break

Last time I posted, I had a goal of blogging every day about startup ideas, or at least spend time working in general several hours a day—between covid and being on winter break, I didn’t end up grinding, but rather mostly talking/playing games with friends. I just started a podcast episode (called CGP Grey productivity) my friend recommended to me—although I’ve listened to only a few minutes of it so far, it touches upon the idea that periods of time where you just take a break from working are required. I do agree—I think working should just be an avenue towards longer term happiness, and that isn’t really achieved if you just burn out and crash. Like I mentioned in my previous post, recently I’ve been thinking about optimizing for happiness rather than solely impact/success, and, as far as the past couple of days have gone, catching up/playing games with friends while they’re also on break has been really fun/I’m pretty happy.

All that being said, I did get burned out on playing video games all day, and I need to find balance between playing games and other stuff. I really like feeling like I’m making progress on random things, so I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring a wide range of random things (most recently I’ve been randomly consuming a ton of sneaker content). Another aspect of myself that I’ve realized over the years is that I’m a contrarian—I enjoy feeling like I’m unique/do interesting things, and part of that is doing stuff that not many other people do. I still end up doing pretty much the same things as everyone else and I’m hardly alone in my desire to be contrarian, but shh, it’s the feeling that counts. In any case, I’ve been messing around with different hobbies, and, although I think I would really enjoy becoming the best at a random, niche hobby, it’s also been a ton of fun being a noob at various things and learning/working through the basics.

One hobby that I’ve enjoyed for a while now is mechnical keyboards—building keyboards, doing maintenance, looking at new designs/designs, and thinking about what I would build next are all a welcome break from the more serious things in life. There’s something oddly therapeutic about sitting there and lubing key switches for a few hours—it’s a small, delicate task, and it’s nice to do something with your hands rather than your brain. I got my new keycap set (GMK Pixel), and so far I like the minimal all black look.

keyboard

discipline and habits

A goal that I’m going to challenge myself to do is to not only pursue discipline in developing good, productive habits but also find happiness in completing these tasks. To that end, I find it really satisfying to see progress in working out, blogging like this is actually pretty fun for me (there’s a creative and writing aspect that I don’t really see in my otherwise extremely technical life), and I think grinding towards startups has been a goal of mine for such a long time that finally instilling enough discipline to work towards it is going to be really good for my sense of fulfillment/direction. I don’t believe such long term change is doable with just motivation alone, at least for me personally right now, so I do think instilling some habits is necessary. I brought back my two-day rule today, which worked for me in the past for developing habits—the two habits that I’m starting out with will be blogging and working out.

goals

In the beginning of September of 2020 (start of junior year), I thought it would be interesting to write out all my goals for the coming year. Interestingly enough, coming back to it a year later, I actually did accomplish all of my goals. It being New Years and all, I think I’m going to write down my goals again and see how I do after some time period. Revisiting these sorts of things is always fun, especially when you see how much your perspective on things change.

  1. Figure out what I want/what makes me happy.

    It’s weird—I think the last time I did this, I had a lot of very concrete goals that I could work towards (getting a quant internship, graduating early and getting into Stanford, socializing/working out through quarantine). Now that I’m at a transition stage in my life where I’ve hit all my goals/climbed as high as I think I can go along traditional paths, there doesn’t seem to be as much for me to work towards. I guess that’s something that I’m scared about—my life becoming stagnant, I become unhappy because there’s no direction in my life, and I just play life on fast forward. A lot of how I figure out what I want to do in life is more just experiencing things and determining that it is definitely something that I don’t want to do—hopefully over the next year I figure out what I want/what makes me happy, and, more than that, get good at determining these sorts of things without needing to spend a large chunk of my life gaining experience/perspective in order to make these sorts of insights/decisions.

  2. Startup.

    My friends and I have been talking about doing a startup for so long that at this point, I need to experience doing it full time for a significant portion of my life. My current plan is to dedicate the next year and a half to doing it, just to see what the startup life is like and how fulfilling I find it. Raising some sort of funding, having a viable business, and getting a significant amount of users and revenue are more concrete goals of mine for this coming year and a half. It’ll definitely make life a lot more interesting, and I’m actually really looking forward to this entire experience.

  3. New experiences and hobbies.

    I believe part of being happy is balancing work with all the interesting things that life has to offer. I like my startup team in that they’re also individuals who are like-minded in the sense of exploring/pursuing interesting new experiences, while also sharing similar values in terms of work/fulfillment. There are a lot of hobbies that I want to try to get better at: content creation like blogging/writing/photography/vlogging, keyboards, fishing, lifting/sports, fashion, cooking, etc! I’m also going to make it a goal for this quarter to write down all the things I want to explore/do near Stanford, and drag people along with me while I do it (or do it by myself).

  4. Read 25 books (or just regularly).

    I just talked to someone who had this as their New Year’s resolution. I really liked the idea, so I’m going to steal it and also try to do it. I think reading is a great way to gain perspective/learn things (much more efficient than having to go through the experience yourself), and it can be really fun/rewarding. This is going to be a fun challenge/I’m looking forward to it.

  5. Fitness related goals.

    Instilling a consistent work out habit for the whole year will be good. I’m in good shape at the moment, and I hope to maintain this throughout the year. I personally think working out regularly is good because physical activity helps a lot with mental/other aspects of life, and it’s really rewarding to see progress/instill self-discipline. A personal challenge is to try to incorporate more cardio, since that has been a habit that I’ve been trying to develop for a while now. I’ve also thought about putting down numerical goals, but I don’t really have a specific number in mind—developing a physique I’m happy with/healthy habits is ultimately what I want.

  6. Develop a good, regular day to day.

    I want a solid baseline for what each day looks like, but I think the danger of making every day look the same is that life goes on fast forward. I think this is where my third goal comes in—I’m hoping that deliberately adding new, interesting experiences regularly will help break up the monotony of life and make the year a lot more memorable. A lot of the time, I remember my life as a flow of memories, where the stuff between key moments is often blurred. I’m hoping to interject more key moments, so that those blurs occur less often/are more defined.

  7. Blogging and gain more clarity of thought.

    This is a more concrete version of my first goal: I want to get in the habit of blogging more regularly. A lot of what I was getting at in my first goal was developing clarity of thought, and I think a habit of regularly thinking about things and putting it into words will help a lot along that front. This is both in terms of figuring out what I want to do in life, but also in terms of startups/my day to day. Blogging is really fun/fulfilling for me at the moment, so this is also a habit that I think will improve my day to day. Also, I’ve spent the majority of my life up to this point getting really good at solving really complex/hard technical problems—I find it fun to work on nontechnical problems as well, so it’s a personal goal of mine to get better at solving less concrete problems (I’d imagine there’s a diverse range of problems in startups/the real world outside of classes).

Happy new years everyone!