It's about drive, it's about power, we stay hungry, we devour
Put in the work, put in the hours and take what's ours xD

Introduction #

what the year is not about:

• not about doing a lot of research.
• not about making a lot of money

what the year is about(ordered by priority):

• about making your mind and body healthy
• about building pipelines for inspiration, planning, execution and money
• about going back to the fundamentals
• about fixing human relationships
• about building things that puts me in the habit of building
• about putting myself in a position where i can help myself and others if required
• about taking long term bets

All of this is also based on the fact that accomplishing my goals in “certain ways  ” will bring me true joy(i am pretty sure about this one). 2023 should be the year when the research finally starts happening, where the real money starts flowing in. In this process there will be a lot of study, practice, failures, experimentation, careful operation and ruthless prioritization.

Why? #

April'22, got diagnosed of adhd. writing this in June'22 and still haven’t got my meds. It’s that bad. But what I ultimately realized is that my strongest issues are with:

• retention of information: do not retain shit, recall seems fine
• extreme procrastination: will tell you someday later
• extreme dependence on mood for productivity: dependence on things that i do not have complete control over yet
• quickly getting overwhelmed: terrible management of energy and time

based on my quirks  and specifics all of the above can be addressed with proper note-taking(at-least it’ll be a sensible start)

Last year(‘21), i watched a lot of videos by Russell Barkley  on adhd, which made me doubt if i am a goat here. Based on recent diagnosis, information i gathered from the videos and past experimentation/experiences i have decided that i need to change certain things so that i do not face such difficulty in doing simple day to day tasks.

i am writing this in June'22, but the year still ends for me in Dec'22.

About existence #

• > be me
• > good enough kid in school
• > 23, realize been living life on absolute autopilot
• > two years of realizations passes by
• > 25, code monki wagecuck
• > quit job for mental health reasons
• > decide that need to touch grass
• > invent own meaning of life: live for others, catch is i need to fix myself first.
• > fixing self is important
• > other things will follow

other things:

• I am no longer going to spend my time and energy revolving around other things.
• I am focusing on myself, and people i care about. Once that’s taken care of we’ll move up.
• I tried my best to carefully craft my environment this time, it’s not perfect but good enough. I have optimized my environment for:
  • Happiness: so that i can get into a good mood as fast as possible.
  • Peace of mind: taking care of my family so they can take care of themselves and it’ll not be a constant worry in my head.
• This time it probably should work, I have been consistently failing at this goal thing since ‘16. My wins should be spectacular for myself and nobody else.

I found this awesome table by shreyas on twitter  , i found it very relatable to how i am trying to fix my life, so i wrote a slightly modified version of it for me:

about lifestyle(🐦):

The preferred lifestyle should dictate your business decisions, not vice versa.

• Work is something you do that lets you earn minimum necessities
• Your business should improve your life
• Variable income is a good stressor
• Try different things & find out your preferences

Moats #

• Friends: Make friends in general. Make friends with people you’d generally not hangout with. Make friends with people all around the world, with people from cities you want to visit. learn how to effortlessly take care and nurture friendships.
• Fixes: Fixes need to be internal rather than external. Not leaving any thought unaddressed.
• Balance: Do not seek work life balance, seek something you would happily sacrifice work life balance for. You won’t need balance that way, you’re the balance mfr.
• Execution: Under promise and over deliver. Create value for myself and for other people.
• Uncomfortable with self: Imposter syndrome is subjective and manifests itself differently for different people, for me it’s what @hillelogram mentioned on the bird site. It’s stupid but I feel like an imposter because I never was able to transform the cool side project ideas into reality.
• To think:
  • Identify my craft, it’s definitely not programming. Maybe it’s a lot of things.
  • Start becoming so good at “something” that you can teach people about it.
  • Define my worth
• To improve:
  • Analytical abilities
  • Creative abilities
  • Execution abilities
  • Competitive abilities
  • Attention to detail

Goals #

These are my goals for 2022:

Basic Human Goals #

I basically checked myself into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, my actions need to align with my needs:

• Health: Get yourself checked, check off possibility of any immediate danger
• Personal security: Add security cameras at home
• Emotional security: Fuck emotions, become god
• Financial security: Make enough.
• Family/Friendship/Intimacy/Trust/Acceptance: Be real, be around real
• Cognitive needs: Be around more curious people. Explore.
• Aesthetic needs: Let it flow for myself.
• Self-actualization: What a man can be, he must be.
• Transcendence needs: one finds the fullest realization in giving oneself to something beyond oneself. This is what I came to realize when I asked myself what’s the meaning of life real hard.

Better Person Goals #

These are things I’ll not be deliberately practicing, these are things that changes me as a person so I just need to be aware of these things.

• Gratitude
• Discipline
• Active listening
• Anger control

Mental Habit Goals #

• Document: Journal/Document everything including mood. (Self Quantification)
• Reading: Read books/papers/blogs, take notes.
• Sleep fix:
  • 8 Hour sleep
  • Socials offline, 1 hour before bed and 1 hour after waking up.
  • Wake-up with a mission, go to sleep with a plan for the next day and the mission. Clear your mind and body once you wake up.
• Understand perspective: Look at anything from at-least 3 different perspectives.
• Hard things: Do hard things daily, learn to use my tools(including phone) to the fullest.

Physical Habit Goals #

• Get Fit
• Fix posture
• Quit smoking

Skill Goals #

• [-] Learn
  • Swimming
  • CPR, Basic first aid
  • Guitar
  • Whittling
  • Pixel Art, Basic drawing
  • Lockpicking and stealing
  • How world works(economics), Business, valuation.
• [-] Improve
  • Math
  • DS & Algo
  • General programming practices
  • Security posture
  • P2P, Dist Sys
  • Shipping shit

Whole Goals #

These goals are vaguely defined by intent, these does not corelate to doing some task or doing a set of tasks. When these things will be done, i;ll know and then i can check them off. Here I mention of building two frameworks, one for ideation and one for execution.

• Write the masterplan. Have only one plan, no backups. Roadmap it 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. (starting: 25yo, ending: 40yo). After 40 you should not be worrying about planning things.
• Build pipelines for inspiration, planning, people and money (money not yet done). More like the eudaimonia machine but for your mind to work on different things. Includes self quantification.
• Build a framework where I can test/execute my prototypes in a safe, sandboxed manner. This framework should have good observability. It must have a fast feedback loop.
• Practice progressive iteration, create a safe ground so that you can inexpensively re-iterate. be willing to put out a half-baked idea into the world, and use the responses and feedback to continue iterating.
• Build a whole social media mafia thing, MLM of pages across social media. need distribution.

Income Goals #

• Introduce money plugs, making money should be a side-effect of what you do
• Start passive income, become a passive income mafia
• By year end, I should be making 7L a month
• Monetize every skill possible, become a whore for next 2-3 years. Study different markets.
• Build random things and then sell them. Make toys  and sell toys like this  . Learn toy product design.
• Do lot of Kickstarter kind of projects eg. ergonomic stand for computer table. lightweight and good looking whiteboard, with magnetic box holder in one corner etc.

Random Stupid Goals #

Just like a kid.

• Place “hooks”, make friends with dogs from different localities, make friends with birds and crows. Matrix shit.
• Get driving license
• Start some satirical movement like birds aren’t real
• Learn Dad skills (umm, cooking, how to tie knots etc)
• Become a storyteller, make people excited about your story. Create a narrative, break the narrative.
• Make eye patch, make pirate cosplay.
• Solve crime as a detective. Read books on criminal psychology and how to become a real detective etc. Up your reasoning skills.
• Do 100 random little things and pay attention to how you feel - visa
• Generate a wild thought pool