Pruning Is Not Loss

Honestly, I have no clue how to begin this. Or, more appropriately, how to end it.

In a nutshell, this is the last Open Goals issue I will publish, at least for the moment. I know, right!

From the beginning, my intention behind this thread was to share my journey toward personal goals, highlighting my objectives, initiatives, struggles, results, and lessons from both successes and failures.

I documented the process for pursuing my objectives, leaving breadcrumbs along the way for my future self and you, who, like me, push yourself to become a little bit better every day.

For this reason, this section of my newsletter is (or was) very dear to me, as I exposed myself naked to the entire world (or at least to you, the internet robots and AI crawlers).

This is as vulnerable as I can be in this medium, since I don’t share much of my personal life on social media or on the internet in general.

Are there any strong reasons behind this decision? I’m not sure; most probably, I used my neurocortex to justify an emotional decision made by the limbic brain. So, typically human.

On the one hand, I’ve already published 20 issues covering the topic in depth, so there is enough content for anyone who needs a blueprint to achieve their goals.

On the other hand, I’m in the process of changing how I approach the newsletter overall, which requires letting go of some ongoing initiatives, such as Open Goals or Engineering Mastermind.

In the end, to prune is not to lose. It's to choose what grows next.

1. Morning breathing exercise

2. Daily reading sessions

In February, I continued what I started in January: doing breathing exercises to keep my stress level as low as possible.

This was the first thing I did in the morning, after I visited the bathroom, of course. Overall, I managed to calmly breathe 18 of 28 mornings, achieving a success rate of 64%.

That’s pretty good.

Regarding my reading challenge, I managed to read for only 11 days, which is a 39% success rate. Not as high as I really wanted, but I can live with that.

As a result, I finally finished reading Glucose Revolution, by Jessie Inchauspe, which I really enjoyed. And also convinced me to change the way I eat my nutrients.

For March, I will keep the breathing exercise challenge as it is a good morning habit. And for my second challenge, I will focus on learn something new every day, either by watching a long-form video, reading an article, or completing a couple of pages from a book.

Objective: Build lasting endurance that carries me further, longer.

• 🚧 KR1: Complete a marathon to push my mental strength.

• 🚫 KR2: Swim 1 km in under 30 minutes.

• 🚫 KR3: Finish an indoor Super Sprint Triathlon sub-50min.

As you can see from the image above, I haven’t completed any key results yet.

I know, it’s the second month this year when I didn’t find an appealing solution for a fitness center where I could work on my swim and super sprint triathlon KRs. 🫤

Although I didn’t mark any of my key results, at least I made progress on some of them.

Firstly, I have signed up for the Wizz Air Cluj-Napoca Maraton 2026 to make sure I have my spot reserved and, at the same time, to make it hard for me to step back from the race/commitment.

Secondly, while training for the marathon, I have alternated between pace and heart rate training sessions. I used the heart rate approach, especially when I ran uphill, since it would have been too much to maintain the target pace.

I also used the heart rate training for the recovery runs. This way, I could easily shift from high-intensity training to the well-deserved easy runs.

Finally, I did look up some fitness centers; however, I haven’t committed to a subscription yet. So, it might be that this quarter I will focus only on the marathon and move the rest of the key results for Q2.

For Mastery, I don’t have any formal goals; however, one thing is clear: I want to continue experimenting with agentic development to understand how I can lead my team to enable entrepreneurs to challenge the status quo in these disruptive times.

I haven’t written anything yet on this topic, and it might look like I’m way too late to board this train. However, I deliberately stepped back from the hype to find the signal in the noise.

Thus, I will tackle this subject to some extent in my future issues.

This wraps up my February updates and adds closure to the Open Goals initiative.

Hopping off at this last station only means I will keep working on my goals offline. Meanwhile, I’m working on launching Over Engineering 2.0.

So, yeah. Stay tuned!

—Alex

PS: Before I leave, I want to share one of my favorite tools: the Hero QuestLog, a gamification approach for reaching your goals. You can read more about it here.