2021 Annual Review
If you’d like to read my 2022 goals, check it here.
In 2012, Steph Curry signed a 4 year, $44 million contract with the Golden State Warriors. Knowing Curry’s value today, $44 million was a steal for the Warriors (his contract is $215 million today). Analyst's considered this $44 million contract "risky business.” Curry showed promise, but had multiple ankle injuries from 2009 to 2011 that raised doubts.
Then, on February 27th 2013, Steph Curry exploded onto the world scene by scoring 54 points at Madison Square Garden. Screen and pop? Swish. Fastbreak 3? Swish. Behind the back dribble and pop? Swish.
After every swish, the MSG crowd would groan. But the crowd sprinkled every groan with a spoonful of awe as Curry made magic on the court. They witnessed a man step into greatness. He entered his prime.
Sitting down for my 2021 review, I feel like Steph Curry before his MSG night. Arrogant, but as psychologist William James says: “People by and large become what they think of themselves.”
A few speed bumps with my previous jobs/relationship felt similar to Curry's "ankle injuries." Mentally, I’ve been better than ever. Physically, I’m in the best shape of my life. Financially, I’ve made the most ever in 2021. 2021 is the year I’ve entered my prime.
Most Valuable Learnings About Myself
Exponential Returns come from Long Term commitments
If I invested $5,000 every year for the next 30 years, compound interest will turn this into $1 million when I’m 65. The idea of compound interest is to make consistent, small investments and over time, your investments will grow exponentially.
In 2021, I realized that this concept applies to all areas of my life:
Work: At DoorDash, I worked on all sides of the business. This was a mistake. Every time I’d switch business areas, I’d need to relearn the jargon and rebuild context. Exponential impact comes from diving deep in a single area for an extended period of time (before switching).
Travel - When I was 22, I wanted to travel to as many places as I could. In 2021, I stayed in Hawaii for six months and intentionally didn’t move around. I invested in a single community, rather than rebuilding my community with each place I traveled to. Exponential impact is the lifelong friends I made.
Learning: In 2018, I learned 12 skills in 12 months. I got decent but not great at any of the skills. In 2021, I focused only on surfing where surfing has become an exponential source of fulfillment.
Exponential returns come if I invest in something consistently and for a longer period of time. Otherwise, I’ll continue to hug the x-axis.
I’m addicted to novelty and variety.
It’s important to experiment with many things before knowing what to dive deep into. However, there’s a difference between experimenting and novelty addiction.
Experimentation is the conscious effort of testing many things, with the intention of diving deep. Novelty Addiction is uncontrollable dabbling, without intention of diving deep. From ages 22 to 28, I optimized for novelty. Travel to as many places as I can. Learn as many skills as I can. Date as many people as I can. Read as many books as I can.
I still need an element of experimentation in my life. I can’t know where to dive deep without trying many things. However, my intention is a T-Shaped model. Have depth in a few things but breadth in many things. I’ve taken care of the breadth. Now, it’s time to dive deep.
I’m afraid to say what I truly think.
Over time, I became afraid of speaking my true thoughts. If someone had a strong opinion on a topic, I’d blindly agree. My underlying fear was conflict. As a kid, I was always afraid of conflict. If somebody wanted to start a fight or start yelling at me, I’d shut down. I’d stop speaking.
Unintentionally, Jiu Jitsu has trained my ability to deal with conflict. Every day I’m in the gym, I’m in a fight. I train my mind not to shy away from the feeling of conflict.
It’s hard for me to have difficult conversations.
I avoid difficult conversations, especially in dating. Many times, I know the person isn’t the right fit but I don’t break it off. When I try to have the conversation, I stumble over my words like a drunk driver taking a sobriety test. The root of this is combination of many things, fear of conflict, ego, inflicting emotional pain on others.
A successful year is determined by the number of incredible memories I had.
The #1 indicator of whether I had a successful year isn’t just hitting all my goals. It’s the number of unforgettable experiences I had with people I love. If I hit my goals without any unforgettable experiences, I wouldn’t consider it a successful year.
Beliefs I’ve Changed My Mind On
Digital Nomad/Traveling should not be “The Dream”
When I was in college, I read Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek. I didn’t do much with it, except fantasize about becoming a digital nomad. Over the last six years, I got to experience being a digital nomad.
Traveling solo/nomad-ing had been essential to my growth as a human being. It was the first time I started to listen to that inner voice. It finally put me in the driver seat of my own life. It fundamentally changed who I was.
These days, I don’t get much benefit from the pure act of seeing many places. I realized I have only three reasons to travel: 1) deepen relationships 2) push my comfort zone and 3) learn a new skill. That’s it. Traveling shouldn’t be the goal, traveling should be a tool to build a more fulfilling life.
Don’t use checklists to select romantic partners
As a nerdy, analytical person, I love creating spreadsheets and long checklists for random things. So naturally, with romantic partners, I created a long checklist of attributes, developed a scoring system and used spreadsheets to track dates, like a dating CRM. I even built an algorithm to automate dating.
However, relationships are not logical, they’re emotional. Many people can check all the boxes but not feel right. And after reading the book How to Not Die Alone, I realized I should evaluate a person based on my feeling. Questions to ask myself:
What side of me did they bring out?
How did my body feel during the date?
Do I feel energized after the date?
Did I feel captivated? Did I feel in flow?
Some of the logical stuff does matter (like financial situation, location, age) but past a certain threshold, I should listen to my feelings.
Money can buy happiness
The often cited study is “after $70,000, additional money doesn’t make you happier.” Science has proven that gratitude, relationships and helping others makes you happier. Money can buy happiness if you use it for gratitude, relationships and to help others.
If I spend $100,000 to help someone achieve their dreams, I’d be incredibly happy. If I spent $50,000 on therapy, that’d make me significantly happier. If I spent $10,000 to take my family on a vacation, that would create lifelong memories we could cherish forever.
Reading 100 books per year isn’t impressive
The quality my reading should be determined by the number of quake-books I can find. Quake-books are books that fundamentally change or alter my world-view. It’s not the number of books I read that matter. It’s the number of books that make a significant impact on life that matter.
2021 Outcomes Review
Establish myself at Spotify by delivering a high-quality product and developing deep expertise
The common theme amongst my review this year is this idea of commitment and going deeper. At Spotify, I've focused on a single area for over a year, and now that I'm near the end of the year, I'm starting to really reap the benefits of deeper knowledge. I’ve delivered significant revenue impact, delivered a brand-new forecasting system, and kickstarted workstreams that have large substantial $$ impact for our bottom-line.
The learning here is that I can still learn many areas, but better to focus on one area, go deeply first, before transitioning.
Grade: A-
Build a roadmap for my career direction
My initial vision for this project did not come to fruition. I ended up over-estimating the amount of time I actually had to dedicate to this and didn’t end up doing this. The problem with not doing this is that then, I’m just following the default path (which isn’t bad).
Grade: F
Cultivate positive serendipity through creating and sharing something useful 1x per week
I initially did great at this for the first few months of the year with 66 Days of Data challenge. But I ended up caring a lot more about surfing than actually sharing these and ended up caring a lot more about my relationships in person than doing this. In reality, I had scheduled this goal for the latter half of the year and just wasn’t my priority.
Grade: D
Review & learn the fundamentals of investing & set myself up for success financially
I ended up signing up for an investing course and getting a financial advisor to help with IPO sell-off. I’ve also allocated a % of my portfolio to “play money.” I do feel like I've set myself up somewhat.
However, I realized that active investing isn't a super high priority for me. I don’t really want to allocate the time to reading annual reports and doing finanical analysis as it would take time away from other activities I love, like sports.
Grade: B
Go on at least 10 dates with the same person
The initial idea here was to use this as a metric to go deeper in a relationship. I accomplished this. However, I realized that living in Hawaii temporarily meant a long-term, serious relationship didn’t make sense. I’ll spare the details on this one.
Grade: A
Build a strong, social circle in NYC by hosting at least 4 second-degree dinners.
I ended up building a really strong social circle in Hawaii. Covid threw off my NYC move situation, however, I'll count this as a success. I didn't host any second degree dinners, but in this case, I accomplished my outcome through BBQ's.
Grade: A
Call my family at least 1x every two weeks
I did a better job of this in the beginning of the year than the end of the year, near the end of the year it started becoming more like 1x per month.
Grade: C-
Eat plant-based for two out of three meals per day
I did a great job of this on the weekdays, eating salads and smoothies for lunch. The days where this stopped was either on the weekends (which I'm okay with) or after a night of heavy drinking.
Grade: B
Meditate everyday
Haven't been great with this. I probably meditate once every 3 days. This occurs less and less the more and more I drink alcohol.
Grade: C
Be able to top turn, cutback, cross step and nose ride on a surfboard (new)
This wasn't a goal I set in the beginning of the year, but a goal I set for myself while I was in Hawaii. This goal ended up being more important to me than the others and I accomplished it.
Grade A
Learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
Just as I expected, I really enjoyed brazilian jiu jitsu. The sport has unexpectedly addressed a lot of my conflict-avoidant tendencies since I'm just constantly in conflict.
Grade: A
Learn how to freestyle sing play guitar at the same time
I didn't take any lessons, but I ended up buying a ukelele in Hawaii. As I started getting really into jamming, i started singing and I figured out how to do this.
Grade: A
Overall
Overall, I gave myself:
6 A's
2 B's
3 C's
1 D
1 F
I received an A on 46.5% of my goals. I should be targeting about 60%, so going into next year, I should set fewer goals and lower the bar just a bit.
Things to do more of
Make Stuff and Share it
Reflecting on my 2021, many meaningful relationships came from sharing my work online. Sharing my work, is like shooting a signal into the sky, pulling in everybody on the same wavelength as you.
Sharing my work online has opened me up to opportunities I had never expected.
Read more deeply
I gauge reading success not in the number of books I read, but the number of books I read that made a significant impact on my life.
In 2021, I noticed that I read significantly less and had fewer books make a significant impact on my life. I started replacing reading with Twitter, Youtube, Netflix which is a direction I'd like to stray away from.
Build strong community
Throwing the first BBQ in Hawaii was one of the most memorable, impactful experiences of the year. The BBQ was like a lighter, that jumpstarted my community in Hawaii. The intention here is to build a similar community out in NYC in 2022.
Sports
I get so much fulfillment from playing sports. I envision three sports for 2021:
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
Snowboarding
Surfing
I missed out on snowboarding last year since I was in Hawaii. This year, I'll make up for the lost snowboarding time.
Disciplined Spending
My shifting my approach to my personal finances to be more like a business. I earn income, have expenses and my goal will be to stay profitable each month. I realized my spending has started to get out of hand over the last couple months.
Things to do less of
Drinking Alcohol
Thinking forward to my goals next year, drinking alcohol is going to get in the way of those goals. When I first got to NYC, I was drinking a lot. Looking into 2022, I'll still go out and have fun, but I'll be tapering down the number of times I'm "going hard". Every time I've "gone hard" it's diminished the quality & effectiveness of my work for the following week.
Watching Youtube
As stated, this year my Youtube/social media consumption significantly increased while my reading consumption significantly decreased. While I don't intend to eliminate Youtube, I'll start tracking my Youtube usage in order to curb my consumption.
I also notice I tend to watch Youtube more when I'm hungover. Addressing the alcohol component should help.
Eating Out
I made this a goal last year to eat out less and I failed. By default, I see the process of preparing food just for me a waste of time. Time I could be using productively somewhere else. I’ve tried and failed in the past with meal prep. Air Fryers have been popular so this is something I’ll try as replacement.
Sugar
I started building a bad habit of eating candy and sugar. Luckily, because I exercise so much and don’t eat too much, I still have the same physique. However, I know that as I age, I won’t have as much leeway with my diet. However, I don’t want to completely restrict myself so my intention here is to limit sugar to one day per week.
Things to continue
Therapy
Every insight I had under the section "Most Valuable Learnings" can be attributed to therapy. Therapy has been a game changer for me in building my self-awareness and sparking many of these insights.
Things that used to cause anxiety, like texting, flaking no longer bother me anymore.
Highlights
Favorite Memory(s)
Hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro, Day 5 especially
Getting barreled in North Shore, Oahu
First BBQ in Hawaii
Brooklyn Mirage Nights, first few weekends in NYC
North Shore Trips
Puerto Rico Trip, surfing 3 times in a day
Miami Trip, especially the night we went out
Teaching my friends how to surf in Waikiki
Favorite Documentary: 14 Peaks on Netflix
Favorite Books:
Die with Zero by Bill Perkins
The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
Favorite Tweet:
Favorite Video
Favorite Podcast: HOW HUMANS SELECT & KEEP ROMANTIC PARTNERS IN SHORT & LONG TERM
If you’d like to read my 2022 goals, check it here.