This weekend I sat down to do another annual reflection.

I could have done what I usually do: dump everything on a page, try to make sense of it, pick what feels important.

But I keep seeing the same issues show up in every annual review. I've literally written this exact line for three years straight: "Still doing too much, not focused enough".

Three years of the same note. Maybe this is not a willpower problem, but a systems failure. My process isn't designed to catch patterns across time.

So this year I tried something different. I brought an outside perspective. Someone who could ask "wait, didn't you say this last year?" when I started repeating myself. Who could push back when my vision contradicted my reality.

The framework that emerged was not only effective, but also fun to go through.

Here's how it works.

Most goal-setting frameworks don’t work for me.

They’re either too vague ("what's your purpose?") or too boring (OKRs, SMART goals).

I wanted something practical and honest. Something that would catch my patterns, not just capture my ambitions.

The framework I ended up with has two parts:

Part 1: Four Reflection Exercises (understand what actually happened)

1. What worked / What didn't

2. What gives energy / What drains it

3. Where does your unique contribution matter?

4. What are you leaving behind?

Part 2: Two Goal-Setting Exercises (decide what happens next)

1. Future-back vision (December 2026—what happened?)

2. Constraint-based reality check (what's actually possible?)

Let me walk you through each one with my real answers.

I used AI as my guide and editor, but a human also works.

This time Claude was prompting me, instead of the other way around: "Don't overthink it - just brain dump the first things that come to mind."

What worked for me in 2025: Living in NYC. Finding flow states through coding and writing. Physical training I actually enjoy (Muay Thai, basketball, tennis). No alcohol (3 years and counting). Small team executing fast with our new "Shake Up" process at Talent.

What didn't work: Still doing too much, not focused enough (I've said this in every retro for 3 years). Data/analytics positioning was not right for talent. Product too scrappy for most of the year. No vacation until November. Very little street photography.

The pattern Claude spotted: "You thrive when building directly, struggle when spread thin across responsibilities."

I noticed something weird this July.

I couldn't stop coding. For 31 days straight. But I wasn't disciplined, I was energized! I'd wake up excited to solve the next problem. No one was asking me to do this, this wasn't even part of my core responsibilities. I just wanted to.

Compare this with October. Coordinating instead of creating. Managing too many projects at once. Firefighting the same problems repeatedly. Not taking regular breaks.

Same person. Same job. Completely different energy.

When I listed it all out, the pattern was obvious:

• Energy: Creation. Depth. Movement. Novelty.

• Drain: Maintenance. Breadth. Sitting. Repetition.

"You love the start, but hate the scale."

This one line explained why I thrived shipping Creator Score app but struggled when working on multiple work streams. Why my best months had 80% building time and my worst had 80% meeting time.

Claude's first attempt at analyzing my answers to this question was too obvious: "You should delegate operational work."

I pushed back: "That's common sense. What's the real challenge?"

The real answer:

Finding and enabling someone who can take a vision from 1→10 with the same taste, speed, and conviction I'd bring to it.

This is what I couldn't solve with BUILD. This is what my co-founders flagged in the past: "There's no one in the core team that could quickly take over many of your responsibilities."

How I created value this year:

• Vision to execution speed: I can see it, design it, prototype it, ship it. No translation layers.

• Taste + technical: rare combo of creative agency background with engineering foundation.

• Builder empathy: I AM a builder, so I understand talent’s core audience viscerally.

• Pattern recognition across domains: music, sports, design, code, crypto.

My patterns:

• Love starting things, struggle maintaining them alone.

• Thrive with small focused teams, drain when spread thin.

• Need periodic breaks to stay creative (learned this the hard way).

• I’m more productive with side projects than without them.

• Prefer building to talking, creating to managing.

What I should focus on doing:

• Setting vision.

• Building first prototypes.

• Final decision-making.

• Killing things faster.

What others could do more (with the right person and handoff):

• Taking prototypes from 1→10.

• Keeping projects alive without me.

This is the most important exercise and the one a lot of people skip.

It's not enough to decide what you'll do. You have to consciously decide what you won't do.

Talent/Crypto: Builder Score as talent’s core product. Trying to track all data for all people. The "analytics/data company" positioning. Trying to fit in on crypto twitter. Shallow networking.

Personal/Energy: Working without periodic breaks. Not celebrating wins before moving to the next challenge. Caffeine. Mindless screen time.

Personal Patterns: Having too many goals at the same time. Trying to do too much.

Claude's observation: "The 'trying to fit in on crypto twitter' addition is huge - that's you reclaiming your voice instead of performing for an audience that isn't yours."

After four reflection exercises, we moved to goal-setting.

Claude asked me to imagine it's December 31st, 2026. I'm doing my annual reflection, feeling genuinely satisfied.

"What happened in 2026 that made it a successful year? Don't filter. Don't make it 'realistic' yet. Just write what success feels like."

My vision:

2026 was the year I built another viral, fun onchain app related to "betting on builders." Leveled up my coding skills significantly. Celebrated my 40th birthday with a fulfilling party, old and new friends, lots of fun DJing.

Published more honest, unfiltered content. Both long-form writing and 30-60s vertical videos. No overthinking what people will think.

Keep $MACEDO alive as low-commitment creative testing ground. Built a simple $MACEDO mini-app where I test new ideas.

Made new friends I actually like spending time with. Went to the cinema more. Played sports regularly. Kept doing Muay Thai.

Entered my 40s in the best shape of my past 10 years.

What I didn't do: Active DJ career. Forced street photography. More than 1 side project at a time.

Claude pushed back: "If you're still Talent’s CPO during 2026, can you do all of this?"

My initial vision had everything: viral “bet on builders” app + Builders Table expansion + full $MACEDO features + new side project to tokenize cars + consistent content + best shape + street photography

"What if you can only pick 3 main focuses?" Claude asked.

The reality check: I'm CPO at talent (~60 hours/week), need 7 hours sleep, training 3x/week. Maybe 20 hours left for everything else. And from Reflection 2, I know I drain when spread thin.

What got cut or reduced:

• $MACEDO? A wrapper to all my content and ideas, not just another project to maintain. But constrain it to half-day sprints only.

• Builders Table? Keep it simple or delegate. I can't scale it alone.

• Tokenized Cars ? Help with MVP, find someone else to run it.

• Everything else: delegate it, do it minimally, or explicitly NOT do it.

The constraint check was about being honest with myself about what actually gives me energy vs what would just spread me thin again.

After all the reflection and reality checks, here's what 2026 actually looks like:

Talent:

• Ship "Bet on Builders" in Q1.

• Make talent.app sticky.

• Become net positive by EOY.

Building:

• $MACEDO miniapp prototype.

• Post more unpolished content.

• Maybe builder.notes if there's bandwidth.

Health:

• 3x/week exercise.

• Sleep before midnight (70%+ nights).

• Best shape of my past 10 years.

The non-goals matter just as much:

• No active DJ career.

• No forced street photography.

• No keeping projects alive alone.

1. Living in NYC for 4 months — the longest I’ve been in one place outside of Portugal.

Lesson: Environment shapes output. My most creative and effective months happened in NYC. Don't ask yourself just what you'll do in 2026, but where you'll be when you do it.

2. The 31-Day Coding Streak — I shipped two apps (almost) solo this year, the Creator Score App and the Builder Registry (that got his own Times Square billboard).

Lesson: I'm happier building than managing. This became the core insight of Reflection 2: “I love the start, hate the scale”. When I'm in the code, I'm energized.

3. Said Goodbye to BUILD and DENITES — two projects I'd been keeping alive through willpower finally ended. BUILD became a public good in February (we airdropped 163B $BUILD to the community). DENITES distributed its final grants in September. Both chapters officially closed.

Lesson: Some projects need to die for you to thrive. This became the foundation of Reflection 4: "What are you leaving behind?" Letting go of BUILD and DENITES were two of the best decisions I made all year. Not every fire needs to keep burning.

4. The $MACEDO Experiment — on December 5th, I launched a personal index token backed by a fully transparent public treasury. The idea had been floating in my head for months.

Lesson: I get unreasonably energized by new, untested ideas. Where others see potential risks (legal exposure, reputation damage, uncharted territory), I see a playground. I love being the guinea pig. This is a feature, not a bug, but it needs to be managed. One experiment at a time.

5. Talent distributed $600K in Builder Rewards — we landed our first B2B customer, took another step closer to profitability, and distributed $600K to builders worldwide.

Lesson: Focus compounds and solid things take time. You can't do everything, but you can do one thing well.

The framework is simple. The hard part is having someone push back.

When I said "I need to focus more," my editor asked: "You've said that three years in a row. What's actually different this time?"

When I listed my 2026 vision, my editor asked: "You're still CPO. You need 7 hours of sleep. When exactly are you doing all this?"

When I said I'd keep $MACEDO low-commitment, my editor asked: "Define low-commitment. In hours per week."

That's the value of an outside perspective. Not generating ideas, but interrogating them. Catching the patterns you're too close to see. Calling bullshit on vague intentions.

• A friend who knows your history (and isn't afraid to be honest)

• A co-founder or colleague who's seen your patterns

• A coach or therapist

• AI (it doesn't get tired, and remembers everything you said)

The tool matters less than the function. What matters is having someone that asks better questions than you'd ask yourself. If you have that person in your life, buy them coffee and send them this framework. If you don't, AI is a surprisingly good substitute.

What matters isn't who. It's that they do three things:

1. Ask "why" more than you're comfortable with. Surface-level answers hide the real blockers.

2. Pattern-match across time. "Didn't you say this last year?" is the most valuable question.

3. Pressure-test your constraints. Vision without math is fantasy.

Block 2-3 hours, not 30 minutes between meetings.

Write, don't just talk. Talking lets you stay vague. Writing forces precision.

Do the exercises in order. The reflections inform the goals.

Don't skip exercise 4. "What are you leaving behind?" is where most planning fails. Addition is easy. Subtraction is where the real decisions live.

Doing this alone.

Your brain is excellent at protecting your existing beliefs. You'll skip the uncomfortable questions. You'll let yourself off the hook on the constraints. You'll write the same goal for the 4th year in a row and convince yourself this time is different.

Your goals need an editor. Find yours.

P.S. If you try this, send me your "What are you leaving behind?" list. That's always the most revealing part, and the one most people skip.

This weekend I sat down to do another annual reflection.

I could have done what I usually do: dump everything on a page, try to make sense of it, pick what feels important.

But I keep seeing the same issues show up in every annual review. I've literally written this exact line for three years straight: "Still doing too much, not focused enough".

Three years of the same note. Maybe this is not a willpower problem, but a systems failure. My process isn't designed to catch patterns across time.

So this year I tried something different. I brought an outside perspective. Someone who could ask "wait, didn't you say this last year?" when I started repeating myself. Who could push back when my vision contradicted my reality.

The framework that emerged was not only effective, but also fun to go through.

Here's how it works.

Most goal-setting frameworks don’t work for me.

They’re either too vague ("what's your purpose?") or too boring (OKRs, SMART goals).

I wanted something practical and honest. Something that would catch my patterns, not just capture my ambitions.

The framework I ended up with has two parts:

Part 1: Four Reflection Exercises (understand what actually happened)

1. What worked / What didn't

2. What gives energy / What drains it

3. Where does your unique contribution matter?

4. What are you leaving behind?

Part 2: Two Goal-Setting Exercises (decide what happens next)

1. Future-back vision (December 2026—what happened?)

2. Constraint-based reality check (what's actually possible?)

Let me walk you through each one with my real answers.

I used AI as my guide and editor, but a human also works.

This time Claude was prompting me, instead of the other way around: "Don't overthink it - just brain dump the first things that come to mind."

What worked for me in 2025: Living in NYC. Finding flow states through coding and writing. Physical training I actually enjoy (Muay Thai, basketball, tennis). No alcohol (3 years and counting). Small team executing fast with our new "Shake Up" process at Talent.

What didn't work: Still doing too much, not focused enough (I've said this in every retro for 3 years). Data/analytics positioning was not right for talent. Product too scrappy for most of the year. No vacation until November. Very little street photography.

The pattern Claude spotted: "You thrive when building directly, struggle when spread thin across responsibilities."

I noticed something weird this July.

I couldn't stop coding. For 31 days straight. But I wasn't disciplined, I was energized! I'd wake up excited to solve the next problem. No one was asking me to do this, this wasn't even part of my core responsibilities. I just wanted to.

Compare this with October. Coordinating instead of creating. Managing too many projects at once. Firefighting the same problems repeatedly. Not taking regular breaks.

Same person. Same job. Completely different energy.

When I listed it all out, the pattern was obvious:

• Energy: Creation. Depth. Movement. Novelty.

• Drain: Maintenance. Breadth. Sitting. Repetition.

"You love the start, but hate the scale."

This one line explained why I thrived shipping Creator Score app but struggled when working on multiple work streams. Why my best months had 80% building time and my worst had 80% meeting time.

Claude's first attempt at analyzing my answers to this question was too obvious: "You should delegate operational work."

I pushed back: "That's common sense. What's the real challenge?"

The real answer:

Finding and enabling someone who can take a vision from 1→10 with the same taste, speed, and conviction I'd bring to it.

This is what I couldn't solve with BUILD. This is what my co-founders flagged in the past: "There's no one in the core team that could quickly take over many of your responsibilities."

How I created value this year:

• Vision to execution speed: I can see it, design it, prototype it, ship it. No translation layers.

• Taste + technical: rare combo of creative agency background with engineering foundation.

• Builder empathy: I AM a builder, so I understand talent’s core audience viscerally.

• Pattern recognition across domains: music, sports, design, code, crypto.

My patterns:

• Love starting things, struggle maintaining them alone.

• Thrive with small focused teams, drain when spread thin.

• Need periodic breaks to stay creative (learned this the hard way).

• I’m more productive with side projects than without them.

• Prefer building to talking, creating to managing.

What I should focus on doing:

• Setting vision.

• Building first prototypes.

• Final decision-making.

• Killing things faster.

What others could do more (with the right person and handoff):

• Taking prototypes from 1→10.

• Keeping projects alive without me.

This is the most important exercise and the one a lot of people skip.

It's not enough to decide what you'll do. You have to consciously decide what you won't do.

Talent/Crypto: Builder Score as talent’s core product. Trying to track all data for all people. The "analytics/data company" positioning. Trying to fit in on crypto twitter. Shallow networking.

Personal/Energy: Working without periodic breaks. Not celebrating wins before moving to the next challenge. Caffeine. Mindless screen time.

Personal Patterns: Having too many goals at the same time. Trying to do too much.

Claude's observation: "The 'trying to fit in on crypto twitter' addition is huge - that's you reclaiming your voice instead of performing for an audience that isn't yours."

After four reflection exercises, we moved to goal-setting.

Claude asked me to imagine it's December 31st, 2026. I'm doing my annual reflection, feeling genuinely satisfied.

"What happened in 2026 that made it a successful year? Don't filter. Don't make it 'realistic' yet. Just write what success feels like."

My vision:

2026 was the year I built another viral, fun onchain app related to "betting on builders." Leveled up my coding skills significantly. Celebrated my 40th birthday with a fulfilling party, old and new friends, lots of fun DJing.

Published more honest, unfiltered content. Both long-form writing and 30-60s vertical videos. No overthinking what people will think.

Keep $MACEDO alive as low-commitment creative testing ground. Built a simple $MACEDO mini-app where I test new ideas.

Made new friends I actually like spending time with. Went to the cinema more. Played sports regularly. Kept doing Muay Thai.

Entered my 40s in the best shape of my past 10 years.

What I didn't do: Active DJ career. Forced street photography. More than 1 side project at a time.

Claude pushed back: "If you're still Talent’s CPO during 2026, can you do all of this?"

My initial vision had everything: viral “bet on builders” app + Builders Table expansion + full $MACEDO features + new side project to tokenize cars + consistent content + best shape + street photography

"What if you can only pick 3 main focuses?" Claude asked.

The reality check: I'm CPO at talent (~60 hours/week), need 7 hours sleep, training 3x/week. Maybe 20 hours left for everything else. And from Reflection 2, I know I drain when spread thin.

What got cut or reduced:

• $MACEDO? A wrapper to all my content and ideas, not just another project to maintain. But constrain it to half-day sprints only.

• Builders Table? Keep it simple or delegate. I can't scale it alone.

• Tokenized Cars ? Help with MVP, find someone else to run it.

• Everything else: delegate it, do it minimally, or explicitly NOT do it.

The constraint check was about being honest with myself about what actually gives me energy vs what would just spread me thin again.

After all the reflection and reality checks, here's what 2026 actually looks like:

Talent:

• Ship "Bet on Builders" in Q1.

• Make talent.app sticky.

• Become net positive by EOY.

Building:

• $MACEDO miniapp prototype.

• Post more unpolished content.

• Maybe builder.notes if there's bandwidth.

Health:

• 3x/week exercise.

• Sleep before midnight (70%+ nights).

• Best shape of my past 10 years.

The non-goals matter just as much:

• No active DJ career.

• No forced street photography.

• No keeping projects alive alone.

1. Living in NYC for 4 months — the longest I’ve been in one place outside of Portugal.

Lesson: Environment shapes output. My most creative and effective months happened in NYC. Don't ask yourself just what you'll do in 2026, but where you'll be when you do it.

2. The 31-Day Coding Streak — I shipped two apps (almost) solo this year, the Creator Score App and the Builder Registry (that got his own Times Square billboard).

Lesson: I'm happier building than managing. This became the core insight of Reflection 2: “I love the start, hate the scale”. When I'm in the code, I'm energized.

3. Said Goodbye to BUILD and DENITES — two projects I'd been keeping alive through willpower finally ended. BUILD became a public good in February (we airdropped 163B $BUILD to the community). DENITES distributed its final grants in September. Both chapters officially closed.

Lesson: Some projects need to die for you to thrive. This became the foundation of Reflection 4: "What are you leaving behind?" Letting go of BUILD and DENITES were two of the best decisions I made all year. Not every fire needs to keep burning.

4. The $MACEDO Experiment — on December 5th, I launched a personal index token backed by a fully transparent public treasury. The idea had been floating in my head for months.

Lesson: I get unreasonably energized by new, untested ideas. Where others see potential risks (legal exposure, reputation damage, uncharted territory), I see a playground. I love being the guinea pig. This is a feature, not a bug, but it needs to be managed. One experiment at a time.

5. Talent distributed $600K in Builder Rewards — we landed our first B2B customer, took another step closer to profitability, and distributed $600K to builders worldwide.

Lesson: Focus compounds and solid things take time. You can't do everything, but you can do one thing well.

The framework is simple. The hard part is having someone push back.

When I said "I need to focus more," my editor asked: "You've said that three years in a row. What's actually different this time?"

When I listed my 2026 vision, my editor asked: "You're still CPO. You need 7 hours of sleep. When exactly are you doing all this?"

When I said I'd keep $MACEDO low-commitment, my editor asked: "Define low-commitment. In hours per week."

That's the value of an outside perspective. Not generating ideas, but interrogating them. Catching the patterns you're too close to see. Calling bullshit on vague intentions.

• A friend who knows your history (and isn't afraid to be honest)

• A co-founder or colleague who's seen your patterns

• A coach or therapist

• AI (it doesn't get tired, and remembers everything you said)

The tool matters less than the function. What matters is having someone that asks better questions than you'd ask yourself. If you have that person in your life, buy them coffee and send them this framework. If you don't, AI is a surprisingly good substitute.

What matters isn't who. It's that they do three things:

1. Ask "why" more than you're comfortable with. Surface-level answers hide the real blockers.

2. Pattern-match across time. "Didn't you say this last year?" is the most valuable question.

3. Pressure-test your constraints. Vision without math is fantasy.

Block 2-3 hours, not 30 minutes between meetings.

Write, don't just talk. Talking lets you stay vague. Writing forces precision.

Do the exercises in order. The reflections inform the goals.

Don't skip exercise 4. "What are you leaving behind?" is where most planning fails. Addition is easy. Subtraction is where the real decisions live.

Doing this alone.

Your brain is excellent at protecting your existing beliefs. You'll skip the uncomfortable questions. You'll let yourself off the hook on the constraints. You'll write the same goal for the 4th year in a row and convince yourself this time is different.

Your goals need an editor. Find yours.

P.S. If you try this, send me your "What are you leaving behind?" list. That's always the most revealing part, and the one most people skip.