New Years Goals

Mario Kart cosplayer in Tokyo waiting for the light to turn green.

I have a mental block when it comes to writing. It’s crippling. I sit around and feel sorry for myself. I thrash between playing video games, reading the internet, and other forms of procrastination. I compulsively snack.

My fear of writing (and my expanding waistline) is why I started this blog. Writing consistently is a 2018 goal. I have others. I don’t plan to achieve all of them, but putting them out there may make me more accountable. So, here they are.

Cross-cutting

Cross-cutting goals address how I interact with the world. Getting them right should make meeting my other goals easier. Yes, these are hard to measure, and in some ways, that’s by design. These are qualitative changes I’d like to make. I don’t want to get caught up in counting.

• Spend less time deliberating. I spend hours thinking about alternatives. Did I pick the right software package? Should I fly home for three or four days? Is this can opener the best can opener I can buy? It’s maddening. I want to do this less.
• Say no more often. I’m too reactive. External requests often preempt current focus. I end up exhausted, behind on my goals, and confused as to where I spent my time. I’d like to be more intentional with my time, saying no should give me space to do that.

Physical

2017 was a sedentary year. I hurt my wrist in January and my ankle six months before that. They still hurt! (I lost my mutant healing sometime around 30.) Neither my wrist nor my ankle are back to normal, but they do feel much better. I can do pushups again and run moderate distances. Assuming these trends continue, I should be able to do the following:

• 10 pull ups in a row: I can do 3–4 right now. Ten was easy when I was active. Should be easy now, if my wrist doesn’t fall off.
• Run a half marathon: I’ve been running 2–3 times a week for 4–6 miles. If I slowly increase the amount I run, I should be able to increase my distance without destroying my knee or ankle or some-other-part-of-my-body-that-I-thought-was-fine-but-somehow-breaks-because-I’m-over-30.
• 15% body fat (average over 7 days): It’s currently somewhere between 17–18%. I’ve started eating better: fewer refined carbs and sugars, less red meat, more veggies.

Creative

I ignore creative hobbies. There is always something I could do instead. Instead of drawing or dance, I could work. Instead of writing, I could hang out with friends. But creative things make me feel happy and fulfilled. I need to make time for them.

• Write and perform a 3 minute standup act: Oh. My. God. Even thinking about doing stand up scares me, but I’ve been talking about it for a while. I’m funny, right? I guess I’ll find out.
• Read 26 books: Same as last year. It worked, why change it? This year, I’d like to reflect more on the non-fiction books I read.
• Start a blog (avg. 1 post a month): That would be this blog. I still don’t know what I’m going to write about. Maybe I’ll write about writing. Maybe I’ll write about my research. Maybe I’ll write about the non-fiction books I read. Stay tuned.

Personal

You might notice a theme. I have a hard time prioritizing. These goals are about prioritizing myself and my relationships. I want to spend 2018 focusing on meditating and spending more quality time with family and friends.

• Visit my parents 3 times: Flying to Charlotte takes a long time — six hours, crossing three time zones. I visit once a year. It’s not relaxing if I go for a weekend because I have to see a ton of people. Visiting regularly may solve that. I won’t feel as much pressure to see everyone, and I can focus on time with my parents
• Meditate 5 minutes a day for 300 days: I started meditating regularly at the end of last year. I don’t want to feel bad if I miss a day, but I still want to have a regular practice, 300 days seems like a good compromise.
• Schedule and maintain regular events with 4 friends/couples. I often think: “I haven’t seen ____ in a while. I should really reach out to them.” But the overhead of reaching out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while is too high. I know I’m not unique. Most people I know feel this way. Routine, scheduled interactions may work.

Work

Last year I started a new job as a research scientist at Apple. Apple’s research initiative is new and growing. I get to help shape the agenda. As part of that I need to re-integrate into the research community.

• Submit one paper: I last published a paper in 2015. At Google, I didn’t feel a need to publish because Google already has a large presence at most top-tier research conferences. Apple, in contrast, is just starting to engage with the external research community. The value of a publication is higher both in terms of communicating what Apple does and engaging with the external research community.
• Read 2 papers a month and write a paragraph for each paper: I tried reading a paper a week last year. I failed. I managed to read a paper a month. I think I can double that.
• Build a style transfer web app from scratch and launch on the cloud: The end product is simple, a web application where I can select a picture from my computer, select a style, and get a stylized image as a result. There are many instances of this on the internet. The goal is to use this application to learn about the latest tools for building neural networks and hosting them on the cloud.

Ok, that’s it. Let’s see how it goes. Also, I probably can’t cheat on the next blog post like I did on this one. You can only write about your New Years goals once a year, I think.