28

The year in retrospect:

27 was a great year for achieving my goals. I think my overall happiness and life satisfaction has been at the highest in the last 3 years. This is because I:

• Found a role within my job which was impactful, educational, and had better work-life balance.
• Hit three significant milestones: 30yr net worth goal, promotion, and a fitness goal.
• These milestones are significant because I've been working toward them for years.
• Got to live with my significant other for 9 months out of the year, which I've never done before in a relationship.
• The fact that I did this isn't as significant as who I did this with - in the 9 months together we only really argued once, and for an understandable problem which we resolved quickly.
• This is significant because who I choose to partner with is one of the most important decisions I will make in life.

I'm thankful for the environment and people around me because they were important in making 27 a great year. My management chain allowed me to live abroad for 9 months of the year while pursuing new opportunities within the team. My girlfriend had a welcoming environment (both material and personal) for us to spend our time in. I realize I'm relatively well off in general - I have lived or worked in the three largest economies (US, China, and Japan) my entire life. The war in Ukraine has reminded me how lucky I am to hold not only one but two strong passports.

Despite my feeling of some retrospective satisfaction, I find myself thinking about what I could have done better as a quickly aging 20-something year old. My inspirational figures include Benjamin Franklin (a prolific inventor and one of the most important founding fathers), Sakamoto Ryoma (a Japanese revolutionary who modernized Japan), and Tetsu Nakamura (a physician who combated malnutrition in Afghanistan). I sometimes find myself asking what I am doing daily, weekly, yearly to even come close to achieving what they have for humanity.

I suppose it's best to use outsized aspirations to fuel hunger for the future rather than remorse about the past. If my 20s is about checking off some key milestones and building a financial, reputational, and marital foundation, I strive for my 30s to be about finding a calling and reuniting with my childhood belief that life is best lived with purpose.

Maybe the fact that I'm writing as if it's already my 30th not my 28th birthday betrays my feeling of slight anxiety towards leaving my 20s behind.

Resolutions for 27 - how I did:

1. Hit my 30 year net worth goal ✓ 
• I achieved this milestone in April, shortly after I turned 27.
• If I added my non-liquid assets I achieved this back in February but I'll keep the official record at April. Why? I was never planning on selling my car or anything then.
2. Get promoted with 25% pay increase ✓✓ 
• I achieved this with a 28% increase including my promotion bonus/RSUs.
• Although I didn't put it as a resolution this year, I was also officially promoted in my current role. So now the name matches the pay, and I got to tick the box from my 26 resolution.
3. Achieve Chinese HSK1 ✗ 
• I will carry this over to 28. I've almost completed the Yoyo Chinese beginner course, and my Chinese has improved faster than before once I started practicing flashcards daily.
• My only regret: why didn't I think of using flashcards earlier? This is what I call a dumb mistake!
4. Be able to comfortably read a Japanese newspaper ✗ 
• Although I passed JLPT N1 five years ago, I haven't been using Japanese often, so my fluency in the language has detonated since.
• What I learned about language is you lose it if you don't use it.
5. Score a 5/165/165 on the GRE ✗ 
• I didn't attempt to retake the GRE. Luckily my scores didn't expire until right after I submitted my university applications.
• As it turns out, UK schools don't care at all about the GRE.
6. Run a 10K in 60min ✓ 
• I've had this on my resolution list since I turned 24, so it's great that I was able to run my first 10K in 52:21 on February 2022.
• This is a bigger success than the achievement makes it seem because in order to prepare for the race, I needed to develop a training routine - something I haven't done before. And they say routine translates into habits, the foundation for success.
7. Run a half marathon in 120min ✗ 
• This is on the horizon. My race is coming up on 3/27.
8. Play soccer every weekend ✓ 
• I started playing soccer every Sunday since I got back from abroad in December of 2021.
• It's one of my weekend activities I look forward to the most nowadays. I'm lucky I found a good pickup soccer group. I went to the field for a different soccer group I found through meetup.com. I accidentally joined my current group that happened to be playing in the same park, and I ended up liking the current group's vibe more than the meetup one.
9. Create a personal website to publish engineering, design, and photography articles ✓✓✓ 
• With the help of Ghost, Figma, and an awesome CSS coder I found on Fiverr, I launched my personal website in January: yuzomakitani.com
• I'm putting a triple checkmark on this one because I also completed two bucket list items:
• Bought a 3D printer and started printing on it regularly
• Downloaded Siemens NX (CAD software used by my company but not in my role) and started designing things
10. Find a plan to be with my girlfriend in a metropolitan area ✓ 
• We have a plan, working on execution now.
• I moved her into her new place last week.

Overall, I achieved some big milestones as I mentioned earlier, and got 9 checks and 4 misses, which I consider to be ok. Not all resolutions are made equal.

Resolutions for 28:

• Academics
• 1) Be accepted into a UK university for a CS conversion program
• 2) Be on track to achieve a 2:1 for the program
• 3) Do an AI related capstone project/dissertation
• 4) Score a 720 (94th percentile) on the GMAT
• Exercise
• 5) Run a 2:00 half marathon
• 6) Run a 6:00 mile
• 7) Score at least once every weekend soccer game
• 8) Become a decent mid-fielder or winger
• Language and communication
• 9) Pass the HSK Level 1
• 10) Enroll in a voice coaching class to become a better speaker
• Form good habits
• 11) One blog post at least every 2 weeks
• 12) Limit Youtube to <2hr/day - replace with design/3D printing
• 13) Mindless browsing <15min/day - replace with reading/book reports
• Travel and hobbies
• 14) Coachella 2022
• 16) Visit 2 new countries
• 17) Try ultralight backpacking: 3~5 day backpacking trip
• 18) Get back into photography: buy a camera by May

This year's resolutions are unique in that I've replaced my financial and employment resolutions with academics and a focus on forming good habits. Since I'm already 2 years early to my financial target, I plan to use this time towards learning subjects which cannot be learned through work (CS, Chinese, and voice coaching) and transform how I use my time (form good habits).

I spend 15~20 hours a week on what I call mindless entertainment - watching Youtube, browsing reddit, and social media. That time could be filled with more fulfilling hobbies like blogging, design/3D printing, reading, or even watching a real show instead of endless infotainment or shorts. While it's not my goal to eliminate mindless entertainment - it's impossible if I have access to the internet - I aim to control the time I spend on it.

5 year plan:

I will probably come back to edit this. Here is what I have at the time of writing, but deserves more thought:

• Form a clearer identity - be able to answer the below questions and live by it:
• What is my calling?
• What is my "brand"?
• Work in one of the below industries
• Key technology
• AI
• Solid state battery
• Cold fusion
• Growth sector
• Offshore wind
• Pumped hydro
• Space and satellite
• Fintech - insurance, blockchain, stable-coin
• Emerging markets
• On track to "retire" by 40
• $5M net worth by 38
• Risk control (Holdings in a Delaware company, create a trust, etc)
• 50/50 real estate/capital market

Here's to a healthy and fulfilling 28 🍻