Avoid This Trap in Your Year-End Review

Numbers don’t lie.

This is the premise behind the common advice to set “SMART” goals — goals that can be measured.

As the year winds down, it’s tempting to focus a year-end review on income earned, books read, PRs in the gym, deals closed, weight lost, gains in followers and likes, content produced, and other metrics.

But while numbers don’t lie, they also don’t tell the whole story.

A Case-Study: CrossFit Open 23.2

In February of 2023, I participated in my first CrossFit Open, a 3-week competition that serves as the preliminary qualifying event for the CrossFit Games.

Even if you have no chance of advancing to the games, the CrossFit Open workouts serve as a useful benchmark of your own progress. You can repeat them periodically to assess how your strength and endurance have improved.

When my gym repeated one of the Open workouts in mid-December, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to assess the progress I had made this year.

The workout we did was Open 23.2, which was divided into two parts:

Part one, 23.2A, was an “AMRAP”, a format in which athletes must complete As Many Reps As Possible of the movements in a given amount of time.

In this case, the time limit was 15 minutes to perform as many reps as possible of

• 5 burpee pull-ups, a burpee jumping straight into a pull-up
• 10 shuttle runs of 50 feet

The catch was that in each round after the first round, we had to add 5 burpee pull-ups to the total. So Round 1 was 5, round 2 was 10, round 3 was 15, and so on.

As soon as the time was up for 23.2A, we moved to 23.2B, in which we had 5 minutes to establish a 1-rep-max barbell thruster. This requires pulling the barbell off the floor, then doing a front squat to an overhead press.

Comparing Performance Metrics

Here’s a comparison of my scores from both times I did this workout: February 2023 December 2023 23.2A Total Reps 111 110 23.2B Max Thruster 50 70

If you’re only looking at the numbers, it appears that I did worse in December than I did in February.

And that’s one problem with only relying on numbers. Numbers may not lie, but they also don’t tell the whole story.

Any conclusion reached based on the numbers that my performance was “worse” would be a grave error.

What the Numbers Don’t Tell

Looking only at numbers ignores crucial information that often makes a difference in assessing progress and performance.

Here’s what the numbers for Part A don’t tell you about my performance:

In February, I scaled the workout by doing “burpees to a target” for all rounds. Instead of doing a full burpee to a pull-up, I did a burpee and jumped up to hit the pull-up bar.

In December, I challenged myself to try burpee pull-ups.

I did burpee all 5 burpee pull-ups for the first round and 5 of 10 in the second round, before switching to burpees-to-a-target.

In total, I did 10 burpee pull-ups.

To do 10 burpee pull-ups and come out only one rep short of where I was in February is actually a significant improvement.

Burpee pull-ups take more time, and considerably more energy, to complete. They also fatigue arms and shoulders more, which impacts strength available for the thrusters in Part B.

There were also other factors that impacted the workout. For example, in February someone else counted my reps for me. Counting reps may not seem like a big deal, but it occupies mental bandwidth that could otherwise be directed towards performance.

Two Takeaways For Your Year-End Review

Here are two lessons you can take from this to apply to your year-end review process.

(1) Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Numbers may not lie, but they don’t tell the whole story.

The numbers you review at the end of your year don’t tell you anything about the conditions and circumstances you encountered this year. Maybe you had an unexpected loss that required you to step away to grieve. Maybe you got sick or had to step up your care for a sick child or parent. Maybe you were laying groundwork for things that will fall into place next year.

To judge your performance only by the numbers is to deny the many factors that contribute to the numbers.

(2) Numbers Aren’t the Only Sign of Growth

If you’re going to push yourself to take on more challenging work, your results might not be as “good” as they could have been if you played it safe.

The fact that you pushed yourself is, in itself, a sign of growth and progress.

If I had re-tested this workout doing the exact same thing I did in February, I likely would have had more total reps. But I would have missed out on the opportunity to assess my true progress.

To fully assess where you are, you must look beyond the numbers.