The holiday season is my favorite time of the year. It's a natural time to step back and reflect on what happened this year and define how we want to focus our energy and time in the year ahead. So much can happen over the course of a year: lessons learned, victories, hardships, special moments, personal growth, new relationships, etc. With our inboxes quiet and our schedules free of meetings, we can afford to take a moment and think about what we achieved and what’s next.
Dating back to 2014, I have taken time at the end of the year to conduct a comprehensive annual life review (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014). This exercise has helped me identify what is important, remove what is not, and evolve in different ways. Continuing the tradition, in this annual review, I'll attempt to gain a holistic perspective of my life in 2022 and where I want to go in 2023.
Traditionally, I have followed the framework inspired by James Clear and Chris Guillebeau. This time, I will try out Steve Schlafman's Ultimate Annual Review blueprint to conduct my self-paced annual life review.
The review is broken into five distinct exercises:
Moments & Milestones: What were my significant moments, milestones, and memories?
Reflections & Lessons: What were my lessons and learnings from this year?
Current Life Assessment: How satisfied am I in the 10 life dimensions?
Intentions: What would I like to change and accomplish next year?
Goals & Action Plan: What are my goals and immediate next steps?
1 - Moments and Milestones
Here I constructed a quarterly timeline that plots my important moments, milestones, and memories.
☃️ January - March
Took an Emotional Fitness class via Coa
Met my current girlfriend via Bumble
Went to Tahoe with co-living friends
Attended EAGx conference in Boston
Facilitated the Virtual Introductory EA Fellowship
Found new co-working spaces in San Francisco (SHACK15, AvantSpace, and CANOPY)
Regularly played tennis and soccer
Gave a virtual talk at Arize:Observe
🌷April - June
Went to Superb AI’s Company Retreat in Napa
Organized various events for 908 co-living community
Had my first Ayahuasca experience
Gave an in-person talk at Computer Vision Summit in San Jose
Went to San Diego with my girlfriend
Attended Embedded Vision Summit and Data + AI Summit
☀️ July - September
Hosted the 1st happy hour for MLOps World Bay Area
Celebrated 6 months with my girlfriend
Contributed to the Full Stack Deep Learning online course
Got into the bike accident
Started using Mint for personal budgeting and opened my first credit card
Participated in FirstRound’s FastTrack mentorship
Moved into a new apartment in the Inner Richmond
🍁 October - December
Celebrated my 28th birthday!
Released the 100th episode of Datacast
Celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with friends
Worked on the NVIDIA technical partnership for Superb AI
Followed the World Cup matches
2 - Reflections and Lessons
Here I captured meaningful reflections, lessons, and insights from the year. The goal is to go inward and be patient.
Success and Growth
Personally, I am very proud of my commitment to finding and maintaining a long-term romantic partner, my focus on personal finance, and my improved content diet. Professionally, I am proud of my increased responsibilities at work, my stable progress with the podcast, and my expanding professional network.
I developed new skills in public speaking (by giving various conference talks and online panels/webinars) and event planning (by organizing happy-hour events for ML professionals in the Bay Area). I developed a new habit of budgeting by using Mint.
Overall, I have become more introspective, loving, and fiscally conservative.
Obstacles
There were two big obstacles I faced this year:
I had to let go of my emotional desire for my girlfriend-to-be back in March when she had a family emergency situation. That was very challenging as we had just started dating a month prior. I consulted many friends for advice to handle the situation gracefully. After she became emotionally available a few weeks later, we rekindled, and our relationship has only thrived since then.
I got into a bike accident in August and had to visit the Emergency Room. Thankfully, I only had a few stitches and some bruises, but I realized how expensive healthcare bills could be). I took some time off work to recover, got new dental crowns, and also made substantial changes to my lifestyle (by changing to a less expensive accommodation and cutting unnecessary expenses).
I don't have many regrets this year, besides maybe traveling more outside of the Bay Area. The three major travels I had were a Tahoe trip in February with my then-housemates, a Boston trip in April for an Effective Altruism conference, and a San Diego trip in June with my girlfriend.
People and Relationships
My girlfriend definitely had the biggest impact on my life. For the first time, I learned how to be in love 💘 As mentioned above, early in my relationship with her, I learned how to put her emotional needs above my needs. This turned out to be the big reward I did not expect later.
Besides her, I made a ton of friends at the 908 co-living community (where I was until October). We did a lot of fun activities together, such as house parties, birthday dinners, barbecue picnics, and game nights.
Health and Wellness
I felt the most energized in the mornings when I got 7+ hours of sleep, playing soccer, doing yoga, and engaging in intellectual conversations (like when I was conducting a podcast interview). Three behaviors really boosted my health: getting enough sleep, exercising, and intermittent fasting. On the contrary, I found that lack of sleep and stress degraded my health.
As mentioned above, the bike accident changed my lifestyle for the better. I have been taking the bus more regularly, saving more, and being more cautious while biking.
Lessons and Themes
The two big lessons I learned this year fall into the areas of romance and money:
I learned how to invest time, energy, and emotional effort to build a healthy and romantic relationship.
I learned how to save money and allocate the budget optimally.
If I have to describe my 2022, these words come to mind:
Love and Commitment with my romantic relationship.
Sustainable Growth with my personal development and my startup.
Explore and Exploit: Whereas 2021 was the year when I was in full exploration mode (new relationships, new activities, new hobbies, etc.), 2022 was the year when I explored for the first half and exploited for the second half (by doubling down on the relationships, activities, and hobbies that matter to me).
Overall, I am grateful for a good job with a stable income, a healthy and active lifestyle, and a loving, romantic partner.
3 - Current Life Assessment
Here I assessed my life in 10 areas to gain a fresh perspective on my current situation. The goal is to capture my level of satisfaction and identify what I want to focus on.
My Life Dimensions
🏃🏽♀️Health: 8/10. I often exercise, play soccer regularly, and walk/bike a lot. However, I want to build more muscular strength.
👨👩👧👧Family: 7/10. I probably need to check in with my parents and relatives in Vietnam more often. The bright side is that my parents will visit me in the latter half of January (as well as my younger brother), and we'll do some travel across the US.
👬Friends: 7/10. My social life has been less vibrant since moving out of the 908 co-living in October.
❤️Romance: 10/10. I found an amazing romantic partner.
💰Money: 7/10. I did not save much money until August when the bike accident happened. Since using Mint and becoming more serious about financial budgeting, I have felt much better about my personal finance.
👩🏻💻Career: 9/10. I am excited about my role at Superb AI, the growth of the company (with the Series B financing), and the growth of the AI sector in general.
💫Spirituality: 7/10. I participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony in April and experienced consciousness at scale.
🕺🏻Leisure and Play: 8/10. I had a lot of fun dates with my girlfriend this year.
🖥️ Technology: 10/10. I felt great about the role of technology in my life as I practiced digital minimalism to the full extent.
🏡Environment: 8/10. I have been enjoying my new neighborhood and finding a good balance working from different co-working spaces in San Francisco.
Reflections
Three things stood out from doing the exercise above:
I have been living a healthy and balanced life.
I maintain a stable rhythm across these life dimensions.
I have introduced more leisure and play into my daily life.
The two dimensions that I am motivated to focus on in 2023 are:
❤️ Romance: I want to deepen my relationship with my girlfriend.
💵 Money: I want to expand my net worth by getting a raise, saving more, and finding alternative sources of income.
4 - Intentions
Here I defined, visualized, and designed what I want in 2023. The goal is to be bold yet realistic.
Creating Awareness
Two big questions about my life I am asking myself are:
How can I compound myself? I want my life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect (such as AI at the moment). The biggest competitive advantage in business is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together.
How can I be hard to compete with? I want to build up leverage with personal relationships (as my network expands), a strong personal brand (via writing and podcasting), and get good at the intersection of multiple different fields.
Furthermore, I want to cultivate my ability to think independently. Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. I want to be able to figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution.
Moving On
I need to say no to any form of excessive alcohol consumption and not prioritize my sleep. I also want to say no to low-hanging fruit opportunities and events that are not directly relevant to my expertise/interest.
Saying no more means that I can be internally driven: I do what I do to impress myself and because I feel compelled to make something happen in the world. In other words, I will define my success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to me. Being misunderstood, trading being short-term low-status for being long-term high-status, can be powerful.
Habits and Behaviors
In 2023, I want to start eating more veggies and drinking more water, going for short morning walks after waking up, and getting back into swimming. In addition to that, I will continue reading high-quality non-fiction books, listening to in-depth podcasts, and playing soccer/tennis regularly.
These habits and behaviors are important because they give me the physical and mental energy to work on the right things rather than working many hours.
Fears and Obstacles
In 2023, to challenge myself, I plan to lift weights and do more resistance training, learn how to drive, and monetize my podcast aggressively.
An internal obstacle I need to break down is that I need to maximize my productivity. Therefore, a permission that I will give myself is to slow down and put myself first. This means building a routine into my life that expands and rebuilds my energy, increasing my level of joy by developing a small ritual that I can look forward to every week, and taking mental breaks throughout the day with walking and meditation.
An external obstacle I anticipate facing is the economic downturn and slow growth across the tech sector. To prepare for this, I need to embrace the messy middle - where growth happens. I want to be able to navigate chaotic situations and become a better person as a result of it.
Relationships
In 2023, I will prioritize my relationship with my girlfriend and family members. Additionally, I want to create new relationships and build a deeper professional network. More specifically, I want to:
Help people as much as I can. Be overly generous with sharing the upside.
Get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Meet a lot of people and keep track of who goes on to impress me and who doesn't.
Find someone eminent to take a bet on me.
Spend my time with positive people who support my ambitions.
5 - Goals and Action Plan
Here I determined my goals and action plan to create momentum in 2023. The goal is to identify where the rubber hits the road.
Purpose and Goals
My purpose in 2023 is to kill my identity. The less concerned I am with my identity, the more I can think from first principles. Identities as we currently know them are static, and life is a dynamic process. If I am operating on the edge of any field or trying to figure out anything new, I need to be open to changing my mind all the time and not labeling things that are changing. In general, it's best not to get too attached to labels or abstractions, if only because they give me false precision. A map can be useful, but it is not the territory.
With that in mind, the three goals I really want to accomplish are:
Continue my loving partnership with my girlfriend: Love is not an emotion; it’s a skill. There’s always room for improvement.
Expose myself to a wide range of reading material to improve my content diet and spark fresh ideas.
Build discipline via consistency: Doing the work week after week, day after day, will close the gap between taste and skill. Hard work compounds like interest. The earlier I do it, the more time I have for the benefits to pay off.
Action Plan
I am still working on this section, so I won't be able to share it here. Basically, for each goal, I'll attempt to answer these questions:
What's important about this plan to me?
How will I be different when I have achieved this?
What does success look like? How will I know?
From 0-10, how confident am I that I will hit this goal?
Why might I fail to hit this goal?
What beliefs and behaviors support this goal?
What beliefs and behaviors hinder this goal?
Who can help and provide accountability?
What 3 specific but small steps can I take to get started?
Conclusion
As an avid reader, I want to round up my review with the list of the most impactful books that I read this year:
Lifespan (by David Sinclair)
Why We Sleep (by Matthew Walker)
Courage is Calling (by Ryan Holiday)
The Psychology of Money (by Morgan Housel)
Nonviolent Communication (by Marshall Rosenberg)
Working Backwards (by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr)
Angel (by Jason Calanacis)
A World Without Email (by Cal Newport)
The Founders (by Jimmy Soni)
The Power Law (by Sebastian Mallaby)
How I Built This (by Guy Raz)
Just Keep Buying (by Nick Maggiuli)
What You Do Is Who You Are (by Ben Horowitz)
Talent (by Tyler Cohen and Daniel Gross)
Time Management for Mortals (by Oliver Burkeman)
The Righteous Mind (by Jonathan Haidt)
San Fransicko (by Michael Shellenberger)
The Airbnb Story (by Leigh Gallagher)
How Innovation Works (by Matt Ridley)
Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order (by Ray Dalio)
Life Force (by Tony Robbins)
Thank you for being part of my journey! I wish you a restful and reflective end of the year.