This has got to be the most disorganized EOY recap out there. But writing down some reflections is still better than none. And..., happy new year!
1/ Goals
I didn't have goals for 2024, and it was great.
2024 is the first year in a while that I abandoned the practice of setting yearly/quarterly goals and checking in on them. Instead, I focused on improving how I allocate and spend my time, what habits I want to remove/add/adjust, and having a self-consistent view of how to live. (I call this set of things "Operating Manual").
I'm not against goals in general—they are useful management tools. However, for personal growth, outcome-oriented goals often involve factors entirely out of our control. These externalized goalposts/milestones are disconnected from internal motivations and progress, adding unnecessary overhead and/or taking the fun away.
- Reading 17 books is really no different than reading 20 books, but having the time and habit of reading mattered more to how happy I am.
- I cannot commit to getting rid of some physical symptoms of my elbow, but I can cultivate good fitness routines to manage/improve it.
I find this system-focused (instead of goal-focused) setup pretty rewarding and will continue in 2025.
2/ Happiness
Happiness is a topic I started to read and think more about. It seems like a complex and self-conflicting topic.
- First, there isn't a clear definition or solid theory about long-term happiness.
- What we have are primarily hypotheses and philosophical thinking.
- Second, happiness seems to be fleeting by its very nature - shortly after the moment you get it, it's no longer what you wanted.
- Happiness exists only in contrast to a baseline, but humans adapt to whatever new happiness level as the new baseline (Hedonic Adaptation); thus, happiness, by definition, is fleeting.
The problem with Hedonic Adaptation is that, if it generally applies, it seems pointless to make any "improvements" to one's life.
- For example, is removing a toxic person from one's life a net improvement, or is it just another thing one would adapt to quickly, and therefore, nothing really would change in terms of happiness?
- We can substitute "removing a toxic person" with "winning the lottery" or "getting paraplegic." The dilemma is the same. In the latter two cases, there are actually studies done on people, and their baseline happiness level seemed unchanged after 1-year of these supposedly life-altering events.
This is a pretty bleak picture. Although it seems somewhat true (especially considering the studies), it contradicts some of our life experiences. And as a result, I don't think this Hedonic Adaption model is totally correct.
I plan to spend more time researching happiness and developing a simpler mental model that is less buggy than the one I've seen so far.
3/ Travel
"If you want to do something later, do it now because there is no later."
I don't know who said that, but I adopted that attitude toward travel (and other things) this year. I crossed off a few bucket list items:
- London (trip report)
- I mostly want to see a Jay Chou concert. We grew up listening to him, and I figured he might retire any day now, so, carpe diem.
- Also, the last time I visited London in 2022, it was a pretty stressful work trip, but I was definitely very fond of the city and wanted to revisit some of the sights with Hongjing. We loved the museums and the food scene.
- Antarctica (photo book)
- Photography workshop trip. It was exciting to meet and see the work of many other photographers. Made a few friends.
- The location is truly special, but it comes with some restrictions that make the experience feel a bit... sterile.
- One of the most memorable things was Hongjing convincing me to do the polar plunge. Good experience.
- Iceland
- Another photography workshop trip. With this, I think I've officially exceeded my lifetime limit of going on trips alone, without Hongjing.
- Magical place, I will visit again for sure. I learned to fly drones and made a few more friends.
- Dolomites
- A last-minute impromptu trip. I was researching some hut-to-hut hike routes for the next year and eventually decided to make the trip within 2 weeks of my planning instead of waiting a year.
- It turned out to be the best trip of this year. I'm surprised I ranked this above Antarctica and Iceland, but this trip feels special - there are so many special little moments that I'll write down before I forget.
- Taiwan
- Our purpose is to see if this is Chinese-speaking Japan...It's not.
- The people are super friendly, but the cities are generally quite ugly looking, the night markets felt overrated, the food is a bit too sweet for me (and lacks diversity), and not a lot of impressive landscape (understandably due to the size of the island). Overall, I think it's just my expectation was too high, but YMMV.
Flighty stats:
I'm still very behind on the trip reports, but stay tuned. I think documenting them is an important part of helping me create memories of the experience.
While it's a pretty successful year in terms of travel - we enjoyed the trips and want to do more, every time we returned home, the first few days were just extra appreciation days for the "mundane," the small, pleasant things happening at home, happening in our daily routines.
"Travel is no cure for discontent" - Seneca (ref)
In 2025, we'd travel less and have more staycation to reserve more downtime focused on ourselves.
4/ Elbow
A somewhat heavier topic now.
I've been having some chronic pain in my right elbow (medial epicondyle tendinopathy) for about 2 years now. The first year of this, I was mostly annoyed/frustrated, a bit depressed, and impatiently trying out somewhat aggressive medical interventions to fix it.
In 2024, my attitude toward this has improved. Nowadays, I am more settled in figuring out ways to manage and live with my condition. For that, I did a fair amount of research and learned about everything I did wrong in the first year. There is still hope of rectifying it; it's just a bit uncertain, and I want to be okay with living with it.
It is a painful, daily annoyance - I basically lost 50% pain-free range of motion of my right forearm, but I want to stay grateful for the remaining 50% and treat this as a reminder of how easily we can lose the things that we take for granted. And with that, I'd like to play more cello while I still can.
5/ Cello
This is one of those do-it-now-because-there-is-no-later things that I started in November 2023 (rented a cello and found a teacher). I played violin and viola when I was young but always wanted to learn cello (and, to a lesser extent, French horn).
I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was for me to stick to this new hobby for over a year, practicing an hour a day, maybe 70% of the days when I was not traveling.
I'm still not good at this at all (proof), but playing the cello to me is maybe like knitting to some people. You'd be very present, immersed, and lose track of time. It's quite meditative. It's one of those atelic activities where you do it for its own sake and feel content.
I'm very thankful for having a good teacher who taught well and kept things interesting, my wife for having to listen to all my practice sessions, and my neighbors for never complaining.
6/ Photography
I have taken more photos and videos this year than in all previous years combined (I started photography in 2020). Perhaps this is because of a few photography-oriented trips (and because of acquiring a couple of compact cameras that are easier to carry around).
I'm really glad I attended a couple of workshops this year. The best part was seeing and learning from other photographers' work. I vividly remember the shock on the first day of the Antarctica trip when I saw a few photographers editing their photos that were so massively different from each other and mine. I was in awe of some of their amazing photos and felt inspired to explore different perspectives and styles. This happened almost every day on the trip, which was great.
Going to workshops isn't super flexible and doesn't have a high ROI in terms of time and money. I'm thinking about how I can replicate this process by reading photobooks and magazines more intently.
On the photo editing side. There is an everlasting effort to review all my photos in my library, but I'm forever behind. Reviewing/editing photos feels like a self-supervised learning step that improves my photography. Not doing that as much as I should is a missed opportunity. I'm experimenting with a new system to make picking up pieces of this effort easier when there is scattered time. I'll see how it goes.
Almost all the "good" photos I took this year came from some serendipitous encounters, i.e. these photos would not have happened if things had gone according to plan or expectations. The surprise element makes these photos extra unique and gratifying.
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A long time ago, we set a small-ish target number. Then, we crossed that number earlier this year. Then, we came up with bigger and safer numbers...
I think retirement is more of a psychological thing than a concrete financial thing. It is more of a state of mind and way of living than an occupational change.
"Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired." - Naval Ravikant.
So, for this topic, I think I'll just continue to figure out the Happiness thing first.
8/ Apps
I don't know why I feel the urge to recommend apps. Maybe it is just a reminder for myself to keep using them to help me organize my life.
OmniFocus
- Hands down best thing for keeping my life organized and reducing stress. It works as long as you have a routine to clean up its inbox and review, e.g. weekly on Saturday.
Day One
- Journaling app, good UX.
Streaks
- Habit tracker
Bearable
- Still testing this one out for tracking symptoms. So far, I think Excel/Google Sheet might be winning.
Readwise Reader
- I love this as a read-it-later. The team behind the app felt top-notch.
- I haven't found much usage with Readwise (the Anki-like highlight/quote memorization app).
Anki
- Been using this to learn Japanese. I wonder if I should expand this to train me to remember other things (e.g., music notes reading, other factual things).
9/ Books
I'm making a 2025 reading list as we speak. Here are a few books I look forward to reading:
- Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Peter Attia
- Heard great things about the author
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation by Ted Chiang
- Labyrinths and Ficciones by JLB
- I remember reading one of these in high school during my sci-fi phase, and I want to revisit it.
- Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
- This has been long on my to-read list.
- Jed McKenna's Theory of Everything and The Prophet
- Recommended from the Naval book, want to check them out
- A History of Western Philosophy
- I wanted an overview, but this book looks long.
- Existentialism is a Humanism
- ChatGPT said that my current POV on life and happiness aligns with Existentialism very much, so I need to check this out.
So, things fall into three categories: (1) longevity and health, (2) philosophy, and (3) fiction and sci-fi.