january 2024 → february 2025 · new jersey
Fifty goalsfor my fiftiethyear. I finished all fifty.
Twenty years of goal lists, and never once a clean sweep. So for the year I turned fifty I raised the stakes: fifty goals, twelve months, and a rulebook to keep me honest. Climb Vesuvius. Eat in my family's hometown. Make fifty pizzas, cook fifty countries, read fifty books. Every one of them got done.
- posts
- 0
- words
- 0
- swaps used
- 0/5
0/50finished
Every goal in the order I wrote them down, tinted by kind. Point at one to see it, click for its story.
chapter 01 · learning
The hours
Every session went into the sheet with its minutes: 236 hours of Italian, courses, podcasts, AI, TED talks and meditation. Pick one to see what was actually in it.
chapter 02 · books
Sixty-five books
The goal was fifty.
chapter 03 · music
Ten songs, from memory
Thirty years of guitar, and I still played off printouts: in the old jam videos everyone else is jamming out and I'm staring at my music stand. The goal was ten songs I could play and sing with nothing in front of me. The neck is a timeline, 1960 at the nut; each pick sits at the year its song came out.
chapter 04 · food
Fifty pizzas
A new style or a new build every time: Neapolitan DOC with mozzarella I made myself, Detroit, a Lou Malnati's deep-dish clone, a 72-hour ferment, steamed pizza gourmet, sfincione, and a Nutella dessert pie. The ones that didn't earn their own post went into two roundups, one for toppings and one for doughs.
Then the tour: 15 famous pizzerias, when the goal asked for 10.
Same rule everywhere: the plain pie is the bar I rate each place at. Scored out of ten, best first.
chapter 05 · food
Fifty countries, one kitchen
Enchiladas for Mexico first, dalgona for South Korea last. The rules said nothing could count twice, so there is no pizza on this map; Italy got manicotti, focaccia, granita and zeppole instead.
drawing the map…
The plates
chapter 06 · films
Ten decades of film
Five from every decade, silent comedies to Everything Everywhere All at Once. One rule for all of it: the movie room, no phone, no second screen. Drag or scroll the strip sideways.
1920s
chapter 07 · music
Fifty albums, start to finish
The Rolling Stone greatest albums, one sitting each, in a comfortable chair and doing nothing else. Here they are by decade, in the order they came out.
chapter 08 · health
One race, four banyas, ten hikes
The body goals that were one-offs rather than streaks. I have never liked running for its own sake, and I'd been meaning to get back to the banya for years.
chapter 09 · body & habits
Thirty days at a time
Breaking one meant starting again at once, not tomorrow. That was a rule too.
chapter 10 · out & about
Every team, one year
Every New York and New Jersey men's pro team, one game each.
chapter 11 · one-offs
Crossed off, once and for all
No streaks, no tallies. Just the things I'd been putting off for years: a dream guitar thirty years in the waiting, a monster truck show, my family's hometown, a Bob Ross painting, a Michelin star, homemade beer and a family cookbook.
chapter 12 · the method
Finish STRONG
Around the six-month mark the easy wins ran out and it became, generously, a slog. So I went back through my notes, kept what had worked, and gave it an acronym. It became a goal of its own.
- S
Start small
Commit to doing just one thing each day. Even on your busiest days, five minutes is enough: read a page, sketch a quick idea, jot down tomorrow's task.
- T
Transform habits
Align your habits with the identity you want. I learned that habits often take longer than the popularly cited 30 days to solidify.
- R
Rebuild mindset
See yourself not as someone who might succeed, but as someone who will. For me that came from embracing stoicism.
- O
Overcome obstacles
Injuries, workloads, illness, family. It's not the obstacles themselves but your response that defines the journey.
- N
Never quit
"Who would care if I quit?" You would. Slow down, adjust your timeline, but never surrender.
- G
Gather data
A tab per goal and a summary sheet of checkboxes and progress bars that turned blue at 100%. It's the sheet this whole page is built from.
the index
All fifty
Show the full list of goalssearchable · filter by kind
the rulebook
Every system needs a rule set
Written on 24 February 2024, two weeks in: "Given the complexity there needs to be flexibility built into the system to allow for variance but not enough to encourage avoiding the hard work that will be needed."
The rule set 24 Feb 2024
- Five swaps, no more.Up to five goals could be switched out, but only "for similar or MORE challenging goals," to allow for injuries or unavoidable conflicts. I used four, and two of them were "due to physical limitations rather than avoidance."
- Collect everything."As much data collection as possible": data points, photos, journal entries. "Charts are a plus, sparklines where applicable." This page is that rule, paid off.
- Report in public, every month.A progress post each month, starting 13 February, on the blog while I was off social media.
- Report in private, every month.An internal journal entry at the end of each month: what got done, what's falling behind, and how to speed up the goals that are flagging.
- Move the needle every day."Even if the day is crazy: read a few chapters, relax listening to a new album, spend 10 minutes practicing guitar."
- No multitasking with media.Full attention in a setting built for it: albums in the comfy chair, movies in the movie room, never on the computer.
- Nothing counts twice.A pizza counts for the pizza goal, not for fifty countries. Videos on how to play a song don't count toward learning hours.
- Slip, then fix it now.Breaking an abstinence goal isn't a lost day. "A temporary setback that is corrected immediately, NOT 'I'll start again tomorrow.'"
What actually made it work from “I Did It”, Feb 2025
- No moving the goalposts.Once the fifty were set, I committed to not altering them to make things easier.
- Priorities first."My family always comes first, no exceptions." I still coached the kids' teams, kept Friday lunch dates with my wife, and kept work a priority.
- Do something every day.Five minutes of Italian, a few pages, one gratitude entry. "Skipping a day felt like a glitch in my system."
- Find hidden time.The commute became podcasts and albums; lunch became reading instead of doom-scrolling; waiting at practice became sketching.
- Track everything.A spreadsheet with progress bars turning blue at 100%. If a goal lagged, I shifted focus to it.
Read the rule set, the method I pieced together halfway through in Finish STRONG, and I Did It. After that I took four months off, then pointed the next year at health alone. That, and whatever comes after it, goes on the blog.
A note on images: most of the photos on this page are my own. Where I never took a photo of the real thing, I used AI-generated images to fill the gap.
data from my sheet and the blog · built · tonypanariello.com