Ask HN: What’s your plan in 2019? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What’s your plan in 2019?

133 pointssunasra138 comments

Learning, startup or anything.

Be more conscientious about planning my days--and therefore my weeks, months, and years. I have been out of school for five years now and I noticed recently that time feels like it slipped through my fingers like water. I hardly know where it went. Of course I know logically where it went--I was living them, after all--but in some respect it feels like somebody else was living them because I lived without aim or purpose or direction, simply taking things day by day.

I deal with a lot of uncertainty and over-intellectualizing things and over-analyzing things, and I've realized that none of that has actually helped me move in my life, whether forwards or backwards. I've sort of stood in place, but you never really stand in place because things move whether you want them to or not, so in some way I've stagnated.

I want 2019 to be the year that I put an end to living like this, and instead give myself some direction to go in, whether I can see the end or not. I've been paralyzed by my inability to make decisions, and I want to put an end to that by forcing myself to make some decisions--things related to my career, side projects, health, etc.

Anyway, I'll quit rambling. I just don't want to keep living on autopilot as I am right now.

That’s a wonderful goal and resonates with me as well. Your first and second points stand in direct contrast to each other - being more conscientious and deliberate without over intellectualizing and dealing with decision paralysis. You might benefit from talking to a counselor or someone who can help prevent you from getting stuck thinking in circles.

I didn't even notice that, but I think you're right--the two points don't play well with each other.

I think what I meant to say is that what I tend to do is debate between doing multiple things, but then I end up doing none of them. I try to think things through--which thing would be best? which would help me the most?--but ultimately I sit there idly watching things go right past me. My goal in being more conscientious and deliberate is to cut through the decision paralysis and pick a decision and try to see it through to the end. What you mentioned resonates with me--getting stuck in thinking circles. I have been doing that for the past few years and maybe even the past decade if I'm being honest with myself. It hasn't been a pleasant place to be in, to say the least.

You should read the book The Slight Edge. It talks about the mindset to achieve what you're looking for.

And now my reading list has 283 items.

Just an extra nugget of food for thought - I'm all for "seeing [something] through to the end," as it shows a lot of grit and determination. But in your quest for being more decisive and deliberate, you can also give yourself room to fail or to quit or to change your mind. The road to success isn't always built on a single decision that you follow straight through like an arrow to a destination. Your path may meander, and your destination may change. It's all part of the journey. When his kids occasionally seemed "stuck," my father used to tell us "You don't have to take the perfect step, just take a step in the direction you think you want to go. Maybe it'll be right, maybe it won't, but then you look around, make a decision, take the next step and keep moving."

I think it’s not necessarily in contrast - what works for you may vary but I think that’s only the case when the time and energy it takes to make a decision isn’t part of your calculus. It’s good to be conscientious when you’re making decisions, especially weighty ones, so long as you don’t get stuck in a loop making that decision, which itself has a cost in your quality of life.

Build more long-lasting artifacts. As a software developer that has primarily worked in startups, most of which no longer exist, it can be frustrating to have nothing to show for the hours I’ve worked. I envy a friend of mine who works as a 3D animator on feature films who can point out the exact shots he’s responsible for and always has a permanent record of his efforts.

I recognize that software inherently lacks the shelf life that mediums like film enjoy, but I plan to at least partially achieve this goal by writing more often, contributing to open source more frequently, shipping and maintaining side projects, and striving to make the company I work for a success — steps that will give me something concrete that others find useful / enjoyable.

There is an additional issue to be faced here. I did a lot of open source in my teens and early 20s that's still sitting on SourceForge, but the last decade+ of my work is locked behind proprietary walls as well.. So while I have concrete things to point at, I wrote them all 10-15k hours of experience ago and they're all terrible and use long obsolete technologies (Borland Delphi, oh how I miss you..).

I completed my family this month. I have my dream job. I officially have everything I want in life, and now I just have to enjoy it all. So my focus is on:

- improving living, eating, exercise habits

- working on how not to lose perspective. I've turned down more money for more time with my family. I hope into my 30s I don't accidentally lose perspective on what's important. So far I think the trick is to live a poorer lifestyle than your income suggests you ought to, which drastically reduces all financial and employment pressure. Figure out how to persist this into the future.

- sing with my toddler more

- clean up the basement

- grok C++

> So far I think the trick is to live a poorer lifestyle than your income suggests you ought to

Yes. At times it's a bit frustrating when everyone else drives a nicer car, but on the other hand not having to worry about money at all is pretty sweet.

We are obsessed with status. And we compare it in everything we do.

Though I don't entirely subscribe to Dave Ramsey, he does have a point about the status symbol being a BMW (and how maybe it shouldn't be).

If you want money and have money, then options are fun to play with. Just beat the stock market.

" I hope into my 30s I don't accidentally lose perspective on what's important". True that. I had my son when I was 30 and he turned out to be autistic. High functioning tho, but still very challenging as a parent when ur child just doesnt fit into the mold. That came with a sacrifice from my career. I took low paying jobs to trade in for less responsibilities and more time to spend with my time. Here I am 10 years later dreaming to start my SAAS, having ensured that my child will have a better shot at being able to function in the society.

This was a surprisingly fresh perspective of goals. Thanks! All I was thinking was of more time on open source stuff, research, writing etc.

Thanks for mentioning enjoying life. I've been making habit changes these last few months and things are stating to stick!

> - sing with my toddler more

I've got a 4 month old that babbles non stop. I find myself singing and being silly all the time. I feel you on this.

> - grok C++

25 years experience, e-mail in profile if you want to talk about anything c++.

It's funny to hear you say you've completed your family I have an 18 year old, and I feel like I'm just getting into the real parenting.

Oh yeah no, I'm not saying I'm done. Just that we have both our sons now and no plans for more. Parenting isn't always hard but it's constant.

> So far I think the trick is to live a poorer lifestyle than your income suggests you ought to, which drastically reduces all financial and employment pressure

Yes. And then if you can find a high-paying job that allows you to work less than the typical 40 hour work week (eg: 20 hour work week) it'd be perfect, don't you think?

If you get the right boss who gets it it may be possible. I'd posit that if you gave me every Friday off instead of a nice raise, you'd still get as much productivity out of me.

Be more social.

I've lost touch with a lot of people over the past 5-6 years. I've jumped jobs, built up my career, moved locations, got married, had 2 kids, and I'm just naturally a home-body. One thing I've neglected is building and maintaining friendships.

Whether it just be going to a dinner party every week or so or just making plans with people that aren't my wife+kids, I should get out more.

I also really want to start playing D&D regularly again, so that might be a good place to start.

Working on being more social is something I’ve started to focus on as well. As someone who deals with mental health issues, I find great relief and satisfaction after spending time with friends.

I say this as someone who didn’t really do anything fun during the vast majority of college and tried to work hard.

Without spending time socially (outside of daily interaction) I was really just sabotaging myself.

Also, living on my own now and working a full time job, I think it’s important to focus on it to make sure I don’t let my mental health slip out of self imposed isolation (which has been a recurring theme in my life).

Still looking for that app/service that helps me stay connected with older friends in regular intervals WHILE ALSO being privacy centric and not leaking my entire social life to a corporation.

May I suggest Millow?

https://millow.app/#/learn

Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18380178 (159 points by jsherwani 51 days ago | 94 comments)

I was thinking about using an app for that but I don't think it would work. It has to come from inside. One thing which helps is that I stopped sending chat messages for birthdays. If I want to send a birthday wish I call the person and tell it in words and that we can talk about other things too.

8 hours of sleep per night. That’s it.

If I can nail this, everything else will fall into place. I’ll naturally drink less alcohol and eat better. In the last few months, I’ve experimented (via Apple Watch) with the impact that alcohol and diet has on sleep.

The book Why We Sleep, combined with habit theory, has had the greatest influence on this decision.

I got fired recently - always thought I was an natural early riser, would wake up at 6 on Sundays... but I'm sleeping two extra hours now that I don't use an alarm any day.

I’m sorry to hear that.

In a similar vein, 18 months ago I came out of an 11 year relationship. It took me a while after that to realise that my sleep cycle was not actually mine. Naturally, I’m a morning person but had been forcing myself to be a night owl to fit with my partner’s rhythm.

These unexpected but dramatic changes in our lives always lead to self-reflection and growth - if we let them.

I hope 2019 goes well for you!

Wowwww I relate so much to this. Every time I end a relationship with a “night owl” i get to rediscover that, like, “holy shit I’m actually a morning person, I was just compromising my sleep preferences for the old in-out!”

Morning sex between morning ppl >>>> evening sex between ppl with mismatched circadian rhythmzzz

This was my goal for the last seven months (since I read that book) and recently I decided to not use an alarm clock to wake up and instead be more careful of when I go to bed. I now sleep around 8h/night (so nearly 9h in bed) and i feel still energetic in the afternoons and evenings unlike when I was forcing myself to wake up early.

Where did this "8 hours" figure come from? I find it funny that people want to get this mysterious 8 hours of sleep while here I'm wanting to sleep less (I routinely get 9-10 hours or even more every night despite drinking coffee 2-3 times).

It's about getting 5 REM-NREM cycles of sleep. [1][2] The exact time varies from person to person and situation to situation, but roughly speaking the cycle takes 90 minutes and 5 * 90 min = 7.5 hours. Add some minutes lying in bed but not yet asleep, and you've got the 8 hours.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_cycle

[2] http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/what/sle...

Yes I think this 8 hour figure actually causes more people to lose sleep more than anything else.

The book Why We Sleep mentions some experiments comparing the difference between 8 and 7 hours per night. I haven't looked into the actual studies, but the book suggests that 8 hours of sleep opportunity is the ideal for most people.

Last few weeks my schedule has been sleeping 3 hours after my 9-5, then staying up until 3am, and sleeping the other 5 hours then.

Breaking up the days like that makes it easier for me to reset at night which means I go to the 24-hr coworking space more often than usual (4 or 5 times a week lately). This year I'm focusing more on smaller, niche, SaaS type projects to build a business, rather than some big startup idea that has no real plan for monetization.

I have had a similar "cornerstone habit" for several years now, with the same underlying assumption: if I can get this one thing right, the rest of my goals and habits will fall into place much more easily.

However, I've formulated the habit slightly differently:

Turn off all devices by 830pm

I have an alarm on my phone that goes off at 820p to let me know all devices need to be powered off in 10 minutes. That means no phone, no computer, no TV, no iPad, etc. The only exception is my Kindle.

What I've personally found is that if I don't have any devices to distract me, 90% of the time I'll start to get sleepy before too long. This makes going to bed at 9p or 930p so much easier. This is especially true after my body has adjusted to a week or two of going to bed early and getting up early. I do occasionally get stuck in a book and stay up late reading, but it's pretty rare, and I don't usually have that stupid addiction feeling I get with Hacker News or Reddit where I'm not even enjoying myself anymore but I just can't seem to put the phone down and go to bed, even though it's 12:30am and I wanted to wake up early.

Previously, when my goal was to get up by a certain time or to get a certain amount of sleep, I was in a constant war between two versions of myself: the one that wanted to stay up late and the one who wanted to get up early, get more sleep, etc. Shifting to just turning off devices at a certain time in the evening has proven to be a lot easier to conform to and still get the same end result.

I have two big goals:

- I want to complete my CS degree, get a post-graduation work permit (I am a US citizen going to school in Canada), and find a full time job

- I'd like to learn to deal with my anxiety better. I have a diagnosed disorder, and lately it has made it incredibly difficult to enjoy doing things outside of my comfort zone. I often have problems eating and socializing, and I would like to start seeing a therapist and develop coping skills to deal with the shit that goes on in my mind.

Leave the shell of a company that sucks the happiness out of me, and move somewhere warmer.

Just curious, what about your current job sucks the happiness out of you?

My company used to have great employees, who I learned a lot from and to this day respect. I've been there 9 years now. At the first sign of trouble, the brightest left. At the next sign of trouble, the next brightest left, and so on and so forth. I don't necessarily think of myself as not bright, but being remote it was a great job compared to my city. Each iteration of trouble I watched the people I respect leave, and those I didn't latch on for power. Now it's in a freefall... I've had 5 managers in the last year, we were bought by PE, and my team was replaced with a new team who are quite honestly the least talented people I've ever worked with. I've never felt less productive, and moreso like I absolutely don't care about the product, and it's very depressing to me. I don't hide my identity online, and don't care that they inevitably see this message.

Definitely find a new job. Take the courage to face the uncertainty. That's what I did, and I'm happier than before.

Think of it is as the mental equivalent of all those physically risky activities people do (mountain climbing, etc.). It can actually be quite exciting.

Am in the same boat but you put the matter much more succinctly than I could. Thanks.

Get the home project completed, so it goes out of head and checklist. 1. I am building am application using firebase, AppEngine & Cloud functions using node.js, Java previously used to be personal desktop reporting application using mysql(stock analysis), now trying to learn GCP and implement it there. Since my GCP free days are going to be over soon less that 60 days and reading too many articles make me wanna think. Can I do a google certification with what I know or even attempt. That's point 2.

2. Do Google or AWS certification. Well everybody I know of in office or friends are doing AWS certification, I never heard of any body doing Google certification is it hard or less job opportunities. I am professionally a mainframe Db2 DBA certified and being a DBA liked the concept of RTDB firebase started learning it and love it that how I got lured in gcp. Anybody here on any experience on GCP certification and what are thing I should learn to Even attempt ?

3. Get back to running marathon & exercising. This was scratched to get point 1 completed in 2018. I should try walking in 2019.

4. Have to get the thought process aligned. I would say I am a bad designer or architect. I plan something write it down and write all the steps and do it and after some time redo that entire thing in some other better way sometimes entire thing is changed and gives better results. Frustrating thing is double the time to do one thing. So have to focus on practical things rather than too much details or fancy things.

5. Meet friends often, this was also scratched to get point 1 completed. Whenever we meet we drink that takes away 3days(hang over day + pending things from previous day + sometimes destroys ideas & motivation). One thing happy about is keeping myself occupied and less drinking (only two times this year. Thats equal to sober). Next year hang out with friends and keep off alcohol.

- spend 200h at the gym, like in 2018.

- sustain my passive income of ~€28k (http://herrmann.io)

- improve my file manager https://fman.io

- find one new source of (passive) income

- More trail running next year.

- Finish at least 2 books from my shelf (https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5198521-aljohn?shelf=t...)

2018 has been a lean year for me. Even though career-wise, I am doing alright, I am a little depressed about not being able to achieve certain things I thought I would by the time I am 30 [I'm 31]. I don't know why I am writing here as I am usually private about my feelings on this topic. Perhaps because none of my friends/colleagues in my social circle would come across this post. My greatest regret right now is being unable to give back to the society I come from in terms of improving the education system there. I have received so many gifts in life, but my desire to contribute back is getting lost in the travails of life.

This year I must concentrate harder than ever before.

Targets:

1. Get a tenure-track faculty position in a good institution

2. Develop an EdTech idea I have in mind

3. Say no to more things. More deep work on smaller number of things than ever before.

4. Upgrade my Python and HPC skills

5. Spend more time with my family

6. Stop postponing "life" like I did in 2018 in anticipation of career breakthroughs. Go see Europe or South America for a few weeks.

7. Washboard abs by summer? ;)

Dude kudos for giving back to your education system and to your community. I wish more people felt like that where I am form. I wish to do the same after school and currently I see a good momentum at my school, but I fear bureaucracy and system will not only hugely slow things down but even stop. I wish you all the best in the following year.

Thanks! I try to do whatever little I can. By I hope I can do something bigger and more scalable than that.

Hope you finish school and fulfill your dreams. :) In the HN bubble, it's easy to forget most students don't have access to even basic good quality education.

My biggest goal is to try to better organize the flow of information that I process on daily basis. I deeply enjoy reading and learning new things just about everything, but during the past couple of years, I have been feeling that quality of information I process has been steadily going down, retention decreasing and FOMO steadily increasing.

This comes in different forms:

- Filtering my numerous feed (Facebook, Quora, LinkedIn, Telegram, etc.) better.

- Developing a better routine around reading save articles. Currently I use Pocket + P2K to read things on the Kindle, it works pretty well, but definitely room for improvement

- Improving usage of org-mode to better store information. Maybe taking https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/

And I guess just learning to let go some things that are not essential

Would love to know your current org-mode setup and workflow.

A lot of it is based on http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html, which I used when first learning org-mode. I made some modifications, mainly around easier task switching and reports

Qualify for 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Awesome. What sport?

Qualify for Olympic trials? Or are you in a sport/nation that you just have to hit a target qualification?

I am completely clueless and confused.

I’m 23 yr old working in a dead end job at Oracle. Each day of my work just makes me feel more drained and irrelevant. I’m unable to change company because of visa (I’m on l1). I am split between changing the team or leaving USA for London/India for good.

Leaving USA is a risky career proposition - which also pulls me towards doing a masters so that I can stay in US few more years and work on OPT without restrictions. However my friends who are currently pursuing masters are not getting jobs easily, which makes me wonder again. All these worries never give me enough time to pursue my dream of enterprenuership and starting up something seriously.

So many considerations, so many thoughts and a very confusing year ahead for me.

Will your company sponsor you for a green card? My understanding is the green card process is significantly shorter if you are on an L1. That outcome would give you maximum flexibility with regards to working and living in the US

It’s shorter only on L1a. I have L1b. I don’t get any such benefits.

Why don't you try a good MSc program, perhaps in Europe where you can find great places with free tuition?

Physical - Body fitness: 3 month: Increase reps to 2 per workout, experiment with 2 days and 3 days between to find out how to increase strength. Cardio once per week, 5-10 minutes 6 month: Increase strength to 3 sessions per workout day. Cardio 15-20 minutes. 1 year: Increase mass to 140 lbs 2 year: Increase mass to 150 lbs Body wellness: 1 month: Stop drinking coffee 6 month: Stop eating sugar Stop masturbating to porn. 1 year: Stop picking lips (and stop using balm) 2 year: Investigate ways to heal ‘permanent’ damage (left wrist, right hand, right foot, neck, back, breast, eyes) 3 year: Heal 2 ‘permanent’ damage

Intellectual: Learn to program: 6 month: Complete 2 to 3 courses on edx, create simple program. 1 year: Complete 5 to 6 courses, complete moderately complex program or contribute to same open source. 2 year: Complete 10 to 12 courses, contribute to complex program/large codebase. Right brain things: 2 month: Stop reading news. 6 month: Write weekly post, 3 paragraphs or more, about a topic of personal interest. Paint or craft 1 work of art. 1 year: Write 2 weekly posts or make two weekly videos 6 paragraphs or more on a topic of personal interest. Paint or craft 3 works of art.

Spiritual/emotional Job: 3 month: Work on expunging record 6 month: Work in a place that doesn't strain body, try out beekeeping to become more independent 1 year: Work for government or self in programming or computing. 2 year: Working prototype for $SECRET_VIDEO_GAME 5 year: Release $SECRET_VIDEO_GAME Family: 6 month: Have family dinner every Tuesday, join or create social group to foster encouraging socialization, became more vulnerable with wife and stop criticizing her. 1 year: Family dinner Tues, have weekly social meetings with diverse and encouraging groups, speak only integrously with wife and don't direct aggression at her. 2 year: Have healing conversations during weekly family dinner, try and integrate extended family and friends with the dinner and foster healthy relationships that contribute to growth, try to actively develop more intimacy with wife. Subjectivity and reality: Observe, relax more often, be in others' shoes, "educate" less. Discover highest life purpose.

Do lots of projects which I'm yearning to do. It will consist of game engine, OS related stuff (probably some driver), databases etc

I like to call it 2FA - Fitness, Finance, Autonomy. All my activities will be around these themes, viz. Getting healthier, learning more about personal finance and planning around self-sufficiency in as many aspects of life as possible.

What would you like to learn more about personal finance? That’s something I’m well versed in and want to teach and write about in the coming year.

I am not the person to which you are asking, but I would be _very_ interested in more detailed ways on how to correctly diversify investments in the most safe way possibile.

Personal Money management and how to maximize it through informed investing.

I would add an additional F, Family. It might mean getting closer to your siblings and parents, or it might mean working on your relationship with your partner or kids, when everything is said and done this one probably is the thing that most people are happiest or saddest about when they look back on their life.

I agree. Fortunately I have been working on family bonding since beginning of 2018. It so happens that we take close family for granted and end up paying more attention to our work, colleagues and friends. But just like any relationship, family bonding needs work. Our cousins do it by grooming and eating lice off of each other. We should do something similar, appropriate to modern standards.

Vacations, however short, work pretty well.

1. Start getting help for my depression and other mental health related issues. I've been dealing with depression for years now, been officially diagnosed about two or three years ago. I've had a few sessions with a therapist last year but I've broke off all contact with them since. I also have another mental problem which keeps me from eating 90% of food, which makes social gatherings in restaurants etc. a pain.

2. Start exercising more. I've bought myself some dumbbells earlier this year, and I've used them less than I'd like to admit. I wanna gain some strength to protect myself and other people from others, as well as have the strength to help people with moving etc. since i had to help with that a few times this year.

3. Get back into programming as a hobby. I'm slowly starting to regret turning my hobby into my job. I love programming, but when i get home from work i have no energy nor enthusiasm left to touch any of my personal projects. I'd love to add a bunch of planned features to my website which has about 1.4k unique users a day on average, but i need to get my motivation back first.

4. Contribute more to open source. This year I've made a whooping 4 pull requests to open source projects. Half of them one-liners. I've been part of this community for a while now and i feel the need to return something to it.

5. Do more volunteer work. I've donated to a lot of charities this year, but there's only so much money i have left at the end of the month. I have a lot more free time than money, so I plan on spending some of my afternoons a bit different.

> 2. Start exercising more.

Here's what worked for me:

1. Accept that 1 > 0. If I could only make it to the gym for 10 minutes on the bike, great! 10 minutes of working out is better than zero minutes! It's not about doing your _ideal_ workout, it's about _doing any sort of workout_.

2. Optimize for time & comfort. I don't mean that your workouts should be easy, they should challenge you. However, I realized that I was wasting lots of time planning/reading/worrying about devising the "perfect" workout routine. This was eating up spare time. So, I went with the simplest routine that seemed like it would be good for me: alternating between endurance & HIIT workouts. I got an interval training app for my phone & apple watch, and used it on interval days, just used the apple watch's workout app for endurance days. Simple and totally doable. Now that I can't go to a gym, I'm alternating between doing 30 min runs and HIIT runs or just HIIT burpees in the garage.

3. Pay for expertise. This goes to my point above, but I paid for a personal trainer to show me how to do a kettlebell workout. We just met a few times, it didn't cost much, and it was useful. When I think about the time and stress I saved myself by just learning from the trainer, the expenditure ($30/30 min I think?) was completely worth it. Wound up not sticking with kettlebells (keep meaning to pick them back up...should just pay a trainer again), but that's OK.

Good luck. Doing regular exercise does wonder for mental health, too. Just accept that the effects are cumulative :).

#2 relates to choosing exercise type.

Running, cycling, weightlifting, calisthenics, swimming, dance, team sports, yoga, etc.

There's some theoretically "optimal" thing there, but the real optimal thing is the one that you'll do.

I am working on ideas that will make money for me while sleep. Will spend more time with family and friends doing the real work. Saying goodbye to social media sites.

1. continue learning Chinese (4+ years already)

2. get a new quant job

3. improve my marriage. It's been awesome for 12 years now.

4. continue taking time to read each day but vary my subject matter even more.

Why Chinese?

I work/ed for companies that have a high percentage of Chinese employees. It was easier to learn Chinese than translate everything back and forth.

How have you been learning Chinese? I am adding learning how to read/speak Mandarin to my 2019 list.

When I started took a 101 and 102 Mandarin class. It was the only class I was taking so I gave my whole attention. I studied for several hours each day. I practice my handwriting every day still. YouTube videos of Chinese sitcoms are helpful to watch.

I can read and write well but my speaking has always struggled. I don't hear as well as others and I often can't tell which tone I am using or the other person is using.

I am taking my first step towards independence and also taking a big gamble. I will take a loan to do a masters in a field I have no previous experience in.

This is an interesting goal. I'm hoping that the field you are choosing to pursue is not arbitrary and that there is some sort of plan to this. If so I wish you luck.

Learn how to invest - it seems to be relatively simple (especially if you're a news nerd like most peple here) but emotionally deceptive. Not many people in Australia are doing it (past their regular Super/401k-equivalent).

I've started to read the 'classic' books (The Intelligent Investor for example), and will probably do some paper trading before I jump into the 'real' thing

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started

Obviously Australia will have it's own peculiarities but still a great resource!

I'd recommend reading "The Four Pillars of Investing" by William Bernstein (and making any adjustments for Australia).

1. Continue to lose weight - i've lost 10 pounds the past month, would like to lose 30 more.

2. Work through PentesterLab Pro - past couple times I would get halfway through the first badge and just stop. This time I am pairing it with Anki cards.

3. Continue getting 7-8 hours sleep, been doing this since I read 'Why We Sleep'

4. Learn Ruby/Rails build a handful of applications.

1) Gained back some weight due to holiday stress/drinking. Going to hard cut for a bit and try and get below 15% BF.

2) Try and get into some professional programming, deep into the internals of golang.

3) Do the entire "Math for Programmers" Book

4) Get into FPV Drone Racing. Autonomous flight. Have some ideas surrounding INAV and a 5" Quad that I have.

5) Figure out how not to dread existence.

1. Learn Spanish. I have always been fascinated by people who speak multiple natural languages and have started learning spanish recently by talking with people on iTalki and doing various exercises around the internet. I would like to get to the B1 level by the end of the year. As part of this I would like to practice every day.

2. Move from test developer to regular application developer. I finished school and started my job 4 years ago and have not gotten a promotion or even change in position since. I have been living on autopilot and I need to take more charge. I would like to make software engineer, get a promotion or move jobs if those aren't possible by the end of 2019.

3. go on more dates. Another thing I haven't done enough of is dating. remedy this in 2019

* Officially launch byobudget.com - my first side project, hopefully on new years day.

* Continue at my day job.

* Have another child (crossed fingers)

* Being more kind, patient, understanding and towards my fellow man.

* Quantify myself - weight, food and sleep tracking, along with room temperature tracking

* Do a handstand for 60 seconds without support.

* Better manage my money

* Get good with the $20 dollar drone I got today :)

* Build stronger binds with my family.

How is your handstand now? Doing a decent handstand was one of my goals for this year that I didn't quite make, but I'm getting there. They're harder than I ever imagined!

Otherwise looks like an excellent set of goals :-)

Improving diet and exercise habits.

Diet > more plant based

Exercise > more “zone 3” cardio training and maintenance level weightlifting.

Curious why more plant based is considered an improvement?

This is obviously subjective, but I feel like my meals are "cleaner" when I eat lots of greens/veggies along with meat. I don't do strict keto, but avoid carbs as much as possible, mostly because of that lazy slump feeling I get after eating them.

I’m not going full plant based but comparing how I’ve felt in various points in my life with various diet compositions, I felt a bit better overall with a bit higher vegetable content.

I'd like to just find my passion for this industry again. This year has slowly worn me down to where my interest is now escaping it in my off time rather than exploring.

It scares me that something I've always loved is finally turning into a job. Maybe that's normal though.

Find a new job before I'm outsourced/laid off at IBM's newest acquisition.

I wish IBM could turn itself around

Health and Fitness needs to be number 1 - part of that is reducing alcohol intake which is difficult as I am part of a very active social group which has a lot of alcohol and drug abuse.

Financially - reducing my cost base and actually getting to a new highest "net worth" figure (I've spent a lot on self education which has been very fruitful but I need that "fuck you money")

Otherwise I need to diversify my income and move towards operating my own businesses - either contracting or a bootstrapping an info product. I think I need to bite the bullet and rebuild my income as 100% location independent because I hate the daily commute so much.

Jack, I was in a similar place regarding your H&F statement not long ago.

I have halved my standard drink intake to maybe ~20 a weekend now and I feel SO much better on a daily basis now (probably due to sleeping better on the weekends).

What helped me curb the rampant binge drinking/partying was a renewed focus on software projects I had been meaning to work on, and training for local races (10ks, half marathons).

I am sure you will succeed as you have already identified what you can divert the time and energy to.

I am on maybe 20 a week at the moment - main problem is the cost (which is probably $160 AUD a week) and how it makes the next morning/next few days useless while your body recovers.

Hope you continue succeeding!

It sounds like it's not too much of an issue for you yet, but you do see the affects drinking/drugs has on you. It's good that you are able to sense this before it has a chance to take hold of you. I was an alcoholic/addict for many many years and remember laughing it off when ex-addicts or recovering alcoholics would tell me that they were so much happier when they'd quit. Now I understand what they meant.

Though I'm wondering if there's ever a possibility for us obsessive-addicts type to be able to reach a comfortable and well-balanced place where we can enjoy a drink or two without everything spiraling out into madness. Probably not...

> but I need that "fuck you money"

By definition you don't.

- Switch over to a mouse-less workflow.

- Stop being so negative and cynical.

- Stop caring about things outside of my control.

- Train my body harder.

- Learn a new instrument.

- Learn all the songs off one classic record. Probably an early Megadeth one.

- Read more books.

- Write regularly.

- Touch my toes. Handstand. Etc.

An old-school, pay-for blogging platform in the indieweb vein.

I should graduate after the upcoming Spring semester with a bachelor degree in CS. After that, I want to find a decent full-time job as a software engineer.

Leaving the industry.

a.)Need to read complete these books

   1. The Personal M.B.A
   2. Running Lean 
   3. Thinking Lean
   4. The Automatic Customer 
   5. Bankable Business Plans 
   6. A programmer's introduction to mathematics

b.) I have a starup idea in education to shorten learning curve using education games, this is what I am planning.

   1. Build M.V.P of educational games that teaches mental models or popular concepts or ideas release them on HN, take feedbacks. 
   2. Release a beta product
   3. Grow the business to earn a living out of it.

c.) Writing

    1.) If everything goes fine, my book on Ripple will be launched in January 
    2.) I need claim back my top writer in innovation, technology titles on Medium 
    3.) Learn to write content that are scarce, indispensable and deep

d.) Open Source Leadership

     1. Find good problems to solve 
     2. Make a simple solution, open source the code. 
     3. Build a community and let it grow
     4. Go back to Step 1

Be sure to follow up with a post about your ed-tech product. I made educational games for my senior thesis project a while back and I always looking for other people in the sector! P.S. Thanks for the book list, I have added a few to my list for 2019.

- Learn and grok Rust.

- Get certified on RHCSA, AWS, etc.

- Continue learning German

- Find a new job that allows me relocate to Germany / Switzerland

- Find new sources of passive income

This is a note for my future self that I will come back to this. 1. Complete Beta of my "AI" SAAS offering and do a ShowHN in Q1. 2. Do a series of Medium posts with a deep dive on the Why, What, who and where? 3. Launch on PH, Reddit and start collecting feedback. 4. Go back to step 1 and repeat.

Wrote a blog post: https://manu-chroma.github.io/blog/ramble/exploration/2018/1...

Hopefully find different employment (with hopefully better pay and room for advancement) but based on all the rejections this year (between a previous bankruptcy and no degree I'm effectively an undesirable) I don't hold much hope. Last year I had one company hire me, never once ask about my financial history, then terminate me while I was asleep the night of my first day of work after they discovered my bankruptcy (seriously, no document or paperwork even asked unlike every application I've ever filled out that specifically asks, nor did any of the people interviewing me or onboarding me) and this year I didn't get notification either way from a half dozen companies and rejected after interviews with several others, one of which had me do three video interviews which may be common for tech type jobs but here in the Midwest anything past 1 interview means "unless you're a wanted fugitive, we're hiring you", that was pretty defeating.

I just can't do this job much longer and my primary employer keeps doing annoying things:

- This is the first year they didn't give us a Christmas card and as a Christmas gift they informed us food trucks will no longer be allowed to come here as it violates the corporate solicitation policies... despite the fact they are food trucks we've been finding for years and inviting them to come out because we get tired of eating microwaved food and 30 minutes isn't enough time to drive anywhere, get food, drive back and eat it and eating at desks is forbidden.

- They told us they'd be bringing more jobs to our location... I went from having 1 manager and 1 team lead to having 1 manager, 3 team leads and what is basically a 'jr' team lead. All 3 of my team leads have been here half the time I have. They did this for every team and in every single case promoted people with considerably less time at the company/in the industry than a good chunk of the applicants.

- Banned most decorations for holidays

- Made our insurance worse yet again

- Gave us a Trump tax break 'bonus', except to our pensions, and gave us an out-of-cycle cost of living increase (which if you read the fine print, did away with our next merit based increase meaning instead of 6ish months away the next one would be 18 months away).

- Continues to highly discourage any talking or socialization by placing a team lead or the 'jr' team lead-like individual in every single row to watch every single employee.

- Etc

I hope you have left a Glassdoor review for them.

If I ever leave I plan to but even if I was fairly vague, there aren't a lot of people that have been here as long as I have. If I mentioned most of the stuff that's progressively gotten worse it would put me on a list of maybe 8 people that had been here that long and only 3 of us in my position.

Griping without directly mentioning them is one thing, complaining on something specifically linked to them is another.

I am Planning to learn SEO and affiliates things,i have just lunched https://www.tweetvideo.info/ twitter video downloader tool for learning process.

* Finishing my degree.

* Weekly goals: 10KM in runs, writers pages, meditation, being more put together (varying uniform from T-shirt, jeans and trainers).

* Making money in the markets (should be a good time to short)

* Becoming a whiz at linear algebra and data structures.

Leave tech

as an occupation or like getting "off the grid"?

My plan is to show "Oh By"[1] to one million people.

The idea has always been that I have no idea what Oh By is good for and that someone (or many) will come up with surprising and interesting use-cases.

Recently on HN I was reinspired by the Tim May[2] interview[3] in which he said:

"... the street will find its own uses for technology ..."

Surprise me!

[1] https://0x.co

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18690492

[3] https://www.coindesk.com/enough-with-the-ico-me-so-horny-get...

Interesting project. How many "Oh by"s have been created so far?

Finish the product I'm building with some friends and start selling it, so I can finally leave my current company.

Also, get more fit, since I'm starting to lose my ideal weight.

Same here. I have been living off my parents and building the product. Need to get it done. Good luck for your product and I wish you good health.

Same for you friend!

Finally start doing creative stuff: work on animated music videos, make music of my own, develop my drawing skills, play some guitar.

Also, get into the habit of volunteering.

Pass CFA Level 1

Lose another 100 pounds. Get an MVC of my web-based DBMS onto GitHub. Learn trumpet.

learn D, work out a realistic timeframe/plan to move back home (country not my parents house), travel domestically more, get back into a routine of riding my bike regularly.

Plus like a million other things.

I really start and finish writing the first draft of a book this year.

this november i left my job. i have lots of stuff to do

1. work on a project. hope that will generate some money. 2. start YouTube for fun 3. working out again 4. enjoying my time off

My Plan

  - Startup in FMCG(targeting rural area of India)

  - Books - Vision 2020(By APJ Abdul Kalam), Changing India(By Manmohan Sigh)

  - Investments

Do more cardio.

Align with BogleHead philosophy.

Use less stuff.

Learn more Go and Kubernetes.

Launched Draftss.com this year.

Currently at $7,000 MRR and aiming to achieve $50,000 MRR by end of 2019.

Planning to launch 2 more products in the first quarter.

Under the section "No Binding or Contract" there is a typo.

"Subscribing to ur services" should be "Subscribing to our services"

Your site took almost a minute to load. I'm from the UK if that helps.

- Launch couple of projects based on ideas that have remained with me for last couple of years.

- Spend 300 hours in Gym

- Apply to YC

- Pay off loan

My goals are : Learn how to invest Making $10,000 month Travel

Give up alcohol.

Start with an app, I use "Sober Time".

eat healthier and lose 10 Kgs of weight

ditto.

Good luck !

Find a good girl and get married!

Scale Narwhal kloudtrader.com/Narwhal and make it profitable so that I can pay myself. And introduce kloudtrader’s other financial solutions.

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