Happy New Year HN! What are your plans for the new year? | Hacker News Reader

Happy New Year HN! What are your plans for the new year?

225 pointsMasterYoda290 comments

Happy New Year HN

First: Thanks for all great submissions and for all high quality and interesting comments from all you users here on HN.

Second: Do you have any plans for the new year, new skills to learn, excited over any new project, looking forward to something, should you do anything different this year, etc?

Personally I never had any "new year promises", neither this year, but I have at least a "goal/plan" this year, to do something different; Consume less, create/learn more. It is so easy just surf the web consuming stuff because you are bored, that in the end gives you nothing/little in the end. This year I will try to use more of my time to try to learn stuff that interest me or can be useful. I probably will fail miserably, but at least its a plan :) And now I have said it, on the internet, so best I stick to it :)

Once again Happy New Year

View on HN

My goal for the next year is just to work fewer hours. Covid pushed my work habit to the extreme, and I need to rebalance.

1. Read more books, less social media/news.

2. Spend more time with my friends. I haven't seen some of them IRL for more than a year.

3. Exercise more, play tennis with my daughter, spend quality time with my kids.

4. Spend more time with my parents. They've become visibly older in the last years, an observation that scares me.

5. Focus more on marketing for the businesses that I've bootstrapped. All the shiny new features that are developed are not as important as getting more people to use your product.

6. Promote open-source project to 1k GitHub stars[1]. I know it isn't very meaningful, but it's just nice to receive a bit of recognition from the community.

7. Enjoy life, don't stress about all the little things that happen along the way.

Happy new year!

[1] https://github.com/AddictedCS/soundfingerprinting

(Not trying to criticize, just curious)

Are the open source work and the business marketing part of/all of the “work” that you want to do less of? If so, what is your plan for balancing doing less of it while still trying to accomplish those goals?

I'm really not good at marketing. Essentially I have to learn how to do it first. I plan to spend more time learning this new skill and then applying it. I've been recommended this [1] course, and if anyone can recommend something that worked for them, that'd be great.

Balancing it with other duties is going to be hard, though I will try to explicitly divide my time into "one-week marketing / one-week dev work." Inside each week, I will try to have days fully reserved for non-work activities.

Programming keeps me in this perpetual cycle of "one more thing for today/this week" which locks me in the IDE without end in sight. I will postpone any dev work that needs to be done until "dev work week" arrives.

[1] - https://devmarketing.xyz

I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear, and also listened to some process philosophy from Steven West's Philosophize This. One takeaway that I had was on the danger of setting goals. I am trying to build a mindset of 'becoming' or to embrace the journey of the goal rather than really trying to achieve a specific milestone.

- I want to reduce/eliminate my alcohol consumption to become a person that doesn't rely on alcohol for social distraction or self-medication. To achieve this I have stopped keeping any alcohol in my home. If I have a drink it will need to be out somewhere and by virtue a 'special occasion'.

- I want to improve my work-life balance by setting expectations that I am unavailable after 5pm. I aspire to be someone who can remain a high performer while also finding and following my passions. This year I will continue to shape those passions. There is no real milestone that I feel I need to set.

I like the idea of pushing the journey to the forefront. My new year is trying to be more in the present and not take for granted the blessings I have.

* Congrats on removing alcohol from the home thats a big first step, keep that one aspiration and I think it'll have a profound impact. Not trying to push this at all , but CBD ( delta8 ) helped me with the cravings ( its kind of like the side effect of smoking weed, you're relaxed and somewhat sleepy but not 'stoned' ).

I will add, CBD and Delta8 are very different things. CBD is not like smoking weed, it's just relaxing and I believe what the parent is referencing. Delta8 can (and usually does) contain Delta8-THC, which is far more psychoactive than CBD (its purpose is to be a legal alternative to regular weed, its made to be as close as possible). Now, if you wanna actually smoke weed you can get weed that contains very low Delta9-THC (Delta9 is weed as we've known it for decades) with high CBD that will not get you (very) high.

I don't even know if Delta8-CBD exists but if you go somewhere and ask for delta8, it's going to get you high and potentially be very not relaxing. If you ask for CBD specifically, it will not be highly psychoactive. Just be careful out there these days, it's only getting more confusing and marketing heavy.

     > I want to reduce/eliminate my alcohol consumption...

same here. each year it just takes more and more out of me physically/mentally, this year really seemed to emphasize that. looking for 6 months here and then will re-evaluate. in the past breaking a sweat when the urge/opportunity arises has been pretty effective.

I have found AA and the community as a whole welcoming. I’ve spent the last 18 years of my life try to “control” my drinking. Not drinking on work nights, staying sober for months at a time but I always found myself down that slippery slope. The pandemic and work from home made it 1000% times worse. I didn’t have to shower or commute. I’d roll out of bed login, do standup and start drinking. It never affected my work. I’ve always gotten rave reviews. AA has changed my life in regards to family, physical well being and work. YMMV but if you’re interested the AA site has pdf versions and audio versions of the big book. The big book was an interesting read for sure.

I second this. The AA program is also about way more then not drinking and if followed is life changing.

To provide an alternate solution to the one already mentioned, I used a modern medicine approach to alcohol use disorder called The Sinclair Method. The tl;dr is that you continue to drink using an opioid antagonist (usually Naltrexone) which blocks the endorphins rewards from consuming alcohol and eventually you just stop caring about it.

For more information, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Alcoholism_Medication/, or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts, or https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoh... (warning: large pdf)

I used to drink socially. But every time it turned into a binge episode. And as it turns out, stopping drinking before the first one is the solution that works for me.

Sadly this did cause some social life problems. I had to mostly replace the people I hang out with.

Ever since I came across this concept of focusing on habits/systems instead of goals, I've been confused. Surely we need both?

Ali Abdaal expressed this well in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rkRC728rIU

I wish you all the best in your journey!

I think the concept is focusing on performing/developing the habits/systems required to achieve longer term goals. Kind of like focusing on what you can do today with what you have on hand for a project rather than focusing on finishing the whole project. For example, a goal under these guidelines might be "lose 10 lbs by July." The goal wouldn't be, "go to the gym 3x per week," or "eat X, Y, Z protein, carbs, and fat grams per meal." Those would be habits/systems to achieve the weight loss goal.

The goal in your example effectively becomes: become a person that is physically fit, dietary conscious. The lose 10lbs is like a side effect.

I really like this idea of "becoming" / "embracing" versus trying to achieve a specific end. As the adage goes, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

I'm trying to do something similar. I have this terrible habit--that I suspect many, many people also do--of thinking that "future me" will be far more capable than present me, that in one year I'll be less anxious, more courageous, less fearful, more outgoing, etc.

(On a smaller time scale, people who struggle with kicking bad habits do the same thing, myself included. I will tell myself, "starting tomorrow, I will once and for all stop {drinking too much soda, eating too much}!" Tomorrow-Me is Hercules, with the willpower of Zeus and the indomitable spirit of a world-class athlete. Of course I end up spending tomorrow drinking soda like a fish drinks water, only to tell myself that "tomorrow will be different.")

Inevitably what ends up happening is that one year from then I'm still the same person, and all I have done is kick the can down the road on so many opportunities--the party I didn't go to because I didn't know anyone; the lunch I made an excuse to skip because I was embarrassed that my old friends were farther along in life than I was (whatever that even means); the interview I turned down because I "wasn't ready yet." While doing these things, I told myself that some indefinite period from now, I'll be this perfect human who is ready to do all of those things, and that right now I'm a flawed person who isn't ready to do those things just yet.

But that perfect human never came to be, and the flawed human is what remains. It's tautological to say this, but nothing changes if nothing changes. I won't be magically courageous or outgoing one year from now if I don't actually embrace the nervous and shy person that I am today. And I hope that if I embrace it, accept that I'll fall and stumble, and try to make little progress along the way, then one year from now I can look back and say, "I'm still not a perfect human and never will be, but I'm satisfied that I did ___."

I and my SO have found that identity based habits work out way better. I recommend it

Can you explain what identity based habits are?

Taking a guess, it could be taking the identity "I want not a person that drinks alcohol" etc

I learned about it in a book by James Clear. See his article https://jamesclear.com/identity-based-habits ED: I must add that my comment support's parent's post, for they talked about identity based habits as well.

> I want to reduce/eliminate my alcohol consumption...

Tonight at midnight will be my 9th year alcohol free. For me personally, it has been wonderful not to depend on alcohol.

No matter what you do, just take it one day at a time and best of luck.

Steven West podcast is amazing!

Someone told me they set a meeting from 6pm till 9am next morning on their calendar (Outlook) that was marked as “Out of Office”. I didn’t know you could do that, but without fail, their online status switches to OOO at 6pm.

I think it’s really good for setting expectations.

You should be able to set your working hours in Outlook. You specify days of the week and start and stop time. In your calendar when people look to book meetings in times outside of your office hours the time will be grey or some other shade.

My notifications in Teams and Outlook stop coming to my phone in my off hours. You may need to go to the phone settings and change notifications to say do not notify outside of work hours or something similar.

Count me among the many ex-drinkers here.

I had a sip of champagne about 10 years ago, prior to that my last drink was probably around 2002 or so.

I don't miss it a bit. Stopping drinking is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Happy new year!! Everyone.

I want to finally get my first job as a developer. I have been trying to transition into tech for the past two years. I have been teaching general and advanced mathematics in high schools here in Nigeria. My goal will be to finally land a programming job in 2022.

Anyone hiring or any senior looking to take a valuable junior under his belt I'm open to working, learning and adding great value. My email is in my profile. I look forward to hearing from anyone.

Hi Tolexx, I wrote a Twitter thread last year on how to get your first developer job - https://twitter.com/hrishio/status/1321389002273001473

I hope you find something useful in that. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to email me (in profile). Btw your email is not visible in your profile. You need to add it in the about field. The account email value is private.

All the best and happy new year!

Hi! I will definitely look at the twitter thread. I have been applying but haven't had any luck. I have gotten a few responses too but haven't landed any gig. I know it's a journey. At the moment I want to get on the job experience and get experience building projects within a team. I'm not asking much in terms of salary. Just working and gaining valuable experience. I have developed a few projects for myself, for friends and some clients.

My email is tolexreal7@gmail.com. Thanks.

Good luck! Having a math background is surely a plus!

Good luck!

Keep an eye out for the "Who is hiring?" Threads on the 1st of every month.

Hundreds of posts from within the community.

Yeah I do check that as well. There will be a post on that today.

Thanks everyone for your kind words and encouragement.

Good luck Tolexx!

Finding the first job is always really stressful, and I really hope you find what you are looking for.

Happy New Year!

Consume less = exclude myself from certain kinds of social relationships with other people, show less appreciation to the labor of inventors, engineers and people who make stuff with their hands (appreciation in action, not just in words)?

Everyone is entitled to live the way they prefer (within certain limits), of course! :) But I would want to “consume better” instead of “consuming less”.

Consume things made sustainably, buy quality products made by small/family businesses, purchase more services rather than goods, avoid consuming things made by big corporations under regimes that go against the values I believe in, support technologies that move humanity closer to the future that appears to be “a better future”, etc.. I hope that this does not sound too contrarian and does not offend anybody! Peace and happy New Year to everyone!

Show less appreciation?

I think they meant consuming less means showing less appreciation, since by consuming you’re purchasing something somebody made which is a form of showing appreciation.

I was under the impression he was trying to consume less online content rather then less goods.

Yep. My hobbies are very low energy and inexpensive, but I end up spending a decent amount of money and energy in traveling. I want to cut that down substantially starting starting next year.

I currently teach high school English. There is a great deal about the job that feeds my soul, but my engagement with the work has shifted markedly over the last few years and is starting to impact my happiness, my optimism for life, and my ability to be the husband and father I know I am. I believe it’s time to do something else.

Several conversations with tech folks lead me to believe that I would do very well in UX. I feel skeptical of boot camps, but here in Minneapolis the impression seems to be that Prime is a useful ‘box-check’ for obtaining a junior position. Any Twin Cities HN’ers have insight into whether (or to what degree) that’s true?

I feel apprehensive about the “flood of junior candidates, dearth of senior talent” dynamic.

Thoughts/comments/connections would be appreciated.

Email in profile.

> I feel apprehensive about the “flood of junior candidates, dearth of senior talent” dynamic.

Many people I know (myself included) are looking less at overall skillset and more for a good understanding of the fundamentals + a desire to grow and stick with a role (ethic).

That is, if you can focus on understanding the core principles of UX/design and show that you can apply those (usually by way of portfolio showing the desires, and therefore your comprehensive of the desires + the outcomes), that means a lot more because most teams realize that hiring someone is an investment and they know that it will take you time to understand how they work, their needs, etc.

I don't know that there is anything special about Prime over other reputable bootcamps. It might be easier to get a job in the agency world (since I know Prime has a lot of tie-ins to the industry) - which is fairly infamous for paying below market wages for entry level positions. I've personally never noticed a difference in candidate quality based on whether they did Prime or any other bootcamp.

Thank you for the insight. Any recommendations on how to gauge company reputations on the local level without having many industry connections? Are orgs like UXPA-MN worth a damn?

I don't know much about organizations like UXPA-MN.

I don't know if I have any good advice beyond the obvious things like Glassdoor. I worked a couple agency jobs early on in my career and while it was a good couple years for career experience, it was also my hardest working (as in hours) and least paying years I ever had. Once I switched to product development I found much higher quality jobs in both pay and work/life balance. That can be kind of tough to find in TC compared to other cities, though.

I was a math teacher for 5 years and have switched to web dev 5 years ago and have been loving it. I did have a bunch of personal web-dev experience, so it made switching careers pretty easy. But I wanted to share that it seems doable.

Since a lot of tech work is still people work (communicating clearly, managing expectations, etc), I suspect you'd be a better candidate than someone straight out of college.

Some of the best tech people I’ve met were history teachers in a previous life :P

Im a year into my ADHD diagnosis and have been finding treatment, techniques and accommodations that work for me.

My aim this coming year is to work smarter, not harder. In fact, I want to spend less time on the computer, and more time with my horses - while still maintaining the same or higher level of productivity.

It would be nice to finally unleash my (10+ year and counting...) pet project on the world - but that still requires a transition from vapour to code ;)

I'm really happy with my life right now. The family is doing well, the job is good fun, working on some really cool things. Though recently I realised that this is all fun and games, and so I want share more. Have more positive impact on the people around me and beyond. Increase the legacy, so to say.

Happy New Year!

De-addiction of Tech News sites. Feeling like I consume too much time reading news, and too little doing on my side projects. Time to reverse it. i.e. more focus on shipping something.

I spent the last few years exclusively grinding work to the detriment of everything else (which worked out financially kind of) so this year I'm going to do what I need to keep food on the table but besides that I'm going to work on bringing back all the other things I used to do.

- All my friends moved and drifted over the last two years so time to find some new ones

- Try to revive my friendships with my oldest and previously closest friends

- Leave NYC and head West

- Start playing piano

- Read at a minimum 1 book per month

- Lose my pandemic weight

- Pick up some fun non tech hobbies like hiking again

Declutter my house and life.

I don't think I am a "hoarder" but I am sort of a slob. I like the feeling when my house is organized but it seems to take a tremendous amount of time and effort for me keep it that way, and I think I have too much stuff (especially clothes) so it's hard to keep it all under control.

I think this will take some deliberate work to change habits (e.g. start small with something like "never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink") and move from there. Others advocate a wholesale, all-at-once getting rid of things that you don't have a place for (de-cluttering) but I'm not sure that establishes the changes needed to prevent it happening again.

> e.g. start small with something like "never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink"

I recommend starting even smaller with “wash at least one dirty dish before going to bed”. Chances are you’ll wash all of them, but you need to be able to still count it as a success on days when you just cannot make it past one.

As for cleaning, I have a once in a while thing where I feel like cleaning, and I trash about 10% of the clutter each time, saving some 40% more because I think I might need it. Every cycle removes another 10% of what was previously the 40%. It’s not perfect, but it has sort of stabilized the situation.

I still have whole boxes of clothes I can probably trash since I never use them, but I’m attached to them for historical reasons. Taking a picture before throwing something away helps.

In a previous HN post, there was a discussion about separating career work from passion/hobbies. That hit home to me as I have been learning a new hobby (camera, audio, software) with trying to produce and support my wife's podcast. My goal in 2022 is to be better at production with updated equipment, software, and editing techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealLaurenLive/videos

Great discussions if you are into the topics of spirituality, health, ET/UFOs, and consciousness.

Happy New Year everyone. May 2022 bring happiness, success, and peace to you and your families.

My goal is find a financially stable way to continue paying for my in-law's cancer treatment. Since the start of 2020 the cost of treatment has eclipsed the combined income of my spouse and I. We're need to find a way to continue paying in the long-term without going further into debt. Chemo medication is so expensive and in this part of the world local health insurance doesn't help with these costs.

I am so terribly sorry you have to go through this.

I've lost people to cancer, but at least we never had to worry about going into debt due to the treatment.

I wish you all the best. Fighting cancer is hard enough, without another Damocles sword over your head

I have three.

1. Spend more time with my family. I have a 1 year old daughter, and boy the time flies watching her grow. I’m slowing down my career and investing in her.

2. Becoming healthy by continued devotion to eating for fuel, being mindful of my activity level and enjoying this beautiful world we all inhabit.

3. Showing gratitude and love for my fellow humans.

Have a Happy New Year all, I hope you make it happen this year!

I'm only going to talk about my programming goals.

1. Get my licenses [1] looked over by a lawyer. Maybe I'll do a GoFundMe since there seems to be some interest in them, and I can't budget the money for over a year. Or maybe I'll wait.

2. Get my build system to a releasable state (including the best documentation ever) and help FOSS projects switch if they want to, especially from Autotools-based builds.

3. Get my programming language to a releasable state.

4. Use my language to help people understand the benefits of structured concurrency. [2]

5. Build a standard library for my language that is based around structured concurrency.

[1]: https://yzena.com/licenses/

[2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2019/12/structured-concurrency-defin...

My goal is building a SaaS to $500 MRR. I work in a non-tech field but have always enjoyed coding. This hasn’t led to a business because I have focused on features I thought would be useful and interesting but weren’t solving core customer problems. In 2022 I will focus on customer development first and build from there.

I like your goal because it sounds achievable. Best of luck!

My career is at the point where I make enough money to comfortably buy anything (non-crazy expensive) I'll ever want to buy. Except a house, of course -- it would be obscene to afford a decent one of those in a major US city. I hate living in major cities anyway, and covid has made it essentially impossible to build a friend group in a new city.

So my plan is to move closer to family, but into a walkable small town where I can establish a community, volunteer, and really set down some roots. I plan to de-emphasize work when possible to grow more into my hobbies: espresso, bike touring, and reading. Hopefully push one of the novels floating around in my head into a full-blown book, or at least a solid start on one. Life is too short to spend all of your effort on work in a city that you only live in because of work.

My plan is keep learning too. I used the holiday days to work on my 3D renderer and brushing up on 3D tech. I just figured out an O(N) way of applying the shadow-map in post-processing. Now I am implementing Screen Space Reflections, and the next step is "Geometry Images" (similar to Nanite).

Building on the success of my podcast, This Sustainable Life, where I've led globally renowned people (you'll know many: https://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-and-the-environment-top-...)

1. Keep building the podcast

2. Publish my next book, on sustainability leadership (in conversations with big publishers already)

3. Continue my mission: to help change American (and global) culture on sustainability and stewardship from expecting deprivation, sacrifice, burden, and chore to expecting rewarding emotions and lifestyles, as I see happen with everyone I lead to act for their intrinsic motivations.

In my case the emotions have been joy, fun, freedom, connection, meaning, and purpose.

How do people do something like write a cohesive book

My plan is to mediate more consistently. Hopefully every day. I’ve found it to help my mental health immensely when I am consistent and recently my mental health has been poor.

But in addition to mental health, I somewhat recently left an extremely rigid religion and have found myself looking for some form of healthy spirituality in my life again and I’m hoping that mediation coupled with a mix of views and philosophies from various eastern religions will help in that part of my life. I don’t expect to believe metaphysical claims from them per se, but to explore them and adopt what I do find makes sense rationally and then also through my own attempts at a spiritual practice.

I'm in the same boat as you and taking the same journey. Expanded my spirituality outlook after I stopped being active in the Mormon church. Also thanks to my wife who started a really interesting podcast. You may recognize some of the topics in your spiritual journey.

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealLaurenLive/videos

I'm looking to recover from two years of pandemic-induced silence.

In the years prior, I was a pretty active member of several communities, to the point where I could be attending several a week. Many of these have disbanded entirely; some briefly moved online before collapsing due to lack of involvement. I haven't given a meetup or conference talk since early 2020.

There are other, larger communities that have managed to stay afloat (disclaimer: I help organize one of them, DevOpsDays Boston), but their barriers to entry are much higher - formal CFPs and vetting versus Slack pings to meetup organizers. So my plan is to realize that's not an excuse, and act accordingly.

- wake up early and work on important goals first, before diving into day job and getting too tired to do anything - write an essay a month, however short - live and work remotely outside of home country, for 6+ months total - get a tattoo that would remind me that I'm still alive and how precious that is

happy new year hn!

1. Work on https://ayahbyayah.com - managed to get an update out this week, next year will be 10 years on the App Store.

2. Get 500 hours on the bike, this year I managed 358 hours and 6000 miles.

3. Continue my Qur'an memorisation journey.

These goals seem to me like progress towards a life well-lived. Good luck!

Thank you so much, really appreciate the kind words.

I'm thinking of resigning first thing. I took the Christmas break to mull it over and came to the conclusion that I'm not happy where I am anymore, even if it is comfortable and decent money. Once I'm settled into a new job I'm hoping to get on to the property ladder so I can have my own space. I'd also like to get a bit fitter so if I can find the courage I'll try going to the gym. In the meantime I'll continue with my software projects.

"Man Returns To Work After Vacation With Fresh, Reenergized Hatred For Job":

* https://www.theonion.com/man-returns-to-work-after-vacation-...

Thanks for the laugh. Happy new year.

Unsolicited advice: Get something new lined up before you hand in your notice.

Maybe, but my notice period is pretty long and I'm in a good enough financial position to be able to have a break. I'll see how it goes.

I left my IT job two years ago and things have worked out just fine. I've become a lecturer in further education which I really enjoy. I also lost 70lbs by changing my diet a bit and walking for 45 minutes a day. Good luck. It's a good idea to have something lined up. I had something temporary to pay the bills for six months then took it from there.

Where do you work/live?

How does lecturing work out in the time of COVID?

Turned in my notice yesterday! It was such a weight off my shoulders once I realized it's what I wanted to do. Good luck to you.

We're hiring: https://www.recurrency.com :)

The big one: quit my comfortable web development job and spend my time learning and contributing to the web3/dao/crypto world, especially the art scene.

I'm financially stable and not looking for $, I'm just really bored and tired of everything that I've been doing for the last decade and this space reminds me of the messy internet that i used to love.

Smaller ones:

- get out of the house more. 2021 was rough

- read books a lot more, I have plenty of time if I steal time from phone/internet

The pandemic kind of pushed my consumption into overdrive, so the goal next year is to put a severe damper on that. For food I'm going to try to eat half as much as I've been doing, unless it's primarily fruits and veggies (like a salad with some fruit on the side). Would reduce the number of calories I eat, decrease how much I spend, how much time I need to spend cooking or picking food up, etc.

Should also give me more time as I will try to avoid media that triggers my buying impulses, like a big one for me is board games, so no time spent buying new games, little time spent watching media about new games (games I already own is fine), etc, which should give me some time back, and maybe I can play all these new games I'm playing more than once or twice before letting them sit on a shelf untouched while I buy the next one.

I'm also going to try to do some form of exercise every day, as I need to get that back on track again.

Other than that, I'm going to try to get myself into a financial position where I can take at least six months off work to shed some old burnout technical debt and to try to knock out one or two projects I've been making very slow progress on the past few years.

Not sure if having a kid is in the cards for us this year again. Both of us are trying to juggle too many things as it is. Also, knowing how the world is headed I'm not entirely sure it's a good thing to do anymore (for the environment or for the kid), but my biological drive is quite strong and being a father is something I always wanted to experience. I'm already 17 years older than my parents were when they had me, which is just wild to think about, as I was already in high school comparatively.

* learn languages

* don't spend free time on professional development.

I have a great job and very good salary right now, but it pisses me off how slowly I can pick up basic words/sentences when I travel. I'm very bad at learning (speaking mostly) a new language, and I figured right now my career doesn't need me to be better at random new tech, but my soul needs some help when it comes to communicating in a different country :-D

I love that one of your goals is to not spend personal time on professional development, I feel like this is such a controversial topic right now.

Hi HN,

I'll quit my job to work as a consultat on my own.

I'll move to my bought house.

I'll buy a nice mercedes car.

I'll receive my new baby.

I'll try to build something with my friend.

I'll try to have profit from crypto investments.

I'll continue to learn rust.

I'll build blog about many subjects.

Spend more time with the children, spend more time with my piano, some major improvements to pianojacq.com , spend less time on the meta stuff associated with running a business so that the other two can become a reality. Finish a whole pile of projects and do not start new ones until the old ones are done. This will be hard.

I don’t tend to do new year resolutions, but 2022 will see my first attempt at building my own business, which I’m incredibly excited for. I’ve been preparing to do so for a while now, and I finally decided to take the plunge this year. I hope to have something to Show HN soon!

Otherwise, a personal goal of mine going into 2022 is to become more aware of my mental and physical well-being. More specifically, knowing my personal limits and being more open towards my friends and family about how I’m feeling. I spent a few consecutive years working too hard without proper balance, and it really took its toll on me this year. I’ve been taking a small break over December between wrapping up my previous job and starting my business ideas next year. It’s been great to have zero mindshare spent on work for a while!

Stay safe, and all the best for the new year!

1. Stop shipping open source libs for a bit, focus on maintenance of the existing ones

2. Ship a SaaS I started working on

3. Improve my sleep

4. Improve my cooking skills

5. Read more books

6. Watch fewer, but better movies

7. Make a few talks

9. Spend more time with my family / my friends. Spend less with the kind who are not really your friends after all

10. Disconnect even more from social medias

11. Learn something new (could be anything)

For me, it's all about health. I've found a new job that I like, but it's 1/2 the wage, and only 3 days a week. But I don't really care, since it's good place. I'll start walking more, and incorporate healthier habits. I will show gratitude to others.

1. Improve my development skills. As a security engineer, it's sometimes easy to fall into a rut where I don't write code often enough. I need to find projects on my own that are interesting enough to push me.

2. Keep training combat sports, especially with my son. It's been a great bonding experience, and those can be hard to find with teenagers. It's been great for me too. Need to train intelligently and ensure I can recover from training.

3. Read books at times other than the night. I usually only read for an hour or so before bedtime, but this makes some books take forever to finish. I fear my house will be filled with unread books before long.

4. Keep trying to be the best dad, husband, and human I can be. Long way to go here.

> I fear my house will be filled with unread books before long.

Umberto Eco[1] would call that a success :)

[1] http://gregorianstorage.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-justify-...

I didn't want to do new years resolutions this year, but when contemplating not doing any, I came up with more than any year before this... I have them jotted down in great detail, but basically;

1. Make 100k$ with creating and selling something. I have done this a bunch of times before but became complacent working on my main project. So that I want to attempt.

2. Build something VR. The Quest 2 (both because of Immersed because someone here on HN said it was great); as a long time follower of VR (headsets in the 00s that gave me feelings of strokes, vrml, the kickstarter first Rift, psvr etc) this thing is a gamechanger and now vr has arrived.

3. Walk. A lot. This year I did 2021 km so next year 2022 at least.

Can you share more about other things you have made and sold?

Most were a while ago (hence the complacent part), but I made a hosting panel (those were popular little over 10 years ago) and sold that (made well over 100k$ in a few months), hosting company hosting millions of sites/apps, a proprietary CMS company, a company that sold games related stuff, a dating site, a PoS system+hardware and a bunch more things. They were all side projects at the time besides the CMS company (which managed to get to 400 staff before I sold) and all ran almost automatically after the onramp efforts. Also, and this seems a weirdo thing here on HN, if I had partners/co-founders (and with most I did), for almost all of these goes that I have never seen or even voice talked with them. I did not know them before, we met online and just assumed trust. We made good money just over text chat. And that's how I ran the CMS Corp as well (as cofounder/cto). I want to do that again in 2022.

Sweet deal. How much did you make in total?

How did you know you should build these and who were your customers

Different per project; I sell best b2b and see consumers more as a wildcard/luck. But managed both.

And I knew what to build by talking to businesses or looking around on forums (I am old) what people ask for. Now Twitter and HN and reddit are pretty good to figure out what to create.

I'm keen if you have any interesting project in mind.

Thanks!

I will move to a part-time job and start a physics degree. There are many crazy things coming up in science, and I want to be a part of it.

That's so cool! What crazy things are you excited about? I majored in Physics but have moved so far away from it, I don't know anything about what's happening in the field now.

My aim is doing a digital detox, letting go the FOMO of knowing everything current. Letting go HN and Reddit and YT videos. Letting myself be bored and not driven and ambitious all the time.

Happy New Year!

For 2022 I think my goal is actually to figure out what my life goals should be, in terms of career path and also more on the personal side, I am a bit lost right now.

Work-wise, for the past 3/4 years I have been doing the same thing, building websites and extensions non-stop (I think I've made like 30 so far, although I've gotten rid of a lot of them over the years), and it's gotten a bit boring. I don't know if I should just stick to a couple of products to grow and monetize them, or maybe do something else entirely (AR/iOS/Mac apps/Game development...), but I just don't find it rewarding or exciting anymore sadly. I feel like career-wise it all went too quickly, I'm 21 and I've already worked for several startups with a lot of ownership (leading the design + product side in some of them), so I don't really have much ambition anymore, it feels like I've topped it already in a way (also in terms of salary and comp).

On the personal side, I just feel a bit lost in general. I recently moved to London, but I still don't really know where I belong. I've always thought about moving somewhere like SF, LA, or NYC, I know people in all these places and I constantly feel a lot of FOMO. It's just hard to decide where to live (especially when working fully remote and having no family ties whatsoever), hopefully I figure it out soon enough.

I quit my job. My last day is next Friday. I have 2 years' worth of living expenses saved up and the conviction that I'll find a way to make it work.

I've spent 2021 developing self-respect and solidifying self-care routines. I started a regular fitness practice, quit alcohol and stimulants, and grew closer to friends and family. Over the holiday period, I've reflected, and realised: I care so much about my body, what I put into it, and how I look after it - so why don't I have the same respect for my time, and what I spend the vast majority of my day doing?

In the short term, I will create the best free Java tutorial videos in the world. I think the state of Java tutorials on YouTube is currently poor, full of misinformation and inefficient scripting. And I intend to change that. My first: https://youtu.be/CN27X68YO4I.

Awesome!

Thumbs up on the video, it is good []. What software are you using to do the editing/screen recording?

[] I would personally prefer if it were faster.

Thank you! I'd prefer it to be faster too, I sort of rushed this one out as a POC. The next one will be a tighter.

I used Final Cut Pro, but tbh I didn't like it very much. I'm going to try Premiere next. I recorded it in IntelliJ with the built-in mac screen recorder (QuickTime). I used a plugin for the presentation-mode theme, but I've since got a new computer and I can't remember the name of it right now...

I am making do with free video editing (OpenShot, and then moved to ShotCut), but I guess they are not as refined as Premiere.

That's great. I'll be watching you. Can we request topics? Cheers mate

Build more things, i took a break in 2021 due to having a child, but I want to resume building mini apps and tools for my own use in 2022 as a way to learn and eventually build for others

Personal: spend more quality time with family and friends. While I spend time with them, Covid made much of it transactional in nature.

Professional: I launched my business and look forward to growing it!

There is so much to learn (automated theorem proving, graph neural networks, reinforcement learning, theory of mind, ...), yet so little time. Any tips on how to prioritize?

I suggest choosing one main direction for a fixed period of time(like a month) and sticking with it, without distractions on other interests. After period ends, you select a theme for the next one. imo helps with getting through the boring/hard parts and seeing results.

I would focus on one area that I find the most interesting and where I would be willing to go all the way [1].

[1] from personal experience, if you many things, you will not end up doing many of them at a top level.

1. Get customers for my SaaS -https://www.tollspot.com

2. Make ship able customer test units for my hardware project related to #1 - custom PCB, presentable enclosure, remote management, etc.

3. Get comfortable going to trade shows to market 1 & 2 and present to group of people (this is going to be difficult due to my personality and I’ve been a developer all my life, so I’m terrified of the transition to business side)

Happy New Year!!

Looks cool! What hardware platform are you targeting?

Thanks! I’m using the LTE module with ARM Cortex M4 from particle.

https://store.particle.io/collections/soms/products/b-series...

2022 marks a shift for me from industry software engineering to research. I’m hoping I get accepted to a PhD program but if not I will likely leave my cushy job and spend time some getting myself into computer science research (being broad on purpose).

All in all, I’m really excited for next year. I feel good about where I am in life in most facets.

Happy new year to you and everyone else around reading this as well! I hope the next year has some joy for everyone!

Sounds great! I do applied research in industry and love it.

Any interests you’re looking to pursue?

Neat! The last two years I’ve been pretty interested in programming language theory and operating systems. I re-discovered lisps and started toying with them. I also started learning more about BSDs and openbsd in particular and toyed around with an openbsd remote server.

I think my general interest would be systems engineering, but more specifically language theory and operating systems.

What kind of research have you been doing?

That’s quite close to my interests: PLs, runtimes, and general system programming. I’m always looking to hone a more holistic view of the computer by blending those interests.

For my research, I’ve been doing a lot of work into improving coverage-based binary instrumentation, exploring what dynamic analysis can do, and investigating a new take on grammar-based fuzzers.

1. Eat decently (drink more water, no sodas, no deep fried potatoes of any kinds, and no sweets. I already don't drink alcohol or eat gluten)

2. Hire a regular online personal trainer that fits my schedule. Upwork is surprisingly a good source for this.

3. Launch a new software product of my own (not client products)

4. Strive for Buddha-like attention and patience with my kids

All are really "live a happier life" goals. Even #3, because I miss doing that so much.

Gluten isn't really a problem for most people, only those who are specifically intolerant of it. Or has that thinking changed?

People's beliefs on this topic are extremely divergent. I personally have developed a sensitivity to gluten so I really have no choice, but I also happen to believe it is bad for your long-term health.

For number 2, I would look into a service CoPilot Coaching

- Find a new job, feeling burnt out and lack motivation currently

- Figure out my housing situation (hopefully move in with a friend, otherwise find roommates), moved back in with my parents after living alone during COVID which was terrible for my mental health

- Get a pet

- Volunteer at an animal shelter

- Be more social

All in all, just trying to rebuild my mental stability is top priority, the last three years have really taken its toll on me and I’m generally just scared of where I’m at right now :(

Deleting all my social media accounts today!! 2022 will be the first social media free year I’ve experienced since I was a freshman in high school!

No resolutions. I have 5 3D Printers now; want to design and build my own printer next. Start a small business printing parts / accessories.

Happy new year from Auckland, New Zealand!

In the past my New Years resolutions were 800x600, 1024x768, etc, but this year, let's try something more exciting.

• Maximise connectedness.

• Reduce entropy.

• Love your neighbour, clean as you go.

That sounds pretty meta, but taken practically: clean the software code at work, clean the litter on the street on the commute (especially masks = COVID concentrators, to save the flies and birds who don't have a vaccine yet).

Another more likely deliverable goal is to write an article, using the Sierpinski triangle as a model of a perfectly balanced binary tree. The topics would translate a suggestion of how to apply that model into all cultures (engineering, economics, marketing, travel, open-source, social networks, etc). The self-imposed deadline is before 20 years of Wolfram - A New Kind of Science at the end of January.

MasterYoda, your iterative learning strategy is the best approach for ML and life! Let's hack together something imperfect that's good enough for today, and learn how to make it better together!

Happy new year!

- Find the pivot point from where I can move into a career of low level programming eventually. First stop is probably going to be a data engineer.

- Find activities that both my boy and I enjoy. So far I haven't found many so I'm frustrated. Hopefully this improves this year as he grows up.

- Maybe swim more? I really hate physical exercises but swimming is a rare exception.

> Find activities that both my boy and I enjoy.

Do you want ideas? If so, how old's your boy and what have you tried?

Thanks! Please do. He is 15-16 months and we are doing these activities:

- Riding snow sled;

- Reading books;

- Playing toys

I guess the real issue is on my side because I don't enjoy physical activities, while babies of this age typically need a lot of physical activities and "reading" is essentially just punching at the books and looking at the pictures, plus the books are pretty boring for any adult.

I recommend the set of Eric Carle books. Our toddler enjoys all of them immensely.

When reading, do not multitask and try to make sure you discuss all details (how many stars, where is the moon, let's count the frogs, etc.)

Thanks. We do have one of the books (brown bear) and it's one of his fav. Again I have to confess it's my fault not enjoying the process :/ I'll just drag on and keep up the smile face till he is a little older and we can expand the reading materials.

There are several Brown Bear books :)

Perhaps you yourself would enjoy "My Very First Book of Shapes" better, where the baby needs to match real life objects with abstract shapes (e.g., wagon/rectangle, sun/circle). Should be able to do it in a few months give or take.

Going back to COVID testing for a bit before I jump back into my technical side. There is some serious need, and I have a good amount of experience last year. It's now been a 2 year swap toward volunteering and medical work. Never expected to see things spike this fast.

Looking forward to working myself out of a job and getting back to my technical roots.

Happy New Year!

I am in the same line as you, I don't have any "new year promises" but I will try to focus on my health: eating better and training more.

This is discussed in a video I think is specially relevant today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE

I will watch you :). Can we request topics?

Oh, the video is not mine, sorry if I mislead you. It is just a video I found some time ago. The channel is quite good in my opinion though.

No, no. You did not mislead. Somehow I mixed up and actually wanted to comment on another comment. Sorry for the confusion.

2021 was my first full year of retirement and I really enjoyed it (I retired at the end of 2020 after working thirty years in software research). In 2021, I plan to work on my model train layout, some robotics projects and continue learning Swift. If things go well, I plan to release a MacOS app for personal knowledge management.

Sorry to hook onto this, but why does everyone want to make a personal knowledge management app? I mean, I recognize the impulse, but I think I’m mostly attracted by being in full control of the code, not lack of features.

This app scratches my own personal itch. I don't expect to make any money from this but if it comes in useful for anyone else, nice :-)

We're about to have our second kid in spring so that is the biggest thing to look forward to. In prep for that, planning to switch out our sedan for a minivan (due to 2 carseats).

Apart from that, try to keep learning. Pickup something new I didn't know, last year it was chess, this year haven't picked anything yet (maybe swimming).

Congrats!

Thanks!

Most reasonable recent sedans have two or three isofix points, so I do not see the need for a van when you have two kids. The difference in handling and refinement (noise, cabin quality) is quite large, although the extra space is nice.

Happy New Year!

My family and myself love New Year Resolutions and make traditions of declaring them to one another.

It is usually a full day of past year review and next year planning, that outputs an annual budget (time and money) to align everyone in the household with everyone's personal goals. We decide on volunteer commitments, income targets, expense budgets, vacation plans, subscriptions and activities.

And all of this is enveloped and guided by a personal goal setting conversation.

I have daily, weekly, monthly and annual rituals, but the New Year ritual is my favorite as it is fun, extremely strategic and the whole household comes together to encourage one another to dream and support one another.

This year, our household will be learning French together so we can plan an extended vacation to France this summer, I would like to finally publish my video game, and I hope to continue reducing my use of a car so we can become a 1-car household.

I want to read more books and start getting my financial life in order. I've been lucky enough to get a raise only a few months after getting my most recent job and it's afforded me a little more money each month to play around with. I'd like to start investing a little bit as well as build up an emergency fund.

Additionally, I'm lucky enough to still have a few online lecture recordings available from the classes I took for my master's degree. At the time I was more focused on just passing owing to being so demotivated from the pandemic that I barely absorbed anything. It's been a real regret of mine and especially now that this knowledge can actually be applied (enterprise software design, microservices etc.) I want to take the time to actually give a damn and learn something by re-watching these lectures and taking good notes.

Do another AWS certification because they are nice to have. Looking at machine learning now but it's so silly and I lost respect for the machine learning crowd.

Yeah we gonna do some "quantum binning" now (put stuff into categories)... Get out of here. Lol.

Happy New Year!

I do not do "resolutions", but my plan is as always to keep learning and growing as a developer.

Also to do even more writing! Including my fiction, which has been picking up steam.

Like you, I hope to consume less next year. Or rather, consume less things and more experiences.

I've made a few measurable goals for 2022 that I wrote up on my personal site [0]: - read 25 books (3 of which are "technical") - write 12 blog posts - take one online course - get conversational in French - shoot 2 new batches of photos and post them online (and get through some of my photo backlog)

And the slightly less measurable: eat better and exercise more. I'm getting old enough that I should stop putting this off.

[0]: https://danturkel.com/2021/12/31/goals-for-2022.html

Start a new blog living in raspberry pi under my desk, optimize old blog for more discovery and help to people suffering from mental illnesses, read more Russian classics, take a walk everyday, use social media to spread news not to consume them, be happy with everything, maybe use a 2-3w full RGB laser projector for a very small show for a bystanders without any advertising or warning, get my drivers license back, pirate more, keep doing what I'm - running i2p exit point, freenet, configure a bridge of TOR for russian users, try to convince my family that I need a second internet line :)

In no particular order,

- Grow the side-project I'm working on.

- Be more consistent with my output.

- At every point during the year, I hope to be working on something.

- Build music-related tools and projects.

- Work more on my music and put it out there on streaming services.

- Read more.

- Be proficient in a Web3 tech stack.

- Contribute to comma.ai

- Be less political

Happy New Year!

I am going to exercise from jan 1st through jan 14th and I am also going to slowly get lose both my gluten- and lactose intolerance through very precise understanding of my consciousness through mindfulness.

This year I've learned a great deal by experimenting with game development. I've learned elixir, started to learn rust, and acquired a great many skills like distributed computing that I would never have touched in my day job. I hope I can continue spinning that flywheel for my self-inspiration.

Goals: 1. Continue building my web-based MMORPG https://firmament.kenny.wtf/ 2. Get better at French (I'm an expat living in Geneva, CH. My language level is inexcusable.)

Happy NY HN.

It's a nice time to reflect on goals.. Over the next year I would like to finish and publish my free and open source VR game made with Godot and focus on the idea of not continuously distracting myself.

Happy New Year!

- Dig deeper into bioinformatics and do some hands-on courses / experiments with various tools that are being used for analysing various *omics data

- Contribute more code to https://benthos.dev and learn more about data streaming

- Catch up on Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast, since I fell behind for a few months: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/

- Meet new likeminded people *wave*

1. Finish XML5 parser I left to languish for quite a bit.

a) Help the man who made Html5gum, and inspired me to work on my own parser, by helping him with HTML5 parser.

2. Learn to program Rust games.

3. Finish the goddamn puddle spilling for SS14.

Happy new year, all!

Happy New Year! Hope you have a great 2022!

My themes for 2022 are as follows:

I want to spend more time with family. We recently moved back to the area where my wife and I grew up and we're really looking forward to seeing folks we love more.

Write more and be more effective at writing. Last year I made it to March or April journaling every day this year I want to try and make it a bit farther.

Be a larger part of my church and community. What form that takes I'm not sure as I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to measure that.

Happy New Year!

My goals for this year are:

1. Become proficient in Java and React.

2. Learn more about AWS services and cloud architectures and patterns.

3. Learn more about distributed systems.

4. Make reading a book per month an habit.

5. Make exercising three times a week an habit.

I started working on a project (meta-JIT framework for Rust interpreters) over a sabbatical a few months ago. I'm going to be switching to half-time at work, and hopefully keep working on that in my free time, along with doing a lot of other stuff that I felt like I didn't have the opportunity to do while working a full-time 40hr/wk job - visit family and friends more, start working out, work on other side projects or friends' open source projects, etc.

That sounds really cool! Do you have any of it open sourced yet?

Yup, https://github.com/chc4/lineiform. It's not usable at all yet - I was building it on top of Cranelift, which turned out to be a fairly bad idea, so I'm going to have to essentially rewrite all of it with my own codegen backend I think. I've been hacking on it on and off but it's been much slower progress due to work (and writing a codegen backend is hard...)

I've lost 5 friends this year. One to Covid.

Here's to a new year. Cheers.

Sorry to hear, hope this year brings more joy for you

Happy New year everyone. Certainly I have plans for the new year like every year, however this time I want to make sure I stick or complete one thing in list of things I want to do this year. I wish I have positive energy that I have during end of year and first few days of the new year where I want to learn so many new things throughout the year . May be it is my excitement about doing so many things which may be not practically possible that you causes the disappointment

It tend not to set too many aspirational objectives as circumstances outside your control (think 2020, 2021) can end up in failure which is demotivating so I throw myself a new 4 week target every 4 weeks and work towards that.

The first one is clear out all the remaining junk in my house that I don't use. Most of this is already stacked up ready for sale or disposal and it's not even the 1st of Jan :)

The one queued up after that is run 5k again (I could do this until covid got me in april 2020)

     > ...as circumstances outside your control (think 2020, 2021) can end up in failure which is demotivating...

having been bitten by this in the past, im curious how you manage your ongoing targets. backlog style? i usually have a few different target areas (health, work, learning, etc) that are all on different timelines so unless i am constantly monitoring cumulative progress one ends up falling off and things cascade from there.

Yeah I just write a list down and pick one that's achievable based on current finances, situation, motivation and desires. I add them to the list as I think about them.

To note I never mix my work objectives with personal ones. That can lead to all sorts of problems as I learned over the last 20 years or so.

I want to write more - and more frequently.

I have a new writing form that I spec'd out in 2018:

https://john.kozubik.com/pub/IcebergArticle/tip.html

... but I have not actually used it to write anything except the description what an Iceberg Article is.

So ... I'd need to write more Iceberg Articles. I'm excited about the topic list I have and I'm excited about the format itself.

Keep up my existing good habits and improve on those that I'm not quite happy with yet. E.g. meditating regularly and getting into a regular sleep schedule.

Apart from that just business goals. I want to finish automating all the day to day tasks, which I'm really close to, finally. Then go on vacation, which I haven't done in the past 5 years. Aside from that growing the business of course, which should be easier once the day to day tasks are taken care of automatically.

2022 is the year I actually sit down and learn how to use Blender to make models to use in WebGL projects.

Technically 2021 is because I've already started, but that's just details.

Happy New Year !

I intend to finish my current project, then take the summer off and spend time with my wife and children before they are too old to enjoy time with their dad due to living their own lives, and while we all have the time, energy, and money to have memorable experiences together.

After that, I'm not sure what I'll be doing - I'm deliberately not planning my next moves because I don't want something to come up and draw my attention away from a summer with family.

1. Pursue science for the joy of it 2. Develop new measures of interpersonal synchrony and resonance 3. Be deliberate about my lifestyle. Take time and invest in myself.

I realized that while I can do people management/TL etc successfully, at this moment (I'm going 40) I don't want to do it. So I'm going as an individual contributor to the new for me area where, ideally and if I'll succeed, I can work till the end of my career (database engine internals).

On personal front - spend more time with my daugther (she's 2 in February) and go outside camping/overlanding much more. Also lose weight.

Get back on the healthy eating train, fell off due holidays and pregnant wife cravings.

Start doing some excercise, getting a rowing machine sometime January whenever it ships.

Make sure to support my wife and future daughter when she arrives, but also make sure my wife and I are taking care of our own mental health, tricky balance but we will get there.

Be more productive on my own projects. Been doing better and better about that.

Just be happy where I am in life, and enjoy the new things to come.

1. Work on https://www.softluxx.com/ - manage to get to 10 inquiries daily, next year will be my 8th year working with the company. Really appreciate for everything that has happened through the long journey. 2. Keep excersing. This year would be my 5th year working in a gym. 3. Be happy.

- workout 3x/week - publish 5 libs developed at workplace - write blog posts about some crazy optimizations we did to get attention and boost hiring - kite wave at least once a month - live with $1000/month, save and invest everything else - love my wife until she thinks it's impossible to be happier - work 50% on product features, 50% on performance and reliability - get back my guitar and play

2021 has been the best year of my life and I am even more excited for 2022. I am currently planning an ambitious software project that I hope will help people understand the world better. I have rediscovered my love of reading and plan to keep that up (my reading list is growing too fast). Also, I’m getting married this year so I want to keep working on being a better partner and communicator. Cheers!

I'm eager to finish adding facial recognition to my charityware project Video Hub App - a browser / organizer for videos on your computer.

https://videohubapp.com/

MIT open source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

1. Find employment that I can tolerate despite Long Covid.

2. Find a capability based OS that I can use as a daily driver.

3. Finish all of Advent of Code before December, in Pascal.

Make a programming language. No, two ! One that will sugar-coat C, one that should ideally be the cleanest, efficientest scripting marvel on earth.

My personal goal will be to go windsurfing again and, maybe, get into foiling. Ultimate goal would be to do trips under sail in Stockholms skärgård. Until it gets warmer again, I will have to fall back to ice skating (and to learning swedish).

Professionally, I am happy and excited to start new projects now that my thesis is submitted and I finally have time to explore novel computational biology data set.

I hope to "retire" from softdev+devops to a job with fewer responsibilities and hours. Something that may be aligned more with social good than with web profit.

I plan to finish the degree I started, technically, 22 years ago.

I plan to go do things with local (fully vaccinated) friends. I'm not especially social so this is a big stretch for me, but my wife is on board (and then some) so it should be easy.

I hope to sleep well enough that I'll be able to work out every morning. I feel way better when I can work out every day but I risk injury if I work out while exhausted. (And I shouldn't have to do this but it is social media so: no, I haven't found a correlation between sleep quality and exercise for me).

Finish the reference implementation [1] for https://concise-encoding.org

I'm at the "last 10% which takes 90% of the time", and want to get it finished by q2.

[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding

Happy New Year HN! My goals for 2022 are: 1. Propose to my girlfriend 2. Determine if graduate school is the right path for me and get into a program that aligns with my interests 3. Get my AWS SSA cert and a GCP cert 4. Learn Swift 5. Natural Language Processing 6. Live a less stressful and happier life

If anybody on here can provide advice or mentorship around [2], I would deeply appreciate it!

I have two

* Build muscle

* Kickstart my love life

I had success with the former in 2021 but the latter was a bust. I intend to keep trying.

If a late bloomer has something to share, I'd love to hear that.

Nothing to share directly, but I just want to point out 2021 was not a great year for finding love. Don't be so hard on yourself. Keep trying in 2022, it will be much better.

And you're already making it easier for your future yourself by building muscle. Keep training hard. I wish you all the best.

Thanks for the wishes! I'll persist on.

Relationships are hard, they require constant effort. Beyond being an attractive human being (i.e. take care of yourself, physically and mentally), it's all about emotional intelligence and communication.

I was a late bloomer in the latter (like very late due to being overweight for most of my teens and early 20s) and I don't have any big wisdom to share except don't lowet your standards and let people treat you like crap just because you think you're getting on the train very late in the game.

Thanks for sharing!

I had the opportunity to travel and I met my better half as a result of that trip.

My advice, do something that takes you a bit out of your depth, you could meet new people as a result.

Help Apple fix their time and date bugs [1]. Here is one from tonight (NYE). I appreciate Apple's want to get 2021 done and dusted, but I suspect others won't!

[1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/incoming-3C66266A-D9CA-4CDB-...

Happy New Year everyone! I've two plans, to finalize a will so my kids are taken care of if anything bad happens, and to try pay off the bulk of what's owed to the bank on my recently (2021) bought house.

Working in tech at the moment is great, but who knows where the future is headed, so targeting debts is my big thing. And that's all down to our stage in life now

Try to eat less. It should go well with spending less and the higher inflation.

Try to work out more.

Try to spend less money on stupid crap I don't need like video games.

Try to save and invest more.

Try to make my place look nicer.

Read more and watch less TV. Well, I've got a good headstart on that since November.

And ... generally ... be more grateful. It's getting rough out there for some people.

All my goals pretty much scream "I'm getting old."

Build up an evening ritual to complement my morning ritual, which is centered around coffee, meditation, and exercise.

I aim to have a structured, deliberate evening ritual leading up to bedtime. I plan to read a comp sci book for 30 minutes, a book in a foreign language for 30 minutes, and then light reading for another 30 minutes. All on a 10" ereader.

How much did you pay for that 10'' ereader? I would love to have one as well but the prices are absolutely inflationated.

Happy New Year HN

I am starting a new job on Feb hoping to kick-ass there as its my first (official)job after college and months of OSS. I will once again try to learn and use Rust but will fail miserably.

My only plan for this new year is to slowdown on consuming content and subjecting myself to a lot more stress and spend more time outside, taking naps and reading books.

I hope to launch two MVPs this year. As others have shared links, I'll venture to do that as well:

1. CxO Industries: helping founders launch successful businesses.

2. TradeCast: automated crypto trading.

[1] https://cxo.industries

[2] https://tradecast.one

I'm still sticking to my resolution not having any "New Years Resolutions" as I continue preparing for 2030. Seems to be working for me so far. [0]

I hope everyone meets their goals for the new year.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25599775

1. Finish pilot #1 for my startup, start pilot #2

2. Publish 2 papers

3. Go through all board prep material (one pass before 2023)

4. Eat less dairy (cut meat out last year)

[edit for formatting]

My life is sort of 50-50. Half is at an all time high, half at an all time low. Hopefully the low end gets a few points.

Happy New Year!

Professionally, I plan to further my side project with educational YouTube videos on algorithms and data structures, which brings me great joy.

As I'm in higher education, which has taken a huge COVID-19 hit (not sure I will get (much) better anytime soon), I'm considering whether it is worth pivoting into an industry career.

1. Increase the Bus Factor of our main application.

2. Develop mentoring skills.

3. Start to transition away from being a full-time developer to a staff engineer.

4. Create a culture that is highly tolerable of risk and failure.

2-4 are not just work focused but are also family focused. So much of what we do as a family embraces comfort rather than risk-taking. We should do more of that.

> 4. Create a culture that is highly tolerable of risk and failure.

I'm curious; in what context? Would this be at a personal level, a team level, or something bigger?

Well...

In my personal/family life allowing my kids the freedom to do big things with enough oversight to ensure basic safety but giving them the freedom to try things and figure stuff out. Give them goals but force them to think through ideas, try things and take chances. I've done this a little in the past and have always been amazed at the results.

Team level: not enforcing a very strict "it must be coded in this way approach" (unless it is obviously wrong). Giving people the ability to try out new ideas and building some time in for learning how not to do things. Example: if a dev takes a couple of days to build a new feature but it turns out that feature sucks, it should be OK that he tried it. Trying to be more of an encouragement to designers and allow designs—even bad ones to get some play. We might learn something along the way.

Help save the world from total destruction.

Any specific first step in mind ?

Time machine

Train for a Half Ironman! And I enrolled in a part time degree so I’ll finally start working on ticking that off :)

I'm launching 31 projects during the first 31 days of the year to break through my fear of launching and just put stuff out there.

If you're curious or want to join in, I'm running a behind-the-scenes newsletter: https://31launches.com

Probably get a new job, or at least get some offers.

I've been at a (research) hospital for almost 3 years and they did not give raises through covid. So now, my calculus about working for a non profit had changed because engineer salaries have gone up so much, especially in my experience level.

Happy New Year HN!

Never really had any new year resolutions, but I promised myself that 2022 is the year I'm going full digital nomad (for a year or two). I have little to no responsibilities that tie me to a certain place at this point of my life and an itch to discover new places in the world.

Happy new year everyone. Here are some of mine:

1. Be the kind of a person to read books(focus on reading instead of playing).

2. Read Japanese. I'm okay at it but I have spent 2 years without using it at all.

3. Get good at programming. I have never gotten far, stuck in tutorial hell. But I aspire to manage it this year.

Happy new year!

Most of these are lifelong goals.

* Write more regularly

* Have a personal indexed knowledge base. Saw some great examples of this on HN

* Give up reading uninteresting books. I have the tendency to keep reading anyway I'm finished, which is a waste of time

* Find a side project that eventually leads to some small revenue

* Learn to deal with cold weather :)

1. Get my card game finished and playable multiplayer on the web.

2. Take what I learned from 1 (and hopefully some momentum) and get a beta of my multiplayer sandbox game on the web.

3. I have too much stuff. I'm trimming down my hobbies to focus on a few I'll actually have time for.

For years now I've been kinda-sorta working on a plan involving making funky peripherals, small toy computers, and large flying machines based on cellular kites and the Magnus effect. I think this is the year to really buckle down and get it done.

I'm planning to build spin classes ("peloton") for smart trainers (I just bought a Wahoo Kickr Core - more trainer than I'll ever need and 1000x more comfortable than the Watt Bike in the gym).

If anyone fancies helping let me know, email in bio!

My resolution this year is to spend $20,000 (Canadian) on travel. Most of it will be just going to a city and getting an Airbnb and working from there remotely. I've travelled a lot, but never really did any trips like that.

Japan is the most amazing place I've been to in my life (though I've not traveled very extensively). But I recommend Tokyo, other cities, and the countryside of Japan.

Happy New Year! I’m gonna stream coding and I hope I’ll make more content in my blog

This year I would really like I read more, I was diagnosed with Irlen syndrome (wether that is correct or not the glasses have helped)

And that makes reading really hard for me but I have gotten books as gifts and really want to read them.

Happy new year HN. I am going to figure out new ways in which to apply myself in CS so I can move past the current slump I am in. Not sure if it's burnout I can't recover from or my interests changing as I grow.

Sometimes slumps are best handled by doing something completely different for a while. Take up a hobby: write, start going to a gym, research a skill in a completely different field.

Slumps don't last forever, but sometimes the best way out is to reverse out of them and go around!

- Get closer to nature. Just completed PADI Openwater with my son few days ago. So hopefully more of diving/nature stuff.

- Shift more to sales/marketing and a bit less on dev in my current work.

- Side hustles in SaaS/ecommerce/blockchain

- Read more

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

1. Stick to a strict budget

2. Stick to a strict diet

3. Liberal consumption of book media

4. Liberal production of content

5. See fewer humans

Happy new year!

My goal for the next year is to do no mindless SoMe consumption, and instead create and market what i build, or relax or take a nap or whatever is the right thing to do, which is never instafacetok for 2 hours.

What is SoMe?

Social media.

New Year's resolutions fail when they aren't engineered to last and direct you for the entire year. If you aren't reflecting on what it did to you and your life on December 31st, 364 days after setting it, then the resolution failed.

Setting any resolution that won't fit this description is dangerous for a couple of reasons: First, it both will be a failure and will teach you failure. Also, it will distract from the resolutions that could have been successful ones.

You should only set one NYR until you have successfully done one for an entire year, because it's incredibly hard and you probably aren't capable of one, let alone more, until you show that you are. After one successful NYR, you've earned the right to try two, the year after that three, and so forth.

Found the energy to do the thankless grunt work on a side project.

I forgot how great it is to relearn that process every time. I'm glad I found a method to move past analysis paralysis/the initial anxiety hurdle.

How?

"Consume less, create/learn more"

That is the crux of one of my goals this year. I have already deleted Facebook, Tiktok and Instagram from my phone in preparation.

I'm excited and optimistic about 2022. Happy New Year HN.

Happy new year, HN!

My goals to 2022 are around the following:

1. Keep the discipline and balance needed to work and study at the same time.

2. Finish the studies that I previously started.

3. Move out of my city to another one.

4. Do not let fear make me not do what I want to do.

I am thinking about buying camcoder and recording some youtube travel vlogs and maybe even short independent post-apo movie.

I want to spent more time with my friends, but this depends on pandemic situation.

Last year I wished myself to lose weight and and start earning more on a side. None of that happened, in fact it got much worse,so I'll set the same target for 2022. Happy new year!!

Happy new year!

My plans for the year are mostly limited to finishing/releasing the things I’ve already been working on, which would be a first.

In the first place for now will stay being a good father though :)

My goals this year are things NOT to do! Eliminate bad habits etc.

I have a few simple plans:

Grow my education business - https://learnetto.com

Play music with my kids.

Travel and see more of my friends and family.

Happy new year, HN!

Good luck with your business. Out of curiosity, how many users do you currently have?

1. Publish 2. Turn 30 3. Be the fittest I've ever been

Left day job, going forward with new company, will see how it goes. Also want to learn more embedded stuff (robotics). Hopefully not end up broke.

So far self motivation is something. Also sucks when you don't have guaranteed money.

Only eating sweet things I've baked myself at home (i.e. no eating store bought chocolate or ice cream).

That's enough for 2022 ;)

Happy New Year everyone!

2022 is when I'll be trying my hand at bootstrapping and also working on my reoccurring back pain.

Start my new 15-minute body workout routine (like 4-hour body but ain't nobody got time for that).

- Build muscle

- Level up my career

- Take a nice long trip to Europe

- Learn music theory and write my own music

- Buy the supercar I've been wanting for some time

De-Googling / De-Facebooking / De-Twittering / De-Amazoning as much as possible

I want to get out of debt, and after that, go back to college part time and cash flow it.

Bank as much as possible, leave finance, start my own business doing <something>

Just get thin.

Between the lockdown the smartworking and quitting smoking, I've gained some weight.

Have my partner get hired full time at their FANG gig and try to buy a place to live.

I intend to deploy my side project to production and try to talk someone to use it :)

Happy new year! My plans so far are mostly about learning and orientation.

- eat more sustainably

- get more productive

I’m starting a new company on my terms or, failing that, retiring.

I want to spend less time on social networks, especially Twitter.

My goal is to simply live as if every day'd be a new year

Happy new year, HN.

I'm a huge believer in CGP Grey's thematic year system (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE) in place of resolutions. After outstanding successes two years in a row with the system (first year with my physical health, second year with my work and finances), I'm doing a "year of relationships" where my focus will be general social and romantic recoveries. Especially since, in the last two years, this is what has suffered the most for many including myself.

I posted on Tildes about this, in fact: https://tildes.net/~talk/zsh/your_theme_for_2022

I just found out about this video, and Tildes too. Thank you for sharing! Would you be kind enough to invite me to it?

Either way I think I will be doing a “year of discipline” for 2021. I feel that I know my wants and needs but I am mostly just going with the flow in regards to everything.

Sure thing, find my email via my profile and I'll send you an invite.

Year of Discipline sounds like a fantastic theme!

I love the idea of year themes but I tend to just end up picking the same words and find it hard to settle on just area so end up with something like 'Progress' because we all want progress right? but then what does that even mean.

I recommend picking an area of your life you want to improve on the most, preferably one where you feel you’re not progressing fast enough.

Weight = “body”. Depression/burnout = “mind”. Other themes I’ve seen picked are specific countries (for language), or culture in general, or “year of zen” to learn how to deal with stress etc.

Excited to help more learners and devs with Codexplainer AI.

I will get out more.

- change city - change job - be useful - read more

Gotta finish Software Foundations series.

Stop programming as an employee

Order very little from Amazon

Get healthy. Get more energy.

Pwn nubs - avoid bubble gum

Get into YC S22 or W23

A twitter account.

Launch my app!!!

Thesis proposal

Happy New Year!

* move to NYC

* buy EUC

* fix hair

* fix teeth

* earn 200k

* invest with stable returns >10%

* socialize

What's EUC please? Thanks.

I'm guessing Eurocoin [0]

[0] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/eurocoin/

Electric UniCycle

Why NYC? And fix hair?

I don't really do "New Years resolutions", but I do (sometimes) do at least a little high-level planning for the year ahead. Coincidentally, I just did that exercise a few minutes before seeing this post. Well... some of the "planning" had been going on in my head for a while of course, but I mean I took the time to actually write it down.

I'd just share the doc with y'all but too much of what is in there would be really opaque because it refers to labels that I put on things that would be meaningless to anybody else. But as a summary, I have sections for

Reading / Research -- refers specifically to books/papers I want to read and research I'm working on.

Learning -- refers to "basic skills" or what-not that I want to focus on.

Building - refers to specific projects I want to work on that involve building something (could be hardware or software, or a combination of both)

Fogbeam - refers to anything related to Fogbeam Labs, my company.

The first section, Reading has reference to a number of books on linguistics / language / computational linguistics / NLP that I plan to work through. It also mentions reading the remaining books by Ben Goertzel that I haven't already read yet. Same for Ron Sun. There's also a section on Machine Learning and Evolutionary computing (Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, etc.). And then there's some miscellaneous stuff. But realistically, I won't get through all of it in 1 year. I finished 50 books in 2021 (which is around my norm) but that includes quite a few novels and shorter books. Most of these are denser / meatier material that will be a slog to grind through. So I'll probably be lucky to finish 30 books in 2022.

Anyway... in the Learning section is some stuff about a sequence of math topics I want to focus on. I won't bore you with the details, but just suffice it to say I feel like I need to brush up on some forgotten math stuff and learn some stuff I never studied in the first place.

There's also a note here to continue working on learning more about working with the SOAR cognitive architecture.

In the Building section is a mention of an (e)-book manager / paper manager / note-taking app that I've started building for myself. Yes, I'm building my own because I have some very specific ideas about how I want it work, to suit the way I like to do things. If I ever get a reasonably decent version finished I might open source it. Most of what I work on is OSS, and that tends to be my default mode. But we'll see.

The other thing in this section is a "body" for some of my AI work. By "body" I don't mean a biped, walking/talking, anthropomorphic body... no, I just mean an old boom-box that I gutted out, and into which I plan to install a raspberry pi, a battery pack, a pan/tilt controller with a web-cam, a microphone, and some other miscellaneous sensors (accelerometer, temperature sensor, etc). It's meant to be "just barely enough" of a form of embodiment to let me do some experiments with how an AI might learn from interacting with its environment. Here is where I should mention that my reading list also needs to include a bunch of stuff I plan to read about developmental psychology, first language acquisition, etc. The idea is to play around with ideas related to the whole "let the AI learn (sort of) like a baby does" meme.

And if you're wondering, no, the rPi isn't meant to do the "heavy lifting" in regards to the AI "stuff" associated with the box thing. It's just going to be a front-end, collecting signals from the various sensors, possibly doing some pre-processing, etc. and then forwarding everything to another box where the real work will be done.

Under the Fogbeam label is a bunch of "finish product X", "finish product Y", type stuff. I'll say no more about that for now. But one of the bullets there is to start blogging more again, so hopefully I can make that one stick and maybe some posts from the Fogbeam Blog will start showing up here on HN in 2022.

Happy New Year everyone, and best of luck to everybody in the year ahead, regardless of what your plans are. (Unless you're planning something evil. Boo. Don't do that).

Become financially independent and not have to work.

Ain't that the dream. Best of luck!

Tbh I feel like I have done everything I want to do at 23. Now the only real aim left is to make as much money as possible just for the challenge of it.

How boring.

Eh, I bought a decent apartment in the city and go out partying with friends every weekend. But in terms of needs, I could stop putting in effort right now and live comfortably for basically forever. But I’m still working hard at gaining new skills with the aim of eventually getting something really high level like CTO.

How boring.

When you are 50, what do you think will be your legacy?

I also think this is a very silly and egotistical question. Why do you want a legacy? I feel in some ways this is because people just want to deny there own death and insignificance so want to extend there life somehow beyond them, but they can't.

Aiming for legacy is a losing game, it's meaningless, just enjoy your life and help others do the same.

Actually, a legacy can honor death by focusing on what is lasts rather than what doesn't.

My children and my children's children—generations upon generations will have been shaped in some part by me. That's where my focus ought to be. That's what I aim for.

What legacy _will_ you have?

Keep it up and you’ll be a terachad soon!

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