Grandma's Death, Crushing the Half Marathon, Q3 Goals

July 23, 2024 by Jeffrey Li

In January 2024, I went snowboarding in Niseko, Japan. Flying back to NYC was a looonnggg flight, so it 100% made sense to make a pit stop: Honolulu, Hawaii. More importantly, I got to spend time with my grandmother.

She was 98. We couldn’t do much, but we did the simple things. We ate chinese food. We watched TV. We had simple conversations. When I left to head back to NYC, I gave her a kiss on the cheek and she’d say in chinese: “such a good boy.”

In May 2024, she had a heart attack one day after mother’s day. I miss you Grandma.

Q2 Review

Become as clean as my girlfriend.

I’ve noticed myself adopting small habits, such as putting my clothes away right away, wiping the tables when Ie’m finished. I still think there’s room for me to improve my cleanliness, but it’s trending in the right direction. And when I do leave things out, she’ll remind me.

Build an initial draft of a financial/investment plan for my dream life (Shaping).

Here were the results of the initial financial plan I set up for myself. I’d target a $2.5 million in net worth as minimum net worth for “retiring” myself. $5 million is the target for myself and spouse. $10 million minimum for an entire family and two kids. If we wanted to live large (fat fire), we’d likely need more than that.

Of course this is dependent on inflation, the period of time and a number of other factors. However, this gives me a good proxy to aim for, which is all I need. I’ve outlined three paths to retiring early:

Earn at least $1 million per year through job promotion. This would likely take another 5 to 7 years.
Earn at least $10 million through a one-time liquidity event. This would likely take 7 to 10 years to accomplish.
Earn at least $400 to $500k in net income on minimal working hours through a lifestyle business. Looking at others, this took them ranging from 3 years to 10 years.

The takeaway here is that it’d be a good idea to do some research into the different paths, their pros and cons, and what’s required to get there.

[Career]—Build an initial development plan for myself (Shaping). There are too many goals, so this one is slotted for this quarter as the financial/investment plan is a good context for my personal development plan.

[Health] - Brooklyn Half-Marathon Prep - Run an 8:00 minute mile. I crushed this goal as I paced at 7:30 for the half-marathon, totaling a time of 1:39. This project was a massive success and I can attribute it to a few things.

Pre-Determined, Doable Schedule: I use intervals.icu to track my workout performance. And my coach basically added my workouts into this app. Each workout was scheduled for the week so I wasted no time “deciding” whether I should workout or not.
Progression: Seeing myself progress is a self-reinforcing motivation loop. The great thing about running as a sport, is its clear whether you’re improving or not.
Performance: Since I had actually signed up for a half-marathon, there was a “final performance.” I basically had to perform on a larger stage, which pushed me to execute my plan effectively.

Q3 Goals

Find a new place to live in NYC. This is the most important as any new apartment I move to is going to dictate my lifestyle in NYC. A new apartment is going to subconsciously influence how I behave, my habits and my schedule. I also didn’t renew my lease, so I’ll be homeless if I don’t get this done.

Career Decisioning Research Post. Given the paths I outlined, I’ll need to research the different paths, read through examples, the pros and cons, and evaluate my own strengths/weaknesses. If I spend more time thinking about this upfront, I can go into the decision with full conviction that it’s the right one. Especially if some of these paths will take multiple years, it’s probably worth the three month investment to think through whether it’s the right path for me.

Reset my habits by beginning daily meditation. Whenever I meditate consistently, I scroll on my phone less, more conscious of what I eat, more present with others. Meditation is an anchor habit that makes me more aware of my behavior throughout the day.

Moving to a new environment is also an opportunity to reset habits. So it makes sense to focus on meditating consistently, as it will improve everything else.

Complete Eight Dates. I’ve finished four out of eight dates with my girlfriend. This book has been great for prompting us to talk about important issues and for helping us learn more about each other. It’ll be key for us to talk through these important issues sooner, rather than later, to help move our relationship forward.

Pursuing Mastery (2024 Q1 Review)

April 01, 2024 by Jeffrey Li

Imagine yourself sitting on a canoe in the middle of the ocean. You feel a slight tint of wind, grazing the skin hairs on your cheek. As you stare out into the large, blue abyss, you can see the force of the current gently rock the side of your canoe, as the current pushes you north.

The question then becomes, do you let the ocean just keep pushing you north? Or do you grab the oar, stick it in the water, and decide where you want to go?

If we imagine life as the ocean, most people don’t decide where they want to go. They let life push them in whichever direction it wants to go. I want to decide where I go. My annual reviews serve that purpose. But to make sure I’m on track, I’m experimenting writing quarterly reviews as well.

Personal Learnings

Achieving high performance in anything requires minimum 6 to 12 months of dedicated effort. A while back, my performance coach asked me: “Have I ever mastered anything?” No. My problem wasn't whether I was dedicated enough. It was that I was interested in too many things and did them all at the same time. I have improved here. This year, I focused exclusively on snowboarding, then running, then surfing (rather than multiple in parallel).

But it’s not quite there. To fully maximize performance, I can only pick one thing for the whole year. That’s it, which brings me to the second learning…..

I probably shouldn’t live in NYC. I want to maximize my performance in surfing. In order to do that, I need to live near a location with consistent and quality waves to practice. In NYC, it’s very difficult to become a better surfer (or snowboarder) and this kills me inside. Doesn’t mean I’m moving but it just means NYC is not the long term fit for me.

Don’t write to build an audience. Write for myself. Many years ago, I wanted to be a writer. It didn’t work, because I spent too much time thinking about how to build an audience. Kinda like how I’m doing with this quarterly review, I should not write for an audience. I should use writing as a tool for myself. That’s what going to keep me writing more often.

2024 Objectives

A slight tweak I made to my annual goals is to stop setting goals and to start setting high-level objectives. Objectives are better because they’re more general and they give me flexibility into the concrete outcomes I want to achieve, while still providing me direction. The key is to limit this to 4 to 5, so it’s easy to memorize.

My 2024 objectives are:

[Career] - Crack the code at Netflix
[Relationships] - Build and learn how to create a thriving romantic relationship
[Health] - Become a Renaissance Athlete
[Finances] - Build a Financial/Investment Plan for my Dream Life
[Misogi] - Complete a 5-Day Water Fast

2024 - Q2 Goals

There are two phases toward achieving goals: shaping vs. execution. Most people will decide on a goal and immediately start executing. The typical process people will take is “I want to learn Spanish.” Then, they sign up for duolingo and just start playing with the app. They’ll have an initial burst of motivation for a few weeks, and then as life comes along, their motivation keeps dwindling until it hits zero.

I’ve done this countless amount of times, which is why shaping the goals are so important. The goal in shaping is to define the goal and the plan. It typically involves gathering information, researching the best paths to achieving the goal and playing with different formulations of the goal until you arrive at a plan you feel good about, before you begin executing. Without this, you likely will lose motivation OR set the wrong goal (which I’ve done too many times).

An execution goal is one where you already have the plan and you just need to execute on the plan. For example, if I’m learning spanish and my plan is to practice duolingo 3x per week, all I need to do is execute on the plan to know if I’m successful. I’m not spending any mental effort to update the goal, since I did that in the shaping phase.

From my own experience, I only have room for the following:

2 execution-based goal (in different life areas)
2 shaping-based goals (in different life areas)

[Relationship] - Become as clean as my girlfriend (execution).

I’m not a complete mess, but my girlfriend definitely has a higher bar for cleanliness. It’s an area I do feel like I’ve improved in over the years, but I want to use this as a forcing function for me to improve in this area. My belief is that whenever I see someone operating at a higher level in any area, I should raise my level to match theirs. Not bring down their level to match mine.

[Finances] - Build an initial draft of a financial/investment plan for my dream life (Shaping). Right now, I just have a bunch of cash/capital accumulating in my bank account. The money is not intended to be used for anything. Money should not be an end, it should be a means to an end to realizing my dream life. So the key steps are to (1) define what that dream life is and (2) build out the financial plan to realize that dream.

[Career] - Build an initial development plan for myself (Shaping). My thinking here is that first, I need to think through the direction I want to take my career. This is tied to the dream life exercise & financial plan, as it’ll tell me how much more I need to earn and give me a why behind earning more. Then, given the dream life I want to build, what direction would I need to take my career?

[Health] - Brooklyn Half-Marathon Prep. The goal for this is still TBD, depending on the results of my mile test. But since I signed up for this, this’ll be an easy for forcing function for cardio/health.

Key Dates/Upcoming Plans

Wedding in Cabo [April 20]

Friends Wedding in Cabo

Brooklyn Half-Marathon [May 18]

For the next six weeks, I’ll be in NYC prepping for the Brooklyn Half-Marathon. As for the goal, it’s TBD, as I’ll be taking a baseline mile test to see where I’m at on a cardiovascular level.

El Salvador Surf Trip [May 19 to May 24]

This will be a mostly guys surf trip but now that winter season is over, we’re shifting to surf season! This will likely be a five-day trip where I work as well.

California <> Hawaii Surf Trip [End of June/July]

I have a wedding in July in California and I want to take my girlfriend around Hawaii & SoCal. I’ll be planning to venture through both SoCal, NorCal and Hawaii.

End-of-Year Asia Trip [December/January]

Toward the end of the year, the initial plan is to hit Niseko, Japan for more snowboarding. Maybe visit China, TBD on the details.

A Late 2023 Year in Review

March 25, 2024 by Jeffrey Li

It’s the end of Q1-2024 and I’m finally posting my 2023 Year-In-Review. I’m late but within the swirl of all my travels, I’m finally able to squeeze in some time to write this out.

In 2021, I read a book called The Amazing Development of Man. It’s actually a dating advice book for women. The book highlights multiple stages of life men go through, offering advice on how a woman should approach a man in certain stages. The dating stuff was less relevant to me. BUT, I was searching for a framework to understand male development, and i found it right here.

The book outlines four phases: The Paige (aka “pre-pubescent boy”), The Knight (aka Party Boy, Explorer), the Prince (the builder) and the King (sharing wisdom). The Knight and Prince were most relevant. A knight (typically in his 20’s) has an intense desire for adventure, exploration and fun. A Prince has an intense desire to start building his kingdom.

When I think back to my 20’s, getting black out drunk in 30 degree weather and waking up in jail, listening to the symphonic snoring inside a dusty hostel room, raving till I was cracked out at the light of dawn. Yes, I was definitely in my knight phase.

Toward my late 20’s, I started questioning that life. Shallowness didn’t fulfill me, depth did. I wanted to invest deeper in my relationships rather than make new ones. I wanted to double down and become world-class at whatever I did.

A knight dabbles. A prince commits. Fulfillment follows an exponential curve, but the returns only come from consistent effort:

As I evolve, how do I build that kingdom? What does it mean to commit? That’s what I’ll attempt to answer in this review.

2023 Highlights

SLC Ski House

In January, I spent 6 weeks in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’ve already noticed the pattern in my favorite experience: friends & sports. SLC was all about friends & sports. We’d all work during the week. On weekends, we’d ski the powdery bowls of Snowbird. All equally smart, ambitious people, bonding over the love of skiing/snowboarding.

El Salvador Surf Trip

Similar to the ski house, this trip had the same formula: friends & sports. We’ve also made this a yearly ritual where the guys would get together and go surf somewhere. We signed up for coaching and we all definitely got significantly better at surfing:

Leaving Spotify to Netflix and seeing the impact I made on others.

In July, I switched my job from Spotify to Netflix. When I left, my team was devastated. One particular direct report I had was distraught. He had joined my team as a new Data Scientist. Over the course of two years, I’d groomed him into a Top Performer. Me leaving was a huge blow for him.

But I left feeling full. The only thing better than becoming great myself, is helping others become great. That’s why I love to teach. The purpose of becoming better myself, is to help others become better, and hopefully that spreads, and EVERYBODY levels up.

Key Lessons Learned

My Happiness formula = Sports + Friends.

Every year I write this review, my highlights always consist of some type of physical activity and friends. If we sprinkle on some “skill development” that’s the perfect combo for me.

Pursue Growth Areas Sequentially.

In the Big 5 personality test, I scored very high on “open to new experience.” I’m always interested in trying something at least once. This natural curiosity toward life, allows me to build an interesting life. However, this tendency also causes me to want to say yes to everything.

The biggest mistake I made in 2023, is saying yes to too many things. I said yes to BJJ, Surfing and Snowboarding, all concurrently. I said yes to building an ML course business. I said yes to building yourmove.ai. I felt friction, because I care a lot about being excellent at what I do. However, it’s difficult to be excellent, when I’m pursuing too many things.

While I believe its possible to do all of these things, I don’t believe it’s possible to do all of these things at the same time while still doing them all well. I do believe I can maintain areas of my life while I pursue growth in others. However, the key, is I only pursue growth areas one at a time.

Somebody is always defining my life. I need to be the one to do it.

The NYC social vortex, gobbles up people’s calendars with plans, parties & social events. It’s incredible. Sweaty NYC summers fill your afternoons with sunny park days, while parties fill up your summer nights.

I get why people say NYC is the greatest city on earth. But living in NYC, means I don’t spend time thinking about my life, as my life is swept up by social plans. Around September of this year, I felt like I no longer had control of my life. I started to feel like my life was controlled by others’ invitations to things. Others’ ideas on what we should do. I no longer had control over my time.

And the key to being intentional with my life, rather than reactive, is to spend time thinking, reflecting about my life. What do I actually want to do? What would make me feel fulfilled? Who do I enjoy spending my time with? Actually spending time to sit down and think, is what allows me to grab my life and steer it in the direction I want.

Priorities in 2023

A key learning: It’s hard to build a business, be good at your job, have great relationships and intense hobbies at the same time. There are a few key insights I’ve learned while trying to juggle these areas:

Don’t try to juggle this. Pick fewer things and focus more.
But… if I do…..at work, the key unlock is I need to get to a point where I can deliver immense value with minimal effort. Most people will deliver immense value but with significantly more effort. The key to delivering immense value with minimal effort is to join a team lacking in the exact skill you’re strong at. It’s probably not hard to do something simple.
It’s easier if I pick one thing in each bucket: career, relationships, fitness. I SHOULD NOT do more than one in one of those buckets.
Dating requires A TON of mental effort & energy. A relationship requires significantly less. Therefore, it really depends on the stage I’m in.

Life Area Review

Fitness

When thinking about this bucket, there are two pieces:

Longevity: I want to be able to play with my kids and play sports when I’m old.
Athletic Performance: I want to be able to perform athletically to the best of my ability.

When thinking about longevity, there are basically three workouts needed:

3x to 4x - Zone 2 Cardio Workouts
3x - Strength
1x - High Intensity

I’ve loved sports since I was a kid. But I get bored if I’m not “working on something.” For the upcoming winter season, I’ve already committed to snowboarding. Learning from last year, I’m going to maintain focus and exclusively focus on snowboarding.

For 2023, I integrated running significantly more into my life. I was also practicing BJJ for most of the year. I felt like I stayed pretty healthy through the year. I did decently on the longevity piece. However, athletic performance suffered because I lacked focus. I was not able to perform at a high level.

Dating/Romantic

For the last 4 years or so I told myself I was ready to find marriage, but I don’t think I truly wanted it. I told myself I wanted it before, but I wasn’t willing to pay the price. I wasn’t willing to spend the time, energy to cultivate the relationship. I always had a trip planned somewhere. I said yes to side-business opportunities. I said yes to new hobbies. I wanted to “enjoy NYC” or I was leaving a place soon whenever someone wanted it to go deeper.

I know myself. When something is important enough, I’ll find a way to make it happen. Everything great in life comes at a price and usually when I don’t meet a goal, it’s because I wasn’t willing to pay the price.

My thinking here shifted from how do I improve my dating life? To how do I find someone that’ll make me happy in the long run? The questions differ, in that I start thinking about value alignment compared to dating abundance. A great dating life is a life filled with dates with attractive people that make you look cool. But being happy in the long run, means less abundance, more focus and doubling down. Completely different questions. On a long enough time scale, superficial things wash away, only leaving your principles & core values.

[2024 EDIT] - While I’ll keep the details private, I have a new girlfriend!

Friends

My level of happiness is directly determined by the quality of my relationships, both romantic and friendships. What I love about NYC is it’s SO easy to make friends. Since the city is so dense, serendipitous connections & parties occur all the time. And especially during the summer, where social events are filling up every hour of your calendar.

But it’s not about just making friends. It’s about building a community. In NYC, I found run club, which became a base for many of my new friends in NYC. The main thing missing, when I did BJJ, was that I never felt like I was part of a community at my gym.

I’ve noticed the keys to building a strong community are:

Recurring, Standing Hangout: It needs to be a hangout that occurs regularly, without any planning. It typically takes multiple hangouts for people to build familiarity with each other.
Activity/Interest-Based: It needs to center around an interest or activity that can easily bond everyone. If there’s a common interest, then conversations are easy.
Hosting/Invitations: The key to solidifying a community, is to then host or invite people to do things, outside of the recurring hangout. It could range from throwing a party, but to as small as just inviting someone to eat with you.

All my communities (surfing, snowboarding, running) had all three of these elements.

Career

I see each company as a puzzle. The puzzle has differing levels of difficulty. And there typically is a “key to the puzzle” that unleashes your success. The puzzle is defined by the company’s values, the people you’re surrounded by, the problems you face. On my team at Spotify, I felt like I solved the puzzle and unlocked the “formula for success.” However, it took me about 9 months to figure it out.

So far, what I’ve learned about “playing the game well” are:

Own critical tools for the business. It’s very difficult to get fired or laid off if I own them.
Be great at a valuable skill my team isn’t good at. Become the team expert on X.
Constantly ask myself, if I left the company, what would the team lose?
Be the one to build zero to 1, because you get most of the credit.

What I’ve noticed from people playing the game well at netflix are:

They not only see the problem they’re asked to solve, but they see a larger, more impactful problem to be solved, then solve it.
Everyone is faster AND more thorough with analysis & problems. Teams really value thoughtfulness.
Opinions/thoughts that are well thought out.
The caliber of talent is higher, so it’s more difficult to standout.

I’ve yet to crack the code at Netflix, but my larger goal is to crack the code in 2024.

Personal Finances

As I stockpile cash while working at Netflix, it’ll be important for me to start thinking about where this cash will go. I have vague notions about where it’ll go, but they’re not as intentional as I want them to be.

When I think about it, there are really only a few large expenses:

Home
Wedding
Kids
Work Sabbatical

Key for me is to deliberate decide where my cash is going to go and set up more of a concrete plan on when I should be selling certain investments to enable these large purchases. So the goal here is to research and build a concrete plan with my personal finances.

2024 Goals

Goal - Complete clean frontside and backside 360s on a snowboard: As of 2024, I did not hit this, as I had gotten injured during the season.

Goal - Crack the code at Netflix: At Spotify, I felt like I cracked the code. At Netflix, I feel as though I’m starting to crack the code on making substantial impact at the company.

Goal - Build and learn how to create a thriving romantic relationship: With my girlfriend, building a thriving relationship where both of us are happy, thriving and fulfilled together.

Goal - Become the Renaissance Athlete: For me, the ultimate athlete is someone who’s great at multiple sports, has strength and endurance. Inspired by Physical 100, having strong, functional, all around abilities makes me feel like the ultimate superhero.

Goal - Build a Financial/Investment Plan for my Dream Life: I have a sense of what my dream life looks like. The purpose of making money is to use that money to build my dream life and in order to build that dream life, I need a plan. How much cash do I need saved for a down payment on my dream home? Where do I want to have this dream home? How much money do I need to have certain experiences?

Misogi - Complete a 5-Day Water Fast

Things to Learn

Environment

I love surfing & snowboarding. To do these sports, requires me to be outside, in the ocean and in the mountains. It’s contingent on the environment being there to allow me to do the things I love. For a good chunk of my life, I’ve always had some awareness of environment impact but I had never dove in and actually learned about it.

It’s a politically charged topic as well so this would also give me an opportunity to learn about both sides & perspectives of the issue, to really develop my own opinion on these issues.

Ideally, the outcome from learning about this, is I make informed lifestyle changes that can help support the cause.

Fasting

Ideally, the outcome from learning about this, is I make informed lifestyle changes that can help support the cause.

What Makes a Successful Long Term Relationship

When I was in my early 20’s, I put in A TON of effort in figuring out “how to attract women.” And the question made sense at the time, as it forced me to push my comfort zone, figure out what I liked and disliked and pushed me to become a better person.

Now, it’s no longer “how do I attract women” but rather, how do I pick the right one? How do I pick the one that’ll maximize my long term happiness? And when I do pick the right one, how do I make sure it's successful?

I’ve spent hundreds of hours learning random skills like memorizing cards, reading hundreds of books but I’d barely spent any time actually learning about what makes a successful long term relationship. But it’s literally the single most important decision in our lives and it deserves its due effort.

What this means is I delve into the latest research, books around what makes a successful relationship. How do I pick the right one that maximizes long term happiness? What actually matters? What doesn’t matter?

Things to Think About

Where should I live?

Honestly, it kills me that I can’t grind hard on getting better at surfing. It’s a result of me living in NYC, so naturally, I start to question whether I should live in NYC. When I thought about it, I need three things in the city I live in:

Sports: The city should have the sports I love (surfing, snowboarding). NYC does not have this.
Community: I need to have a community of some sorts to continue to be happy (see above). NYC is excellent for this.
Ambition: The city needs to have people who have big goals, growth mindset and would constantly push my thinking.

Throughout my life, I had never actually given serious thought to the city I wanted to live in. Partially, it’s because I didn’t have the flexibility, I had to go where the job would take me. The other reason is I just didn’t have the self-awareness and clarity around my values to be able to articulate that.

2022 Annual Review

January 04, 2023 by Jeffrey Li

In 2021, I stepped into my “prime.” I felt happier than ever. I was a better surfer than ever. Made more money than ever before. Made a ton of new friends. I was rolling on all cylinders.

But like an annoying alarm clock, 2022 shocked me awake from my dream and back into reality. But that’s life. Like stocks, our lives don’t always live in a bull market. We have great runs, crumble back to earth, recover and go again.

Pivotal Moments

Collarbone Injury

I landed at 1am, slept 2 hours, hopped into the car at 4am for the 2 hours drive to Copper Mountain. Mixing these two hours of sleep with a few shots of liquid courage, becomes a recipe for feeling invincible.

As I hopped off the ski lift, carving through the soft, Colorado snow, a feeling of invincibility swept through the veins of my body, suffocating any fear that might crop up. I was with a new group of friends. So like a high school freshman with a chip on his shoulder, I wanted to prove how “good” I was at snowboarding. Mix this with some liquid courage, it was the perfect recipe for me to push myself.

I started to slide heel to toe, toe to heel, heel to toe, toe to heel, until I was rhythmically pushing a 360 butter. Like a 2013 EDM song, the rhythm moved faster, faster until……..BAM. I didn’t know what the f*ck happened to me, but I stood up. I couldn’t lift my right arm. Shit.

I carved down the slopes. My friend sees me carve down and its clear I’m not okay. I walk to the ER, get an X-ray and this is what I see:

Complete fracture of my clavicle. I ended up just chilling at the ski lodge for the rest of the day, wrestling with the emotion of a broken clavicle.

A week later, I was in surgery:

But you know, this moment ultimately made me a bette person……..F*ck that. As much as I want to say breaking my collarbone made me a “better person”, it didn’t. An injury is like running Slack on your computer. It just consumes all your computer RAM and makes your software slow as fck. Valuable RAM you could dedicate to other things.

I can’t say I’m a “better person” from the injury, but it did teach me an important lesson. Literally, nothing matters if my health isn’t there. Nothing. Relationships. Money. Success. They all go to zero without my health.

Quitting Alcohol

NYC Summer seduced me into the beautiful world of liquor and partying. Late nights dancing away at to electronic music at Brooklyn Mirage. Drinking cocktails at the Surf Lodge in the Hamptons. Lit BBQ’s at Brooklyn Bridge Park. 4am karaoke nights in Koreatown. Incredible memories I don’t regret.

When I first move somewhere new (college, SF, Europe etc), I always party a lot initially, but then stop. In 2018 and 2019, my friends knew me as the guy who barely drank. The challenge with NYC, is NYC life is centered around drinking. Without strong boundaries, one drink always turns into five.

I set a lot of goals for 2022. Alcohol got in the way. Whenever I partied, I’d piss away my entire next day watching youtube videos. I’d operate at a perpetual 60% through the week when I partied. I’d flush my discipline down the drain. I wouldn’t feel 100% until next Wed/Thurs. By then, I was already prepping for the next party.

In college, I felt like I could only express myself through alcohol. Now, I didn’t need alcohol to be social. I didn’t get more girls drinking alcohol. I didn’t feel good from being drunk either.

The cons significantly outweighed the pros, so I decided after my 30th birthday, I was done with alcohol for the rest of the year.

My biggest fear, was that I’d lose friends and I’d stop being invited to things. This was far from reality. I ended up making more friends. All my friends literally didn’t care at all whether I drank or not.

I’m gonna bring alcohol back at some point. Binge drinking has no place in my life anymore. Only exception(s) I’ll allow right now: friend’s weddings and MAYBE trips/vacations.

ML Course (Soft) Launch

The main goal I felt behind on due to drinking, was building my ML course and a big win was shipping this course. I guess I can call myself an “entrepreneur” now.

I formed an LLC in the beginning of the year and began working with my business partner to develop two courses for 365 data science. The first one, the Machine Learning Process A to Z is live! This was the first time I made a decent sum of money outside of my normal job.

The course was WAYY more effort than I expected, especially since I was working on this part time. We still have a lot more work to do, but I need to at least give myself a small pat for shipping this:

Energizing Moments

Building yourmove.ai

Web3 was hot in 2021. I tried to get into it, but I wasn’t interested. When generative AI got hot in 2022, I also wasn’t interested. But once I viscerally saw how generative AI could solve my problem(s), I became hooked. The problem? Dating.

A friend connected me with another friend, who’s building yourmove.ai. I built a tangential project where I automated tinder using convolutional neural networks. I decided to help him build his product out further:

A good heuristic to know whether a project or a job is my “passion” is if I didn’t get paid to do this, would I keep doing this? For most people, the answer is no.

I don’t get paid to work on yourmove.ai but I feel drawn to work on it in my free time, which passes this heuristic. But why do I feel drawn to certain projects and not others? My recipe for successful projects are:

Child-Driven: The project needs to speak to my inner 7-year old. If I showed this project to the 7 year old version of myself, would he be excited?
Skill Development: The project must improve my skillset in a domain.
Creation: The project must force me to create something in some form that can be shared with another person.

Sports

When I think back to my childhood, sports was the thing I truly loved as a kid. I note this down every year. Sports like Surfing, Snowboarding and now, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu + Running. Sports will always be a part of my life, no matter what. I’m happiest when I have a sport I can grind on.

Biggest Improvements

Leadership

I’m not a natural born leader. I had to learn how to be a leader. If I could point to one skill I improved the most at in 2022, it’s leadership. Whether it’s leading a cross-functional work project, or planning a friends trip, I now relish the opportunity to do this.

My philosophy of leadership is not to be the domineering, commander-in-chief type of leader. I see my job, as serving the team, to the best of my ability, in order to accomplish our goal or mission. Whether that means leading from the front and commanding everyone, or if that means just removing roadblocks/getting out of the way or coaching someone’s skillset. Every team or group is different and will need something different.

Social Skills

My goal of attending 1 event per week dramatically upleveled my social skills. I feel super comfortable in all social environments and feel confident I can make friends with a bunch of strangers. I want to continue attending 1 event per week in 2023.

Deep Relationships

Success in friendship is not about making as many friends as possible. It’s about building, deep lifelong friendships. The friendships that last a lifetime. The only way to do that, is depth. The benefit of quitting alcohol, was that it forced me to build my relationships not around alcohol, but other activities too. Bonding comes from experiencing a wider array of emotions with someone. Alcohol can accomplish this but I’m not willing to pay the price. But there are other ways to experience these emotions: extreme adventures, exercise, deep conversations, vulnerability.

Expressing my Feelings

In the past, when I needed to express how I’d feel, it’d take me at least a few minutes to put words to those feelings. From going to therapy every week, for the last year, those few minutes have become a few seconds. As a side effect, it’s made my writing a lot better!

Biggest Areas to Improve

Diffused Focus

I’m interested in A TON of things. My natural instinct is “yes, yes, yes, gimme.” This instinct results in my focus diffused across too many projects & hobbies. Right now, it’s diffused across BJJ, ML Course, yourmove.ai, career, running. It’s too much. My downfall, will be being focused on too many things. The signal, is when I start feeling overwhelmed and scattered.

On the flip side, I have been TOO focused at other points of my life, where I became obsessed with a singular focus, ignoring other areas of my life. How do I stay focused while not dropping the ball in other areas?

My theory, is that because humans have a working memory of four items, we should not have more than four focus areas at the same time. And even when we do have four focus areas, they need to have a priority. If I have too many disparate threads, I’ll either need to combine threads or drop them.

Takeaway: For 2023, focus on a fewer number of goals.

Friend Diversity

The typical profile of my friends is an asian male working in tech. While I love my friends, I feel that being friends with only one type of person, limits my worldview. I’m less in tune with the problems of the world, I’m more in tune with the problems of this profile. The challenge here, is that it’s easier to connect with this profile since that’s what I am. While I want to continue making friends in general, I also want to intentionally expose myself to people very different from myself.

2022 Grades

Become a two stripe white belt in Jiu Jitsu (outcome) - N/A

This goal is no longer relevant. My new BJJ gym doesn’t do “stripes”, however, I did attend class for about 5 months.

Maintain 10 to 12% Body Fat (outcome) C-

Last time I checked, I landed at around 14%. Did not achieve this but I wouldn’t give myself a complete F. This goal also isn’t well-written as what does it mean to “maintain”? Also, why do I want 10 to 12% bodyfat? The reason why I want 10 to 12% body fat is to look good, which is fine. However, I need to do some more thinking on why I want to look good. If looking good was the goal, I’d still be OK here.

Continue improving on emotional health - A

This has been successful. Whenever I was in NYC, I went to therapy every week for the purpose of personal development. Verbalizing my specific feelings every week has not only made me more aware of them, but also, made me a better writer, as I can more vividly describe how I was feeling at a specific moment.

In the next year, I’m going to consider looking for a new therapist, as I do feel like I’ve plateaued in my development here.

Grow my email list to 1000 subscribers (outcome) - F

Did not achieve this at all. The reason why I didn’t achieve this was because the ML course I was working on ended up requiring significantly more effort from me. Every year, I put on a goal for content creation and it’s something I don’t end up doing, which ultimately means, I don’t actually care enough about this to make it a priority. Next year, I’m not going to have any goal here.

Takeaway: Stop setting content goals. It isn’t intrinsically important enough to me.

Earn at least $3000/month in side MRR (outcome) - B

Didn’t hit this number exactly, but I give myself a B because I did end up earning close to $20k outside of my 9 to 5 job with the launch of the ML course. This equates to around $1.6K per month outside of work which isn’t bad at all. $3000/month was a stretch goal when I set it.

Get promoted - A

I achieved this in the middle of 2022. To be honest, this as an easy goal as I already had known that I was probably going to get it. I was already doing the job and my team needed a manager.

Build 5 deep, new, meaningful friendships (outcome) - A

I probably developed 3/5. However, I give this an A mainly because I feel like these new relationships are great. Better to go deeper in a few than to have too many, otherwise, it makes it difficult to make a relationship “deep.”

Find a romantic partner that I can "move to the next stage" - C-

I went on a lot of dates, but I did not really achieve this. I found that I met many people “willing to go to the next stage” but I was not willing. I think 2023 requires a reframing of this dating goal. When dating is my fourth priority, I can still get dates, but the quality isn’t there. So dating needs to be at least a top 2 priority in 2023.

Be profitable for at least 10/12 months - B

In the beginning of the year and during summer, I was roughly break-even. What I noticed, is that once I stopped drinking alcohol, my savings rate shot through the roof up. When I was partying, I actually had to watch my spending a lot more, since I was spending nearly $200 every time I did go out. After quitting, I no longer need to think as much about money, will saving more than I did earlier in the year.

Total, three A’s, two B’s, two C’s, one F.

Life Review

Health: B+/A-

My health is really good compared to the average person. However, what would make this an A is improving on (1) sleep and (2) nutrition. For sleep, I sleep reasonably well, but need to take CBD gummies after BJJ. My overall sleep hygiene is an area for improvement. For nutrition, I still have vices, like eating sugar and eating out a lot. This has always been a recurring bad habit for me. However, from taking my blood tests, all my markers check out super well, so I’ll score this a B+/A-.

Takeaway: Do more experiments, similar to quitting alcohol. Quit sugar for a month. Quit carbs for a month etc. etc.

Career: B+

Career-wise, I’m very happy in the role I’m currently in. An A or A+ would mean my careeer feels like my “calling.” I don’t feel like my career is my “calling” quite yet, but I would say it’s pretty good right now.

Finances: C

My finances are actually really solid, but naturally, staying at a tech company actually reduces your compensation. So relative to what I know I can get, I feel like my earnings are on the lower end. This is DEFINITELY relative, as I earn enough, relative to the general population and many peers.

Relationships

Friends: A

I’m super happy with my friends right now and feel like I have an abundance of friends and people who can support me. I’m very happy in this area. And this is an area that I’ve intentionally invested in in 2022.

Romantic: C-

I’m not super happy with this area. I don’t have a problem getting dates, but it’s more about dates I’m very excited.

2023 Goals

A few changes I’ll be making to my goals this year. I will have (1) fewer goals and (2) these goals will be more “general.” I’ve always leaned specific. The benefits of specificity, are that it’s very clear if you’ve achieved them or not, but they are less flexible to change. The benefit of general goals, is that they are flexible with new information, which means, they likely won’t be irrelevant end of year.

Find one “Hell Yes” (dating).

The best way to define this goal, is to define it by my level of excitement for the other person. In the past, I’ve defined this as quantitative goal (6+ dates or “move to next stage”). The problem with this framing is it ignores how “excited” I am. I can game it by going on dates with women I’m not excited about.

So the goal should be me feeling excited about the other person. It’s hard to find someone I’m a “Hell Yes” about. And a “Hell Yes” doesn’t equate to her being smoking hot. For me, there’s a baseline level of attractiveness they need to be, but its really values alignment & chemistry that gets me really excited.

Level up my Machine Learning Engineering Skillset

All the podcast interviews, business opportunities, raises, job offers, promotions came from one thing: being good at data science. So if I want to keep building on these opportunities, I should lean back into growing my data science skills. More specifically, my machine learning, causal inference and engineering skillset.

I’ll write another post outlining my deliberate practice/learning plan. But in summary, I need to focus on two core areas: engineering & modeling. And to differentiate myself from other practitioner’s, I’ll throw in causal inference.

Increase my overall earnings (or earning potential), by at least 2X.

Increasing my earnings will open the door for my dream life. While I’ll keep this vague on what exactly I’ll do since this is a public post, but this could be any form, within my job, side projects etc.

Compete in my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Competition

I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu consistently in July 2022. While training consistently is good, the best forcing function to push my skillset is to sign up for a competition. If I knew I had a looming competition, my competitive instincts would kick in. It’d push me to train harder, learn the technique better and drastically accelerate my skillset. I will target this in the latter half of 2023.

Continue

BJJ Training: Keep training BJJ 3x a week, however, this is not going to be an explicit focus initially.
Therapy: Continue talking to a therapist each week.
1x a week social event: Keep going to events where I don’t know anyone.