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:

My dad was a lawyer until he was 37. At 37 he came home and said I’m going to be a doctor He resigned and went back to get undergrad prerequisites, then applied for med school at 38. Didn’t become a doctor until 46. As I approach 37 I realize how crazy that story actually is

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.

My Standards of Performance, My Guiding Principles

Source: Tampa Bay Times

Bill Walsh is one of the greatest football coaches of all time. When he joined the 49ers in 1979, they were the worst team in the league. Within two years, he rebuilt the franchise to win the Super Bowl. 

His core philosophy was his standards of performance. Standards of performance are a set of principles that guide his team’s behaviors and attitudes. If his team could execute against his principles effectively, then the score would take care of itself. He didn’t worry about winning, he worried about executing against his standards. If he did this, the wins will be there. You can see his standards of performance here. 

This got me thinking about my own standards of performance. By clarifying a set of standards/principles to measure myself against, this gives me a personal score as to how I’m performing in different areas of my life.

As long as I perform well against my standards, the outcomes (money, love, happiness, etc) will be there. I’ve added links to people/examples I’ve stolen these principles from:

Life

Excellence/Greatness

• Excellence comes from being good repeatedly, rather than being great once. See Steph Smith and Kevin Durant

• Never worry about competition. Set the bar so high for yourself so competition becomes irrelevant.

• Have unshakeable belief in yourself. Brainwash yourself into believing it's possible. See Rose Namajunas.

• Remove “impossible” from your vocabulary. Everything can be figured out. See Marie Forleo.

• Overcoming suffering callous’ the mind. Intentionally seek suffering. See David Goggins.

• Always have a challenge. When there is none, create a challenge for yourself. See Kobe Bryant.

• Better to strive for greatness and lose, than to not strive at all. See Israel Adesanya.

• 90% of success is quality of process. 10% is outcome, outcome is icing on the cake. See Bob Bowman.

• Always be learning or developing a skill. See Scott Young.

• Failure is just information. Absorb it and try again.

• Pressure situations are opportunities. Stay cool in the pocket and embrace the opportunity. See Tom Brady.

• Follow and cultivate irrational obsessions. Don't just do what's "trendy." See Naval Ravikant.

• Go all-in on your gifts.

• Jump into the deep end of the pool. Sink or Swim.

• Life defining education or experiences have an unlimited budget.

• Always capitalize on opportunities for positive serendipity. See Ben Casnocha.

Happiness

• Happiness does not come from achievement. Happiness comes from relationships.

• Fulfillment does not come from achievement. Fulfillment comes from giving and helping others.

Self-Expression

• Smile while you still have teeth. See Dan Hooker.

• Don't stop trolling.

• Be who you really are and turn it up 1000%. See Colby Covington.

• Regret comes from not doing something you had an instinct to do. Better to take action than do nothing at all.

• Intentionally embarrass yourself. Never allow fear of embarrassment or judgment to hinder my full self-expression. See Sara Blakely.

Relationships (General)

• Find genuine positive qualities in others and praise them for it.

• Always express appreciation to others.

• Give without expectation of anything in return. Never see a relationship as a transaction.

• Express your true, honest thoughts. Don’t just agree with everyone.

• Go first. Introduce yourself first. Start the first conversation. Invite them first. See Gabby Reece.

• Have the difficult conversation.

• If I have an instinct to meet someone, I must approach them within 5 seconds. See Mel Robbins.

• Even if I disagree, I must at least understand the perspective of the other person.

• Believe in others. Give them the confidence to take on the world. See Mark Jackson for Steph Curry.

• Help others realize their dreams.

Relationships (Dating/Romantic)

• Don’t get into a relationship due to FOMO or pressure from family/others. See Mark Manson.

• Resentment is like cancer. Address it early before it festers, grows. See Mark Manson.

• Accept the other person’s flaws/insecurities. Nobody is a perfect being.

• Have quality fights and arguments. See Mark Manson.

• Core values determine compatibility.

• Never ghost. See Logan Ury.

• No matter how great the other person is, if they aren’t excited/interested in you, you must let them go.

• Tell the truth. Or at least, don’t lie. See Jordan Peterson.

• Truly care about the other person’s happiness and fulfillment. Even if that means, you have to let them go.

• Find a best friend.

Health/Fitness

• Don't workout. Train.

• Compete.

• Eat mostly vegetables. Eat some meat. But enjoy yourself as well. See Tom Brady.

• Avoid sugar mostly.

• Train in some form everyday.

• Focus on being healthy over looking good. Looks will deteriorate.

• Be functional over being static. Better to have less muscle, but do more with it than to have more muscle but do little with it.

• Take periodic breaks from alcohol.

• Meditate or do breathwork. See Wim Hof.

• By default you’re only operating at 40%. You have so much more in you.

Career

• Cultivate your competitive advantage by developing skills that are difficult for others but easy for you. See Erik Torenberg.

• Every project I take on must be done with excellence and craftsmanship. Therefore, I cannot take on too many projects. See Cal Newport.

• Learn to sell. Learn to build. Knowing both will make you lethal. See Naval Ravikant.

• Understand the problem first. Build the solution second.

• Set a ridiculously high aspirational hourly rate, build your life/career around this hourly rate. See Naval Ravikant.

• Develop specific knowledge. Become the only person that can do what you do. See Naval Ravikant.

• Always be soliciting feedback. Always be giving feedback. See Reed Hastings.

• Embody the entrepreneurial spirit, whether it's within a large company or side projects.

• Amplify your strengths and shore up your weakness'.

• Be generous sharing/teaching knowledge to others.

• Over-communicate.

• Under-promise. Over-deliver.

• Iteratively deliver value, rather than deliver value all at once.

• Do things that compound. See Naval Ravikant.

• Continuously keep pulse on your market value.

• Start with the end in mind. Know exactly what you want to get out of a job/experience. - Drunk guy at a party

• There’s a cap on trading time for money. Find opportunities to scale impact, without the cap of time. See Naval Ravikant.

• Specific knowledge combined with leverage, will get you what you deserve. - Naval

• The best brand is being yourself. See Nate Diaz.

• 100% completion is better than 5 80% completions.

• Nothing is actually impossible, if we had unlimited resources.

By no means am I living all of these. These principles represent my northstar in becoming the person I want to be. I’ll continue to update this list with new standards/principles as I develop myself.

To implement everything, I will be grading myself across these principles in my yearly and mid-year reviews. Each review, I’ll focus on a few principles to develop.

I slept homeless for a night, so I created a dance video.

In 2014, the irresponsible, 21-year old version of myself had to sleep homeless for a night, in the dark, chilly 30 degree air of Maastricht, Netherlands. Graduating college jobless gnawed on my conscience. Usually, I could use party-ing to escape feelings of embarrassment, but in the dark, cool Dutch night, my thoughts had nowhere to be but front and center. Perfect.

As negative thoughts chained out of control, a hill-billy looking man, with jagged teeth sits next to me. His putrid clothes reeked. He was definitely homeless. Filtered through my dark thoughts, my fist clenches, immediately ready to defend myself. Then he.....

Simply asks: "where can I find food?" I told him I didn't know and I was from California. A smile creeps over his face. "Caaaleeefooorrnniuh, I LOVE caleforniuh. Do you know NWA?" He starts singing/rapping "Fck the Police. Despite his terrible singing, each note is like an axe, breaking the heavy chain of negativity flooding my mind. I start rapping with him.

After 20 minutes, he ventures to go find food. I was riding a wave of a euphoric WTF. Just as the homeless man turned my own darkness into gold, I wanted to turn the darkness of the night into a memory of gold. I had my camera. I had dance moves. So I decided to dance around town and make a video of it.

I ignore 99% of these messages. Here’s why.

I ignore 99% of these messages. Here’s why. 

Hi I'm a recent graduate from ____. Can we chat about your experience at ____?

I ignore 99% of these messages on LinkedIn. Here’s why.

Finding a job and dating are like close, family cousins. The common genes? Rejection and validation. Rejection is like a heavy-weight boxer, constantly jabbing blows at our emotions and resilience. Validation is like a water pump, pumping happy chemicals into your bloodstreams. We might be furiously refreshing our emails to see if we got the offer, or constantly glancing at our phones to see if that person texted us back, only to get jabbed with a rejection. Or, we might get that wonderful phone call, pumping happy chemicals into our bloodstream. 

First dates and phone screens are checks for red flags. Second dates and technical screens give us a deeper feel for the other person’s skillset. The onsite is…… I won’t go that far with this analogy. Although, it’d be hilarious if we were all assigned “homework assignments” after the second date.

For each job posting, company’s get hundreds of applicants. For females, dating apps can become overwhelming, especially when their inbox looks like this:

Now, since I have worked for multiple “big tech companies”, I feel like a female on dating apps. Here’s what my inbox looks like: 

If I broke this message into a formula, this is what it’d look like: 

Hi, I'm currently a student or employed at XXXX. I saw you were working at [INSERT SOME BIG TECH COMPANY] and am very interested in this position and was hoping to chat about your experience.

Click. Delete. Move on with my life. Let’s dissect why I don’t respond to these messages. 

Noise

Someone might write me a stellar message. But because it’s on LinkedIn, this dramatically increases the likelihood I gloss over the message. It’s easy to message someone on LinkedIn, which is why everyone does it. When anything in life is easy, more people will do it, therefore, making it difficult to stand out. Dating apps are easy, so it’s easy to get lost in a sea of dudes. Applying through job boards is easy, so it’s easy for you resume to get lost. 

If you want to stand out in a sea of noise, do the harder thing. The harder thing means less noise which means, less competition. The harder thing in this case is finding my email address and sending me a high-quality, cold e-mail. Literally, no one emails me and my email is smack in the middle of my LinkedIn profile. 

Here’s an example of a cold e-mail a recruiter told me “was the best she’s ever gotten”:

Specificity & Investment

Another reason why I won’t respond to these messages is lack of specificity. If there’s one king rule for sending messages on the internet, it’s be specific. Returning to the previous Tinder inbox, you’ll see nearly every single message in that screenshot is a vague “Hello” or “How Are You.” 

Specific questions lead to specific answers. The only way to ask specific questions is through research. Research shows that the other person has invested time and effort into crafting the message. Here’s an example of an e-mail I sent someone: 

To be fair, when I was in college, I had no clue what I was doing. Like an F-14 fighter jet, I’d carpet bomb messages & resumes to as many places as I could, hoping for a hit. As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve realized depth reaps greater returns that going broad. Being specific reaps greater returns than being general. It’s the best way to jump right out of the sea of noise.