30

Retrospect of 29 and resolutions for 30

This year, I closed out several chapters of my life. I moved out of my parent’s house after 7 years of living rent free, quit my job at Apple after 7 years, then bought an investment property in North Carolina. I then moved to London to pursue a masters in CS, and committed to my future by moving in with my partner.

Like last year’s resolutions, I’ll focus on my identities and what I’ve done to reinforce those identities. Let’s get right into how I did on my resolution from 29. Significant accomplishments are bolded.

Results for 29:

• Adventurer
• ✓ Backpacked Olympic West Coast with brother and 2 friends
• ✓ Had a successful Coachella 2023
• ✓ Join a football club in UK and not be the worst player on the team
• ✗ Get scuba diving certified - planned for summer of 2024
• ✗ Christmas Japan trip with my girlfriend and our families
• ✗ Consistently juggle a soccer ball 20 times
• Responsible adult and partner
• ✓ Move out of my parents place
• ✓ Live with my girlfriend
• - Mastered 12 recipes and 5 cocktails (target 20)
• ✗ Do not browse Youtube for more than 1hr/weekday, 2hr/weekend
• Financially successful
• ✓ Switch jobs (AME or Google) or enter a CS masters
• ✓ Buy my first real estate investment property
• Orator and multi-lingual
• ✗ Start a voice coaching course
• ✗ Pass HSK 1
• ✗ Complete the Coursera music theory course
• ✗ One blog post every month
• ✗ Read one Japanese newspaper article every day
• Good friend
• ✓ Made meaningful and diverse friendships in UK with students from UK, Taiwan, Japan, India, England, and France
• ✓ Reconnected with some high school friends, need to reconnect with others (Neal, Isaac)
• ✗ Never waste a weekend: plan every weekend

Notable unplanned accomplishments:

• Adventurer
• ✓ Traveled to Hungary, Austria, France, Bulgaria, and Portugal (4 new countries)
• ✓ Snowboarded in the French Alps and Borovets
• ✓ Went skydiving in Portugal
• ✓ Learned how to fly an FPV drone

Reflecting on my six identities:

Adventurer

Reviewing my previous resolutions, I often fulfill my adventurer identity. This is because it involves doing things I like, such as soccer, backpacking, travel, and overcoming physical challenges. This year I’ll focus on scuba diving which was a resolution I didn’t achieve from last year. I’ll also go on a backpacking trip in the Italian alps and keep attending music festivals. At this point backpacking and soccer have become ingrained habits, which shows remarkable progress from just 2 years ago when I started both. This reinforces what I learned from reading Atomic Habits: that consistent habits can bring significant improvements to my life. However I must admit that my juggling ability is still lacking, and something I’ll work on this year. I also will focus this year on playing as midfielder more instead of winger to improve my technique over my speed.

Responsible adult and partner

I moved out of my parent’s house after 7 years in March of this year. I lived with my brother and 2 friends for five months which was a great experience. Then I moved to London with my girlfriend. My cooking can definitely use more work, but luckily my girlfriend is excellent at and enjoys cooking. So I’ve been focusing on making cocktails these days. I can make a Moscow Mule, Tom Colins, Dark n’ Stormy, Mojito, and Summertime Spritz. The most significant event is that my partner and I got married on paper in August and started her immigration process to the US, committing to a lifelong relationship. The wedding will likely occur in the 2025.

Financially successful

Financial independence is an identity I’ve always been on the right track on. I’m at a point where day to day expenses are no longer a factor for stress, even though I’m supporting both myself and my partner. However in order to meet my aggressive financial target for when I’m 40 I’ll need to change my strategy a bit and take on some more risk. I will need to increase my net worth by 23% every year to reach my financial target. One thing I can do is convert my 60/40 portfolio to cash, and try to buy in to a 100% equity portfolio around the time of the next recession which might happen this year or next. With interest rates so high, this may not be a bad idea to try.

Orator and multilingual

This identity is where I am lagging in progress the most. Committing to an HSK test for during the summer should help me progress in Chinese. As for Japanese, I need to craft my daily life in such a way that I naturally progress my kanji reading comprehension. The most exploitable aspect of my life swapping out mindless YouTube browsing with reading and watching Japanese media. Unlike my adventurer identity hobbies, language is something that doesn’t come naturally to me and it is still a mental drain until I ingrain it as a habit.

Computer scientist

I’ve been focused on my studies, which is definitely the right priority as a student. I am on track to graduating with distinction because my last semester results were average 90.3. This means I need to make over 70 which means I can average 50 this semester to achieve distinction. Distinction is equivalent to 3.7-4.0 GPA. Whether I am a mechanical engineer or computer scientist or whatever profession, I think my end goal is to find a career that serves a purpose. Whatever profession I choose to enter, I should think about what purpose it serves other than making me and my family money.

Interesting friend

What I’ve learned is that environment is the most important factor to making friends. The first month of university is where I made the majority of my lifelong friends. I experienced this first as an undergraduate at age 18. Over a decade later I’ve experienced it again as a graduate at age 29. I made many great friends through my university experience. I was successful in reconnecting with old friends as well. Unfortunately I won’t be able to meet my university friends often once I return to the US. But that gives me the opportunity to reconnect with my old friends.

Mapping out my 30s:

I would consider my 30 successful if I can find my calling and find a job relevant to my calling. I’ve been realizing financial success in the first 7 years of my career through a combination of luck and hard work. I’d like to make financial success something I accomplish independent of my career through real estate and smart investments. This opens up more opportunities for my career.

So what are some things that can be my calling? I fundamentally want to make a positive impact on the world. I’m also an engineer-minded thinker (a problem solver). Combined, this means I want to help solve the world’s most important problems. So what do I think are the world’s most pressing issues?:

Energy 

• Energy storage and distribution: this opens up many potential industries, the most obvious being clean energy equipment and battery technology.
• Solving nuclear fusion: this is a bit too far out there for me to add my eggs to the basket. I would consider joining once net positive fusion is proven to be scalable.

Climate change

• Curbing CO2 emissions: probably the most relevant issue with lots of avenues for joining. Some ideas: wind farm manufacturing, solar farm manufacturing, energy grid operations research.

Nuclear war

• Nuclear war and proliferation: I believe nuclear Armageddon is the most likely way we wipe out humanity and thus this is the most significant issue.  However, this field is policy driven, mainly making sure authoritarian governments with nuclear arms are stable and rational actors. As an outsider I have next to no impact here, especially as an engineer.

AI driven extinction

• AI has become increasingly relevant in the past 2 years. AI stoppers and kill switches can be engineering driven similar to how digital security (encryption, network protocols, etc) has been driven by research and engineering rather than policy.

Space exploration

• Humanity as a multi-planetary species is a hedge against various extinction events. Developing the assortment of technology to become multi-planetary will probably the most important progress we will make in this millennia. So working for companies like SpaceX or its suppliers would be a worthy and very engineering heavy cause. Though from Mars, I’m not sure how or where we would progress from there because the technology required to get to Proxima Centauri B, the nearest habitable planet, is 4 light years away versus Mars which is 4 light minutes (6 orders of magnitude difference).

I am replacing the computer scientist identity with engineer this year. Looking back at my undergrad and career experience, I have 4 years of mechanical engineering study, 7 years of manufacturing engineering and program management experience, and 1 year of computer science study. Seeing how we are in a very tough job market for software right now, I may need to leverage my 11 years of experience in mechanical/manufacturing not just 1 year in CS.

Resolutions for 30:

• Engineer
• Graduate with distinction (GPA 3.7+)
• Complete an artificial intelligence related capstone project
• Land a job that I am interested in and fits my calling (生き甲斐）
• Find a specialization and map a career path
• Adventurer
• Finish a Spartan 10K
• Get a scuba diving license
• Backpack the Italian Alps
• Play as midfielder in majority of soccer games
• Responsible adult and partner
• Propose to my partner
• Set a marriage date and location
• Settle in a city where both of us have good employment opportunities
• Limit mindless browsing and YouTube to 1hr/weekday, 2hr/weekend
• Orator and multilingual
• Pass the HSK 1 and 2
• Be able to read a Japanese newspaper by 32
• Financially responsible
• Buy another property

I’ve also come up with a personal mission statement, which I will post in my next blogpost. I will review this mission statement on my birthday and judge myself against how I acted in these principles.

I will also come up with a list of alternative activities I can do other than mindlessly browsing and YouTube, such as watching a TV series or reading a fiction book.

Here is my 5 year plan I came up with when I was 29 for reference.

5 year plan:

• Form a clear identity - be able to answer below questions and live by it:
• What is my brand?
• What is my calling?
• Impact society for the better
• Climate change
• Work in one of the below industries
• Key technology
• Artificial intelligence
• Solid state battery
• Cold fusion
• Growth sector
• Offshore wind
• Pumped hydro
• Space and satellite
• Fintech - insurance, blockchain, stable-coin
• On-track to retire by 40
• 10M net worth = 5M net worth by 35
• Secured from lawsuit (Delaware company for holdings, trust, will)
• 50/50 real estate/capital market