Where Did The Time Go, Co-conspirators?
The early morning rays had dared to interrupt my slumber. My alarm had futilely blared its presence at 0530, but I laid there, staring at the ceiling, under my warm blanket, and scrolling through the digital void of YouTube for 30 minutes. My plan, a meticulously crafted stratagem for a day off, was to rinse, cleanse, conquer the pavement with a quick jog, the return home for a home workout, shower, laundry, and a decisive jumpstart to my precious free hours.
It was already past 0730. This procrastination, a momentary lapse in my crafted discipline, was unacceptable. I shot up out of bed, washed, changed into my workout gear, laced on my shoes, then hit the pavement. What would have been a walk around the block became a determined jog to make up for my poor decision of staying in bed. My body and mind were primed for the workout I had planned the night before, climbed the stairs back to my apartment, locked the door behind me, and grabbed my tools of choice.
After weeks of strategic active resting, it was time to return to being active. With my kettlebells and bands in hand, I was ready to forge myself through training once more:
- Dynamic warm ups: 3 minutes
- Banded overhead presses: 3 sets of 10 reps
- Reverse Lunges: 3 sets of 5 reps each leg
Then my main workout consisted of the following:
- 20 lbs Kettlebell Swings: 1 set of 20 reps
- 20 lbs Kettlebell Deadlift: 3 sets of 10 reps
- 20lbs Kettlebell squats with calf raises: 3 sets of of 10 reps
- Body weight push-ups: 3 sets of 10,11, and 12 reps respectively. The last set, a tactical drop to my knees, was still a victory.
- Finally, a 5 minute cool down period using static stretches, twist holds, bridging, and fluid movement.
With my workout finished, I took a lukewarm shower to wash away the smell of effort and tossed my dirty clothes into my basket. Today was laundry day, my precious day off from two fronts of income generation. This was my day off and I intended to be productive.
Thankfully, my apartment complex offers an on-site laundromat, less than a 2 minute stroll from my unit. I loaded my clothes into the wash, set my timer for 50 minutes, and headed back. As soon as I reached the bottom of the steps, slowly climbing, my mind, normally a fortress of strategic and practical thought, was surprisingly blank. Then, it hit me as though lighting struck,:
‘Holy crap, it’s already July 1st, the beginning of a new month… 2025 is almost over…’
My mind was slowly processing this thought, as I ascended the stairs back to my studio. Once I returned to the safety of my living space, it dawned on me; this is the perfect opportunity. A chance to reflect on the battles I’d engaged in and won(or lost) so far this year, and the most strategic place to document it is here on my blog. This blog, this project, that I’ve talked about starting for years, was now real and a tangible fortress I’d begun building. And I’ve been fortifying it brick by deliberate brick.
Let’s Pause, Reflect, and Dominate!
How often have you heard someone say, or heard yourself lament, “where did the time go? Another year is almost over!” And then, the polite (or perhaps subtly condescending) inquiry, “have you met any of your New Year’s resolutions yet?” The “New Year, New Me” mentality is a common recurring trend.
Whether you kept to your goals or abandoned them because life got in the way, that’s okay! Stepping back to gauge where you currently are in your life isn’t about casting judgement; it’s about gathering intelligence. Reflection is a crucial reconnaissance mission: to chart how far you’ve advanced this year, to discern what shifted or remained stagnant, and, most importantly, to extract lessons from your progress, no matter how insignificant, to project victory within the remaining months ahead. This is NOT an option.
That is the premise behind “Stratagem’s Archive”; my objectives were to dissect my own campaigns: what I’ve deployed, what fascinated me, my strategic objectives, how I execute each idea, and the tangible results of taking decisive action. Here, I reveal the tactic I’ve tested, how I’ve course-corrected, and the necessary adjustments made to maintain momentum despite changes in the battlefield. Even mere thought experiments are crucial for priming the mind for future opportunities.
Instead of chalking 2025 as another year of time flying by or wondering what you did this year, let’s take a moment to think over a few questions. Some might be simple, others could reveal uncomfortable truths, because, ‘nothing’, is the typical default answer. Let’s begin planning, strategizing, and constructing our own empire one goal, one brick, and one step at a time.
The Questions Begin Here: YOU Are Here:
In the last 6-months of 2025, here are a small list of questions to mull over:
- What’s changed in your personal domain?: Your relationships, habits, health, or finances?
- What’s changed in your professional sphere?: Your job, career trajectory, projects seized or surrendered, roles mastered, skills mastered and deployed?
- Regarding your objectives: Which have stalled? Which were rightly abandoned because they were never your battles to fight? Which goals transformed entirely?
- What constants remained in your life? Your core values and priorities? Any daily routines, both that served you and sabotaged you?
- What persistent challenges, or which areas demand immediate, undivided attention?
- Which aspirations remained unwavering?
- What were your greatest victories, monumental or minute? Acknowledge them, celebrate them.
- What were the unexpected challenges or strategic detours? What did they force you to learn?
- What habits or practices served as powerful allies on your journey?
- What habits or practices proved to be liabilities, holding you back from conquest?
A Ruthless Self-Reflection
“Looking back, what’s one thing that you are proud of the most of, and what’s something you could have approached differently?”
Self-reflection is not a gentle act; it is a brutal, necessary assessment. It is the individual’s imperative to retrace their personal timeline, to identify moments of strength and precision, and to pinpoint where tactics could have been superior. Some people, in their pathetic weakness, weaponize self-reflection to shame others, failing to practice the very discipline they preach. We are not them. We are here to claim our gains and to extract every possible lesson from the trials of the past.
The prompts above are merely catalysts for your mind to begin its strategic dissection. Countless resources exist – on the internet, in texts, through insightful individuals – if you possess the cunning to seek them out. It demands profound inner strength to gaze upon your past self, your words, and your actions, and to maintain that gaze when the easy path is to recoil in shame, blame, or guilt. Your willingness to engage in this means that a profound shift has occurred within you – a shift you may not have yet the words for. It demands to be acknowledged, flaws and all, because it finally commands a portion of your attention. And it knows you need its guidance to comprehend what has truly changed and what your next move must be.
The following prompts further insights, designed to converge disparate ideas and unveil something previously inconceivable—something insightful, enlightening, something uniquely yours. It originated from within you; now you have to give it a voice. It is ready to be shard with you, its creator. Document your answers in a journal, a notes app, or an audio recording. This is your historical record, a tangible marker of, ‘this is what I once believed and thought’ versus ‘I no longer wholly agree; something has transformed, and here is what it is.’
- What was your biggest victory in the first half of 2025?
- What’s one habit that you will cultivate or ruthlessly eliminate?
- What’s one area of your life do you want to be more intentional, more dominant?
- What’s one thing that surprised you the most?
Engagement: Share Your Intelligence
Through your period of reflection and assessment, what small insight have you gleaned? Or, what single word would you use to describe the first half of the year for you? Share your intelligence in the comments below.
We Still Have Time Before 2026 Arrives People!
Do you comprehend the absurdity of hearing individuals declare, ‘it’s too late to achieve their New Year’s resolutions,’ when only a month or three has passed? Six months into the year, however, presents a significant chasm from January. Yet, consider the undeniable truth: 2025, like all other years, still contains an immense window of opportunity before its official end. While it may be July 1st, at the time of this writing, this year is far from over.
It’s like being on a malfunctioning escalator and calling for rescue. The escalator may have ceased its ascent, but you are not stuck. It has simply transformed into stairs, and it is time to activate those legs and climb!
- Look over your original (year long) goals? Are they still relevant? Do they need adjusting based on your review?
- Break down your larger goals; how might they be broken up to fit into a 3-month and 6-month actionable steps?
- Remember: focus on the 1-3 areas that you want to work on for the rest of the year. Any progress, despite the length and duration it’s been cultivated, can show more than simply saying you won’t make any.
Let’s say for example that you want to focus on your health and well-being. How would you be able to group this together? Could we posit that we could group exercise, nutrition, and sleep together? For example: could you take a walk for 5-10 minutes, eat 1 fruit a day, and sleep 10 minutes earlier? Starting small gives you a foundation to build upon until you are able to increase the amount of healthy habits and it becomes an automatic practice, not a punishment.
This idea can be thought of the same way with other activities and goals: learning new skills, a new language, entering a new industry, pursuing a relationship or repairing one, the possibilities are endless! However, given that we all have so much attention throughout the day, giving your attention to a small amount of projects would help keep you focused and delay feeling overwhelmed. Give it a try and see what happens when you dedicate your attention to 1-3 projects than 3+ projects with the amount of time we have left in this year.
In order to reinforce these habits and practices to become automatic, set up a monthly or bimonthly review to see how much progress you’ve made so far. It gives you a sense that you made strides from who you were to who you are now and consistent effort and reflection keeps you accountable. It gives you a sense of being responsible for yourself and your actions to keep making progress. The biggest thing here is to remember; plans are guidelines, not strict rules. Plans can be adjusted when known and unknown variables shift, when life gets in the way, and something isn’t working anymore. Being flexible with your goals is just as valuable as it would be for professional pursuits.
What Are You Willing to Do Now?
Given how quickly time has flown and we’re already beginning the month of July, I had given myself time to reflect on my own accomplishments, lessons, and goals so far. For instance, my biggest wins I’ve had so far this year were: moving out of my family’s home and living on my own. I wanted to know what it was like to live on my own and be responsible for myself, not because I was kicked out or I wasn’t happy at home. I’ve grown to become reliant on myself, evaluating my interests and values and priorities and relationships in my own environment had been eye opening. It got to the point where I’ve had to say goodbye to relationships and hobbies that were no longer mutually respectful between myself and those I was friends with.
The main lesson I’ve learned came from making financial choices without thinking things through and without doing the math. I’ve accumulated over $5,000 in credit card debt with rent, expenses, recurring programs, and a paid program to help me find my dream job. They’ve compounded and I still had the mentality that I was still living at home with little consequence and thought and my credit card has an APR of 25.26%. That’s huge for someone in a low income bracket, but that was my choice.
Prior to moving out, I also took out a $13,000 personal loan with an 8.70% interest rate to help pay down a different credit card that had a $7,000 balance on it for car repairs I couldn’t pay upfront. The 19% APR was killing me and I despise being in debt, so a personal loan made sense living at home, but not so much living on your own. I took it upon myself to work a full time job and a part time job to aggressively pay down my debts. My goal is to avalanche the most funds towards my $5,000 balance first because of the APR, then allocate those funds to pay off my personal loan. By doing the math, I’ve projected that I’ll be able to aggressively pay off my credit card by the beginning of November to the end of December, 2025.
As soon as I’m able to deal with my credit card, I’ll focus on my personal loan and use the same aggressive approach. I’ve projected that I’ll be able to pay this off, even with a small interest rate and monthly payments, by next year June-July. Working two jobs, eating poorly or nothing after a certain time, and getting very little sleep during my work week is the price I’m paying to get out of my debt. I could use those freed up funds to invest more into my Roth account, build up a bigger emergency fund, and have money to spend guilt free each month. I’m much more conscious of my spending and I’m doing what I can to make sure I won’t make the same financial mistakes again. I’ll be much more prepared next time with the funds ready to be deployed than needing to borrow again.
Finally, the area of my life that I want to be more intentional in are with my friendships. I briefly mentioned that I’ve had to say goodbye to friendships that were no longer mutually aligned and weren’t supporting both parties involved. I’ve learned what my values and boundaries are and they had been repeatedly violated when I clearly stated something was not okay or I wasn’t available then made myself available to make other people happy and myself miserable. It was a matter of when to move on and I chose to let go this year then let things continue the course it was on.
I’m currently debating with myself about handling a decade long friendship. I don’t see myself being valued or included into my friend’s life anymore, so
I’ve been reflecting about what to do next; the two of us are on different life paths, we don’t have much in common anymore from when we were two broke college kids, I felt unheard when I expressed my needs and values and how it felt being around my friend and his girlfriend. I adore his girlfriend, but she’s not responsible for my friend’s actions, or lack thereof, and I’ve expressed that she shouldn’t take away my friend’s autonomy to communicate with me on his own terms. I want to have an adult conversation, but that isn’t going to be happening anytime soon.
I’ve shared my thoughts, set my boundaries, and I’ve just been distancing myself from this friend. I had shared that I am busy with work and I’ll get back to either of them when I’m available, but I’m not ready to have that conversation yet. If I don’t then, I could regret it for the rest of my life. If I don’t then, then I better prepare myself to lose something and someone I held with high regard. Right now, I just see the shell of the people we used to be and our dynamics has grown in different directions, it’s one sided and not sustainable anymore. But that is my problem to face, so that will be a conversation for another time.
Wrap It Up Here, P2A.
In conclusion, keep these reflections and plans in mind, they can help with whatever you are pursuing or with what you want to pursue. It’s almost like what Tow Mater from “Cars” told Lightning McQueen about his ability to drive in reverse without crashing; “I don’t need to see where I’m going; I just need to know where I’ve been.” If you don’t know where you’ve been, then how can you know where you’re going? Food for thought. Thank you for taking the time to read this long one, and I’ll see you in another one!
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