoing fights still in motion.
I also pushed mobility hard using GoWOD — results were great until they weren’t:
- improvement was real,
- then a back spasm reminded me that apps don’t own your spine.
And then: the most cinematic closing scene of the year.
On December 30, snow fell so heavily (Mazury) that it was the most intense winter landscape I’ve ever seen in my life.
The kind of snow that makes the world look like it rebooted.
What didn’t survive (and why it matters): the piano example
I also tried piano. I liked it. I had momentum — and then I didn’t.
Not because it was useless, but because the habit loop never locked in.
James Clear’s point about habits is brutal and true: if there is no immediate reward, repetition becomes fragile.
That’s exactly what happened with piano:
- effort was real,
- novelty was there,
- but the “reward signal” was too delayed,
- and without a system, it quietly died.
This matters because it’s a small, honest example of the core principle:
What doesn’t get a slot in the system doesn’t survive — even if you genuinely want it.
The finance thread: “money should work”
This year I started thinking about money in a sharper way.
A recurring thought appeared:
If I’m genuinely good at what I do… why isn’t that visible economically?
Jim Rohn pushed this lever hard: study wealth like you study health or skill.
Books like The Richest Man in Babylon reinforced a simple rule:
Pay yourself first.
Money should work, not just sit.
I’m now treating finance/business literacy as a domain worth “studying” intentionally. And I know my own pattern: when I commit, I tend to end up in the top 5% — sometimes the top 1%.
So the question for 2026 becomes: can I apply the same deliberate practice mindset to business and wealth-building?
Family: the mission behind everything
A lot of what I do, I do with one thought in the background:
I want to pass this on.
There’s a calibration exercise (Brian Tracy-style) that hit me:
- What would you do if you had “enough money” tomorrow?
- What would you do if you found out you had six months to live?
My answer surprised me with its clarity: I would try to transmit everything I learned — everything that proved valuable — to my child. Because nobody ever sat me down and handed me “the library.”
Near the end of the year, something interesting happened by accident: my daughter’s godfather (Janusz) gifted me two books — and only later I noticed the meta-pattern: the authors (Pompliano and Parrish) wrote their books largely as wisdom-transfer for their own children.
That resonated deeply with how I think about learning:
- I’m not collecting knowledge for status.
- I’m building a library of models and skills that can be passed forward.
- I want my growth to become her leverage.
And this wasn’t abstract. We did real things together:
- shared routines,
- shared English practice (Cambly),
- trips that create memory, not just achievement:
- Białka Tatrzańska (Hotel Bania),
- a week in the mountains at Nosalowy Dwór.
This is not a footnote. It’s the mission layer.
Social: not absent — in combat mode (and why that’s not enough)
To be precise: I had plenty of human interaction in 2025.
But much of it was transactional / adversarial / high-stakes:
- negotiations,
- conflicts,
- procedural pressure.
That is social interaction, but it does not build:
- network effects,
- goodwill,
- optionality,
- long-horizon relationships.
It’s social in “combat mode,” not social in “growth mode.”
And the uncomfortable fact remains: I initiated basically zero new relationships. I need to change that.
One external nudge landed late in the year: Conor O’Neill (MBA/public speaking context) described a simple rule:
Meet at least one new person per week.
He also pushed daily practice for speaking: recording yourself for 3 minutes a day to build the muscle.
That hit hard because it’s the opposite of my default: social initiation has delayed feedback, uncertainty, and risk.
I also have a personal frustration here: when I meet people, I often feel like everyone extracts value from me, and I get little in return.
Maybe that’s partly selection bias — or weak filtering — or a boundary problem. But it’s real enough that it creates resistance.
Still: the solution is not isolation. The solution is better selection, better boundaries, and building a network of peers — not dependents.
The cost (and the diagnosis)
Here is the most precise diagnosis I got this year:
I am addicted to intensity as proof of value.
Intensity becomes evidence that I matter.
If I push hard, I feel “earned.”
This is powerful — and dangerous — because it creates chronic overreach:
- too many “hard” weeks,
- cognitive performance drops from overload,
- body signals ignored until they become loud.
But there’s an even deeper pattern.
This wasn’t just “imbalance.”
This was systematic avoidance of domains that don’t give immediate, measurable feedback:
- Physical pushing → immediate feedback (pain, PR, Garmin metrics).
- AI/books → immediate feedback (understanding, notes, output).
- High-stakes negotiations → immediate feedback (response, outcome, next move).
- Social initiation → delayed/uncertain feedback, risk of rejection.
- Spiritual practice → almost zero measurable feedback.
Pattern: I optimized for control + immediate measurement.
Anything requiring patience, uncertainty, dependence on others, or a long time horizon without clear metrics quietly fell out of the system.
That’s why the baseline numbers matter. They convert “diagnosis” into data.
2026: constraints, not goals
I’m not writing a list of aspirations.
I’m setting constraints — because constraints shape behavior.
Constraint #1: Physical governance (recovery-aware)
I’m not 20 anymore. Recovery is not optional.
No more chronic self-destruction for small performance wins.
On running: I’m going to study training properly and build smarter structure:
- use Jack Daniels as a foundation,
- go deeper into Greg McMillan,
- run training in 12-week blocks (because every time I pushed beyond that without real deloads, the crash appeared).
On strength/calisthenics: same principle. No more “prove it” cycles that overload CNS and joints. I’ll keep strength, but I’ll govern it.
Constraint #2: Social floor (hygiene)
Not “networking someday.”
A repeatable rule that rebuilds initiation and tolerance for uncertainty.
Constraint #3: Spiritual cadence (small but real)
Not one intense month.
A micro-cadence that survives low motivation and high workload.
Constraint #4: Family time as dedicated blocks
Presence requires structure.
If it’s not scheduled, it gets crowded out by everything that produces instant metrics.
Closing
2025 proved I can build a year like a machine.
But it also exposed my shadow:
- intensity as proof of worth,
- control as comfort,
- avoidance of uncertain feedback loops (social/spiritual).
That’s not shame. It’s data.
If 2025 was the year of Jim Rohn and LLMs as mentors,
then 2026 must be the year of governance, relationships, and long-horizon practice — and a year where I’m more effective in terms of total cost.
More social. More business thinking. Jim Rohn sparked the impulse, and Berkeley Haas gave me a language for the game.
Now it’s time to run the next system.