Ask HN: What is your new year's resolution? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your new year's resolution?

176 pointsnigamanth429 comments

What do you plan to achieve this year? Both professionally and personally.

Are you going to learn a new programming language? Familiarize yourself with a concept? Spend time with family?

I feel, and I think it's a common thread for my generation, that we have grown weary of drinking from the information firehose. The internet has become like high fructose corn syrup for our brains. We're fat with it. So I want to consume less (low quality information) and create more.

I like the idea of "note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work"[1]

My resolution this year is to read more and to write more, and to write better. With the main purpose being to "think better".[2]

More than any other blog I go back to Andy Matuschak's. A close second is Buster Benson's[3].

[1] https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes?stackedNotes...

[2] https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQ...

[3] https://buster.wiki/me/

Something paradoxical about wishing to create more information and simultaneously wishing to consume less of it.

Nothing paradoxical. Creation and consumption are two opposite things. Creation requires active brainpower. Passively consuming what others have already created just devoids one's brain of the creative powers.

Also, on the topic of note taking, creation does't necessarily mean for others.

I think this misses the point the other user probably tried to make.

Yes, it can be good to bias towards taking action particularly when passive consumption is the prevailing habit. That need not take the form of creating more fodder for consumption, which can appear redundant. Absent all the niceties of modern life that deliver the means of this consumption, people in general were not full-bore creatives (I believe this is consistent even if you account for leisure time).

Except information is never really "consumed", more like "copied and integrated".

By that rationale, entertainment media is not consumed.

And that's accurate, and why entertainment media can drive things like fashion trends

Not really. Doing so would lower the average number of readings per article. In the most extreme case, this would lead to every article being write-only and never read by anyone. Of course this is absurd because writing takes so much more effort than reading, and the vast majority of people will be consumers without writing anything (except short private chats).

Yeah, and on a similar note, I'm done with thinking globally.

I'm tired of wanting the world to be a better place and designing systems for the entire world. Instead, I want to focus on small scale local problems.

How do you decide which small-scale local problems are worth focusing on, without the big-picture view providing a frame for your priorities?

I used to order my life around thinking globally and acting locally, but humanity has closed the doors to the kinds of futures I was working toward, and there is nothing in the global view which inspires me anymore. There are still plenty of things I can do on a small scale, but the choice seems arbitrary without the context of a larger story. I wonder how you are getting past that obstacle and finding motivation for the small scale work.

Don't overthink it. There's likely only a few things you can do locally. Pick one or two that interest you the most or that you think you can have the biggest impact on.

The small scale is pretty obvious; if it's a problem for the local community, then it's a problem to care about.

There are lots of small, local problems. The choice isn't arbitrary - it's whatever you think you are best suited to fix.

> but humanity has closed the doors to the kinds of futures I was working toward

Curious to hear more about what you mean by this.

My personal philosophy includes a strong vein of deep ecology, with a political view influenced by mutualist anarchism. I wanted to be part of a humanity which got its act together, tore down its oppressive hierarchies, adapted to its limits, and learned to respect not only each other, but the whole of the ecosystem we live within. That can no longer happen; we've already gone so far (with CO2 emissions especially) that everything, everywhere, has been or will be disrupted and damaged by human industry.

I lower the cognitive overhead for global problems by just donating to charities that do effective work I believe in (e.g. PSI). On the local level we can at least go to town hall meetings and vote.

any other tips you've read/received on writing concisely in general?

Get my shit in order. I feel like a lot of the systems I had in place to keep me sane and getting shit done have sort of fallen into disrepair the last couple of years. I feel tired and disorganized and spend too much time on my phone. Maybe it's a knock-on effect of the covid situation with lockdowns and isolation or I dunno. My health and fitness isn't as great as it was, I'm procrastinating too much and find myself doing things I know won't make me happy in stead of things I know will. Overall I'm just fed up with being tired all the time.

Maybe it's just time to re-read the roman stoics again. Epictetus never fails to be disappointed in me and my excuses.

If you're interested, I'd love to chat about your systems and goals!

Whenever I'm feeling a bit directionless, small conversations with strangers start my snowball rolling :)

Throw something on my calendar: https://calendly.com/taylor-town/30min

Always good to dedicate time to getting your shit together, happy new year:

https://www.theonion.com/clinton-calls-for-national-week-off...

i recommend exercise. I'm over 50, and often after work I'll feel totally drained. after some kind of physical activity - and food - I have energy well into the evening. 20 years ago, I didnt have to do this, but at my current age, this fixes it.

Yeah, this is a big part of what's fallen apart. I used to be quite a gym rat.

Yourself or others may find _it is exactly what has fallen apart_.

Exercise is magical, it gives you superpowers of focus and confidence that you can solve all problems. If everything is going wrong, it's the first place to check - are you exercising? If not, fix that. And maybe everything else goes away.

Im 34 and in the same boat. I try to hit the swimming pool 3 times a week at least, preferably during my “lunch hours” and it changes everything. Couldn’t go for the last 2 weeks and I feel like I’m 85. Not sure where it comes from.

Being able to work out over my lunch hour is easily one of the best parts of working from home for me.

I suppose it was technically possible while working in an office, but such a hassle. Always resulted in losing some workout time around the edges, too.

Must be nice. WFH for us meant that you have calls scheduled from 10am to 2pm. I think for the new year I'm going to block off 12-1:30 every day and absolutely step away from my desk.

Recurring time blocks like this have been an absolute game-changer for me, I'd highly recommend it!

An hour in the morning and an hour-and-a-half around lunch have made it so much easier to stay sane, and provide nice cover to decline meetings by pointing to a calendar conflict.

The exercise component is clear but could you elaborate on what you meant specifically about "food"? Do you mean a certain type of diet or only eating at certain times of the day or after working out?

Being tired all the time is not normal. If you wake up tired or frequently feel fatigued you should consider seeing a sleep professional and getting screened for sleep apnea.

I think you might be me.

I have, incredibly, held firm to a resolution I made many years ago: never make another new year's resolution.

It's better to have a CI approach IMO. Continuous Improvement. There's nothing special about January 1. If you want to do something start now.

That was my resolution until this year. It's a great one to have. I still started early, but it was influenced by the time of year.

Still waiting for tomorrow to arrive.

for me it feels like i need some kind of closure, the CI you suggest for me is hard, when i take a new year resolution, it feels like kind of starting on a clean slate, f*k all the mistake i made and start fresh, and i was able to do some progress year by year (but very small), i was thinking of making a resolution every year on my birth day, but it feels like a lonely activity, but in new years resolution, i feel like its a communal thing, like ,yay :) lot of people taking resolution and i'm doing one as well, if i fail then i convince my self ,saying, meh i will add it to next year, but i add list of things in my resolution, and finish some, all it comes down to me for is , clean slate , forgive myself if i miss some goals, and i start fresh because its New Year and it means you can start fresh ;-)

I'm the same, instead I always take around 2 weeks vacation at the end of the year and do a full year retrospective instead of creating goals (doesn't take 2 weeks but being off work helps).

I’m with you, but some people prefer major releases that they can emotionally prepare for. I’ve also been told it helps avoid procrastination, like any deadline can.

It just enables procrastination until the next Jan 1st

2nd. Waiting for one day a year and (usually even only) then make a resolution for the next year to me sounds like 'maybe could use more self-reflection and/or realistic view'. Self-reflection with the intent of figuring out the reason for needing that one day in the first place (maybe it wold be fun to just pick another day from now on?), but also to figure out whether one is not just being untrue to oneself. For example are you perhaps afraid of making resolutions and then just pick the day of which you know it's common for others to do so as well, making it less bad when you fail at the resolution, because the others more often that not (mind you this is just from purely anecdotal evidence of people around me) also fail? Wouldn't it be better and then just make no resolutions at all? Could be a win on the self-knowledge front? And then from that perhaps shift to making well thought-out resolutions for yourself, whenever is the most appropriate or perhaps even spread over longer periods of time (e.g. start with 'try to achive x' but then don't be too stubborn to halfway decide x sucks, or maybe y is better, or a modified version of x is better, etc.).

I want to use my phone less. I don’t want to use it at all during idle time. Instead, I’d like to fill that time with reading books, drawing, and journaling. If I can get my phone use to under 2 hours per day, I think I’ll be more mentally healthy.

The area I need to work on the most is phone use before bed. I don’t know how to fall asleep quickly, so I use my phone to kill time until I eventually fall asleep. I think if I can find a way to stop using my phone before bed, I’ll wake up better rested and be able to have more productive days. Yet that first requires me to figure out how to become tired at an appropriate bed time rather than lying around for an hour and a half with a swarm of thoughts.

I sometimes wish I could ditch my phone entirely. However, it’s important for me to have communication paths to message friends, so I need my phone for iMessage.

——

My past resolutions, which were successful include: losing weight to become fit, giving up meat, and eliminating social media. Hopefully I can make my new resolution successful as well.

Reading books instead of the internet before bed has been really good for me. It fills that need for something to wind down with, but isn't as aggressively fighting for your attention. Anecdotally, it seems like reading a book, even on my phone, knocks me out a lot faster than anything online.

Congratulations on the success with your previous resolutions, and good luck this year!

> The area I need to work on the most is phone use before bed.

For me, I started falling asleep quickly once I chose a home for my phone (downstairs on my kitchen counter). I also discovered I started getting out of bed more quickly too!

> I sometimes wish I could ditch my phone entirely. However, it’s important for me to have communication paths to message friends, so I need my phone for iMessage.

You might not be able to ditch your phone entirely, but you can get closer!

You can get a cellular Apple Watch and leave your phone at home. It sucks to use iMessage on it, but that's kind of the point. It can connect to AirPods for Siri and phonecalls and directions, and that tends to be enough.

---

[1] https://taylor.town/phone-home

[2] https://taylor.town/extinguish-all-notifications

[3] https://taylor.town/leave-your-phone-at-home

I was on the “no phone by bed” train until my garage was broken into at 3am and realized I couldn’t quickly call the police.

You don't have a means of self-defense in your own house?

I keep a baseball bat by my bed, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go looking for a fight against two intruders who are armed with who-knows-what. When the cops showed up, they said that if I had called and said "home invasion" they would have been there in a matter of minutes.

when seconds count, they are only minutes away.

Play more video games. I feel like this year I haven't had a chance to get lost in a great video game's narrative. Spent far too much time trying to be productive and not just taking a break to relax.

Btw if anyone has any suggestions for games to play. Please share.

Marvel's Midnight Suns, by Fireaxis the XCOM developers.

Half card based tactical combat, half Mass Effect dialog trees with passable writing. It's a great chill out and relax game. In the game itself you basically hang out and talk to people for most of it.

It's not going to blow your mind, but it's my game of choice for destressing. And it's so long!

Fire Emblem is another game people compare it to, but I haven't played that.

If you want something with especially strong narrative, the Witcher 3 got a big update that added raytracing and blinged out the graphics overall.

Control. It’s a bit weird but a great game with a really nice atmosphere.

I recommend Control to everyone I can.

Stunning game, weird as. There is a... sequence... towards the end that is in my Top 3 gaming moments ever. Probably even Top 2.

Sounds a bit cliché but Control opened a creative doorway in my mind that I didn't know was there, and now I spend a lot of time trying to find more things like it.

don’t want to spoil anything but do you mean the one with the music?

I do indeed.

Although I thought about it a bit more, and I'm a sucker for the storytelling trope they use a little bit after that, which means Control probably takes 2 out of the Top 5 moments :)

out of the park baseball

Baldurs Gate II.

Still one of the most engrossing games. Even works on iPad.

I'm actually playing that right now on PC.

I never played it before and was looking for some cheap, fun RPG games.

I finished Baldurs Gate I a couple weeks ago and then moved on to II.

Love the BG series. Met my wife through the modding community too. Every couple of years I do a replay of the games.

Hades is a phenomenal game if you like an action rogue-like. Amazing story and music with extremely high polish.

Second this. Last game I've put serious time into - a true joy to play.

SOMA's one of my favorites - went into it blind and first played it this year thanks to it being added to Xbox Game Pass. High on Life is good too comedy/style-wise.

God of War: Ragnarok. Preceded by God of War 4 if not already completed.

One of the best progressions for a suite of character in this decade.

I’m fascinated by how well they managed to reinvent the character Kratos as well as God of war the game. Incredible feat. Imo this transition has really solidified Kratos as one of the all time greatest video game characters.

I can highly recommend the documentary “Raising Kratos” which gives a great behind the scenes look of the whole process. Very interesting and at times even pretty emotional.

For the great narration with stunning visuals and great story, you might like to play Bioshock series. Right now I think they sell entire collection (Bioshock 1,2 and infinite) on sale on Steam.

Hah! Love your nick! I haven't played games in years, but, I really enjoyed half life and the bioshock series (and portal, absolute classic).

Any others to recommend in that vein?

I would like to add couple more titles to recommend: Firewatch, Fallout series and entire Metro series (2033, Last Light and Exodus). Fallout and Metro games are very similar to half life just not that hard to play.

I've really enjoyed the BioShock series and I started Metro 2033 in october. It's great.

Firewatch I enjoyed, I'll have a look at the others.

Thanks :) happy new years

If you're looking for narrative experiences, Disco Elysium is likely the best video game story ever told - bar none.

Maybe not the best story (although it's really good) but the intersection of presentation and prose is exceptional. One of the few times the medium has really surpassed raw text on the storytelling metric.

Some of those narrative sequences will stay with me for the rest of my life.

My necktie disagrees with this.

I second Disco Elysium. Top 10 games if not 5 I ever played. Sad thing about the studio and the creators getting pushed out of the company.

Try pentiment for a similar experience; albeit, 15th century European style.

If you’re a programmer, you might enjoy Captain of Industry. It’s a factory game that’s strangely realistic.

I love factory games in general but I refunded Captain of Industry almost immediately. It's very well regarded, but it's very early access, and I have a couple more of the major Factorio modpacks to work my way through, which should take me roughly until the heat death of the universe. By then, Captain of Industry should be out of EA; so I will try it again then.

Elden Ring got the Game of the Year award for a reason. The narrative is somewhat minimalist and told in fragmented notes, not the type you would see in Mass Effect, for example, but it is there. The biggest points of the game are exploration and challenge, though.

My personal favorite is Citizen Sleeper. Also Signalis is pretty cool somewhat oldschool dreamy horror game.

Signalis is a masterpiece in my humble opinion. It's been a long time since I've truly enjoyed falling into the lore of a game.

Here are the games I've enjoyed in recent years: https://memex.marginalia.nu/good-video-games.gmi

Turns out to be mostly indie games. Feels like that's the only space that's actually experimenting and doing interesting things.

Heaven's Vault and Cruelty Squad stand out especially even though the latter is weird and has a fairly high bar to entry.

RDR2! Taking long rides on a horse through beautiful fields is extremely relaxing.

Oh, goody. I recommend Turbo Overkill. It plays better than the new Doom games before you even get to the upgrades. Double jump, dash, and remarkable air control right of the box. Narrative is pretty solid: shoot things till they stop trying to get you.

Don't sleep on games from FromSoftware. They make me feel the way games did over two decades ago. There's an accompanying sense of wonder and exploration, but also thrilling challenge. The narrative format is less in-your-face - there's lots of lore and optional quests/conversations with NPCs, but few cutscenes.

Pentiment for something very different than everything else. Also, the steamdeck is a game changer if you’re time constrained.

Hellblade: Senuas's Sacrifice is the latest I've been drawn into.

It perfectly blends an Icelandic setting, Pict lore (blended with nordic mythology in historically accurate ways), and psychosis, which is the main theme of the game.

I enjoyed the main quest line in Genshin Impact. Besides being a beautiful open world all around, some of the story arcs left me in tears, which hadn't happened since the cutscene where <warning: spoiler ahead> Cyan said goodbyes to his family on the ghost train in FFVI.

I'd expect silk song to come out this year, I think the sequel to breath of the wild as well?

I don't know if either will have a narrative to get lost in, but they'll certainly have worlds to get lost in

Outer Wilds (not to be confused with Outer Worlds) is the best game I've ever played. An extremely engaging discovery driven story game that's so well executed it puts most AAA titles to shame. It's one of those amazing experiences you'll only get to have once. Wish I could forget everything and play it over again. (If you're not convinced look at some of the reviews online. But try to avoid spoilers as much as possible. This game is best experienced as blind as possible.)

To spend less energy on work.

For the last year I've been working a job where I need to be in the office in the mornings, have a few hours break in the afternoon, then have meetings in the evening. By the time I'm done I'm completely drained, and more often than not my kids are already asleep.

I've come to the conclusion that however hard my team and I work has basically zero impact on the company as a whole, compared to whatever seemingly tiny decisions some exec makes. So it makes no sense for us to be working hard and burning ourselves out. I've progressed enough with my career (>10 years experience) that I'm not concerned about future career prospects.

If anyone has any suggestions of how to find more sustainable roles I'm all ears.

Work smart, not hard.

Set a "work budget". Maybe this is eight hours a day or a more flexible 40 hours per week.

Do the most high value work with those hours possible until your work budget is zero.

Stop working until it recharges.

Decline meetings that are too late. Ignore unimportant emails. Go spend time with your kids who are literally growing up without you.

All jobs will take what you give. It is on you to set boundaries.

Not sure if it is a resolution, or maybe just some "New Years Cleaning", but I'm trying to curate my social media feeds a little more.

I have already done of good job of eliminating the toxic depressing people in years past, so that is not the problem.

But I now realize there is another type of person who affects how I feel in a negative way: the super-successful advice peddler.

I have recently unfollowed a handful of people on Twitter and LinkedIn who seem perfectly nice, yet give too much advice, or are always acting like they are trying to help me achieve their same level of success.

It feels good so far. It reset my mind so that I can focus on just being myself and forging my own path without worrying about what other people are doing or how I'm not as successful as so-and-so.

So I guess my New Years Resolution is to carry that forward. Do not consume content from people who humble-brag in the form of success advice.

This is a good one, did the same a while back and it feels much more refreshing. Its also a natural thing to do as over time your preferences do shift.

I think that there is a parallel with the benefits of changing the route of your daily walk; it stimulates brain activity and can help you start seeing things differently or find a solution to a problem. Routines can be good, but adjusting them a bit from time to time can be definitely beneficial.

https://theuniversityblog.co.uk/2010/01/14/open-your-mind-ta...

I’m one of those people who like to give advice to help others achieve their goals. I didn’t know people might be perceiving it negatively, thanks. I’m doing this to share the feeling of pride I have for myself and want others to feel it for themselves. My goal for the next year is to cultivate more compassion, so this fits.

Most people only share their success and happiness on social media, which leads to a very warped version of reality which we compare ourselves to. It's intensely unhealthy to try and live up to the standards of a feed, be it Instagram, Facebook, or even LinkedIn.

I cut my podcast subscriptions down to the bone. Every night I go for a 3 mile walk and listen to a podcast. This year I want to go for walks and listen to my brain. Just the thought scares me.

it'd probably harder to get going but why are you scared? it's a bit hard to comprehend for someone who never listens to podcasts/music while working out or jogging.

I also listen to a ton of podcasts and think I know where they're coming from. If you're constantly listening to something, you're never really spending time analyzing or working through your own thoughts. A re-occurring topic on HN seems to be that a certain amount of boredom is good for you, but constant podcasts take away that opportunity.

"Sometimes quiet is violent... There's no hiding. I'm forced to deal with what I feel; there is no distraction to mask what is real" - Twentyone Pilots, "Car Radio"

Do it! This summer I started waking up daily at 6 am for an hour of uninterrupted time of thinking and prayer before my little ones wake up. It's great, I'm so happy I did it and plan on doing it forever. I find myself enjoying solitude and silence more and more. Craving it sometimes, almost. My mental health has improved a lot. It's like I never understood how much my brain needs the quiet alone time without any work planned.

I love listening to podcasts while walking, but apart from the listen to my brain thing, I also am starting to think I need to give my ears a break from my headphones…

Try walking without listening to your brain. Consider it walking meditation.

Crazy as it might sound, you can literally do this by listening to your feet!

It's really fun to do when it's real real cold out and the ground crunches a little as you walk

Excited about my goals this year - thanks for asking this...

(1) I am building a community Makerspace / entrepreneur incubator lab in Latin America (related goal: Learn Spanish!). Agile product development methodologies, pairing, open-source product designs - High quality people, practices, tools, products and clients (and snacks). - If this is your jam, hit me up. I could use the help!

(2) I'm learning Ruby & Rails (For fun: Using ChatGPT to propose a learning path & resources, and planning to use Obsidian + MkDocs to document what I learn). I'd like to feel comfortable hacking together interesting SaaS tools for friends & interesting business ideas. I'm familiar with Python/Django, so please feel free to suggest your best Rails advice!

(3) Writing & Sales are the two most important skills for Entrepreneur mode, so I'm studying books in those areas and practicing. I've done roles as developer, consultant, product management, and solution/sales engineering, but I'm holding myself accountable to actually develop excellent Sales Skillz (after all - we all "sell" our ideas, suggestions). Wish me luck on that one!

(4) Fitness / sports - Getting back into Squash (the best game there is). My dream would be to play at a 4.0 level (currently 3.0'ish)

Wishing you all an excellent 2023 - full of happiness, health, good family vibes, creativity, and prosperity.

PS: Check out this video on focusing on New Years "themes" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE

could you point the books u reading on (3)?

I suggest buy these gems and read them (roughly) in this order, take it seriously - take notes.

// Mindset (Important)

- Think and Grow Rich https://a.co/d/fMmWnrI (listen to Earn Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret" daily while reading it - https://open.spotify.com/album/0bg1C7BwYZq5vXFpJOhZFM?si=wAB...; listen to everything else he's done: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4gyPmRdEnJ6GVibKuQekoF?si=YD...)

^^ Take this one seriously, take notes, and when he says do something - do it, trust the system.

- Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders https://a.co/d/8H4AsQg

// Startup & Business

- The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building https://a.co/d/daElAvL (MUST READ - extremely actionable)

- A Radical Enterprise: Pioneering the Future of High-Performing Organizations https://a.co/d/d7LljeV

// Writing & Speaking

- On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction https://a.co/d/3Sb7vG4

- Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds https://a.co/d/gd0LJuU

- The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition https://a.co/d/bFYFQyo

// Sales

- Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook https://a.co/d/gM1yZt7

- The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation https://a.co/d/1FPKfmy

- Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal https://a.co/d/86WRDtR

Best of luck of your journey.

Thank you very much.

> For fun: Using ChatGPT to propose a learning path & resources, and planning to use Obsidian + MkDocs to document what I learn

Where can I follow your journey?

Would love to hear more about (1) but an extended stay in latin america probably isnt in the cards for me. But anyway I love the coworking / maker / incubator places and I think the world can always use more.

I want to learn Ruby on rails. Would you or someone else like to collaborate with me or be my mentor? (I tend to get stuck at times and then lose the momentum).

Was born and grew up in Colombia so can answer a few Qs about culture if you'd like.

Earn more money.

I've been a software engineer for 8 years but I earn less than some new grads. I've never gone in for flashy toys or expensive trips, but now I realise that money buys me time. Time with my friends, time with my family, time to do what I want.

How do you plan on earning more money? New job? Freelancing? Starting a business?

Job hunting is the number one. I see job adverts for around 1x to 3x my salary. Job hunting is a real uphill struggle as I'm severely affected by ADHD and have a spotty job history, but I think if I spin it well I can get a big bump.

Every year I like to write out my long-term (5-10 year) goals down and then pick 2 or 3 of them to focus on for the year. Then break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals/habits. For 2023 I chose to work on over coming my social anxiety which has some how gotten really bad and work on changing careers into another field (currently in construction).

If you'd like to chat about socialization or career change, I'm available. I was in industrial hygiene for 3 years before making a big switch.

What concrete steps are you considering for overcoming your social anxiety?

Progressive exposure to social situations that make me uncomfortable. I think this is known as exposure therapy? The idea is to just put myself in more situations that are just slightly outside my comfort zone. So starting a conversation with the cashier at the store or barber or something like that and then progressively pushing my comfort with something a more challenging.

Exposure therapy sounds right and something I’ve discussed with my own therapist to get over my own SA. Best of luck to you!

The only resolution I have: to step out of my confort zone more often. I’m defensive by nature but most times I’m “out there” net results are positive.

Okay, so.. At the very least, not give up into suicidal thoughts, but, beside that... Read more for leisure. Which, is why I bought cute e-ink device, and it helps tremendously regarding that... Read more to learn language. In this case, Japanese. After all, using the language is the best way to accomplish that... I am already reading in JP daily, but its only like 20 minutes. I want more. So, I will do more. (Here, also, e-ink device helps a lot. Kiwi Browser + ッツ Ebook Reader 'website' + yomichan is blessing with that)

Try to get serious about programming again. I was going on and off past year, just going.. through books, but never really making any serious project. So, that, I want to change. More effort. More cute things.

And, save a bit of money, alongside perhaps upgrading PC. My current PC is rather dated, and limiting, so... Getting a proper PC, would help a lot, considering I do compile from time to time (Yay NixOS) (And maybe would go back to gentoo, to see how things are lol)

And so, I will keep trying. Even if I fail. But I will keep trying. And that's about all.

3840x1440 Any other resolution to better yourself you can make at any day of the year

Oh man. I wholeheartedly reject anything below 4k. Let’s wish us all 8k in the next year. So our code looks crispier and better every year.

Screen sharing would be fun

I just had a new 3840x2560 3:2 display arrive and it's glorious.

Get on a bicycle at least 6 out of 7 days even if only for a gentle 20min ride into town.

Between 2015.06-2022.05 I only had a bike for transport, and since buying the car in May I defaulted to driving.

This will change in 2023.

To recover from long covid. It's been almost a year and it feels like I'm half way there, so I am optimistic about getting this over with in 2023.

Right there with you. I hope I can run my 4 miles in the morning again.

Tip for anyone suffering from viral fatigue - I had a bad case a few years ago and it was only strength training that turned it round. That's as simple as learning to use the weight machines at the gym.

To implement every recommendation given to me by physiotherapists, to carefully record progress and to return to them for further advice.

I'm in my 40s and can feel my body starting to protest at my neglect of it. There's no reason for my musculoskeletal system to degrade until I spend my final years hobbling about in constant pain. Physios are great and their treatments can actually fix/prevent most of this stuff.

This year I'm focused on trying to grow my Patreon. It's for a niche NES game development hobby that I don't expect to pick up any real steam, but I'd like to see if I can get enough side income from it to de-stress my day job a bit, let me consider a soft-retirement down the line where my primary income isn't the only thing keeping the ship afloat. I think that'd be a nice long term goal, but it's not remotely feasible if I don't put in the work. This year I'm going to do just that.

Not watch porn even once. I am not addicted to it or something, but want to improve my self-control.

Many don't realize how much control porn has over them until they try to quit. Quitting for 1 day, 1 week can be easy. Quitting for a year? Almost everyone who regularly watches will struggle to do so. Don't let the struggle discourage you. If you give in, try to get back up asap. Even if you don't make it 100% porn free year its not a failure.

Wish you the best.

I don't understand why one would quit porn. It's great entertainment. It increases quality of life. It's an integral part of one's sex life. Why would one want to quit?

I hear that cigarette smoking is also very pleasant, especially after meals, while thoughtfully gazing at a landscape, with coffee after waking up, etc. /s

https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

Are you comparing porn with cigarettes for real?

There's evidence to suggest the dopaminergic addiction is just as strong

Porn addiction can be much more damaging to people's lives than cigarettes.

None of the prior comments talk about addiction. Just porn consumption.

Addiction to anything is bad, simple.

> Are you comparing porn with cigarettes for real?

Well, technically speaking, it wasn't a comparison, it was a rhetorical parallel to indicate that perhaps just because something appears to be pleasurable, it doesn't mean that it's also good for you.

Were I to compare, it would be an apples/oranges thing, which isn't the right way to compare anything.

Not to mention that smoking affects only the user (and their environment, surely, and perhaps their insurance provider), while porn also affects the actors, to a degree that it must be paralleled to abuse.

You may like watching porn; but could you stomach going through that meat grinder as your career?

Yea, I had a feeling I used the wrong word “compare”, but didn’t know the correct word. Thanks.

> just because something appears to be pleasurable

The comment you reply to didn’t only focus on pleasure.

> Not to mention that smoking affects only the user

This doesn’t connect. Smoking affects also people nearby (people that didn’t sign up for it). Porn only “affects” people watching and involved (both parties signed up for it).

Also look up ethical porn. I can’t vouch for all of it, but I know some people here in Europe that treat their performers well.

We largely fixed this with coffee. I hope we can largely fix it with porn.

> You may like watching porn; but could you stomach going through that meat grinder as your career?

I love sex and wouldn’t mind getting paid to have it. I know some performers personally and wouldn’t mind working with them. The only reason I won’t do it is because society will penalize me when I maybe want to become president ahaha.

After looking at that website for like 3 minutes, I've reached the conclusion that I prefer my sex advice to come from someone who's not opposed to orgasms during sex.

It also doesn't help to see things like this on his Wikipedia without listing any sort of institution he was affiliated with:

> Wilson was born in Seattle and taught human pathology, anatomy, and physiology, and was especially interested in the neurochemistry of addiction.

The most reputable thing I could find about him is a TEDx talk, and criteria for giving one of those isn't really top-notch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Wilson_(author)

> After looking at that website for like 3 minutes, I've reached the conclusion that

Three-minute conclusions are the best, and they can last for decades.

Yes, if I can't quickly verify someone's credentials, I pretty instantly dismiss them as the arbiter of truth.

Even more so when they're talking about pyschology, anatomy, health... You know, the topics where bullshit information online tends to be quite common.

At this point, I consider giving a TEDx talk an anti-qualification.

Exactly. It causes no harm. I'd rather have more real sex, but in the meantime porn is the best substitute available.

Can be personal decision. Like someone choosing to watch less/no movies.

Porn can also be bad for you if you have no control over your consumption. But that is true for most things.

For some people watching too much porn damages their actual sexual life. Granted in other cases might help. So it comes down to a personal choice. Some people don't want to support the darker side of the industry. They don't know/understand the implications of their watching porn has on many of the people involved. Some people may prefer to read/exercise but they keep dragging themselves into hours of porn.

> They don't know/understand the implications of their watching porn has on many of the people involved.

There is something called “Ethical porn”. It might just be smoke and mirrors, but they promise to be ethical to people involved.

> It increases quality of life. It's an integral part of one's sex life.

I disagree with both these assumptions. Curious why you think so?

A comparison of my own quality of life with and without makes the distinction obvious both with and without a long-term relationship. It's a completely unproblematic and simple judgement.

Of course I don't claim to speak for everyone; people are different and there's obviously people who should reduce or abstain from porn.

GP, however, did seem to speak for everyone, so a counterpoint was called for.

It reminds of the typical “let’s take a complex thing and blow a tiny detail’s importance completely out of proportion”. In this case the complex thing is “happiness” and the tiny detail is “the fraction of time you spend watching porn”. So yeah, no reason to quit, unless you are a diagnosed addict. But to each their own :)

It has decreased my quality of life by virtue that it interferes with it. Binge-watching (including browsing) lowers your baseline dopamine levels. It may also interfere with sleep (I can attest to this - having images swimming in your head, usually from over-consumption, can make it impossible). Some people find it more addicting than others.

One I admire, writer of thelastpsychiatrist, said you should treat porn viewing like a heist - in and out in 10 minutes. That's been the intention for years, but the longer sessions creep back in.

You might as well ask why some people can't handle their liquor, drugs, or junk food. This goes back to self-medicating / emotional consumption from many years back, when easily available pirated porn was a complete novelty and I had no idea of what sort of impact it might have on me.

What worked really well for improving my self-control regarding porn was putting money in the game. Whenever you trip, I have to donate 100€ to an organization I don't like (in other words, hate). It should be really painful to donate this money.

I once tripped and it was extremely painful. Don't want to do this again.

Depending on how important this is to you, I'd increase/decrease the amount of money on the table.

It's very helpful to do this together with a friend, to keep each other accountable.

There's actually a really cool NPR podcast on how people used this same strategy to give up a 4 decade smoking habit

Good luck on this quest!

For anyone else not seeking to quit porn, one thing I do is just watch the same favorite clips, only looking for new clips maybe once a month.

The way this practice feels is much different from binging on the firehose.

Another thing I do is mix exotic dancing with these clips. It lowers the "direct" stimulation level and adds a sense of beauty and rapture to the experience.

In fact, frontman1988, I would recommend this latter practice as a fallback. If you feel you absolutely need to look at something sensual, don't dive all the way down into the deepest smut you can find. Just allow a little titillation instead, and you won't have gone off the path as far.

> even once.

The problem with this approach is that if you fail once, there goes the entire year. Try something like "not to do $x on 95% of days" or "go a full month without $x". An all-or-nothing strategy doesn't give you a mechanism to get back on the horse and improve.

I prefer to go all out. Allowing for leniency would be admitting defeat even before starting. I mean how difficult can it be to not view certain websites. If I fail I will implement your technique, but until then I trust myself enough to succeed.

I don't think all-or-nothing strategy is necessarily the same as restrictive cognitive restraint. You can avoid agonizing about failure and still shoot for quitting cold turkey - evidently this strategy works for some.

I just soft-launched a method to overcome addictions and improve impulse control. It combines the Todo list with self-control techniques in a fun way. Might be worth a try? https://Tuduka.com

I exercised regularly, almost religiously, before I got Covid. Covid knocked me flat and I haven’t gotten back into my routine. Need to get back. Also, I need to get serious about finding a new job.

It find that in such situations it helps to start small, regain strength step by step. Same for your job search. I personally tend to always want to do everything in the shortest time possible, this can be quite overwhelming and then you don’t achieve anything.

Use the internet as a reference only and otherwise avoid it, specifically social media, entirely.

I've already started and have already noticed how peaceful and calm the real world is all around me. And that's all that matters.

I think it's interesting that this comment and a few others call out "I, somebody who is currently on the Internet, would like to avoid the Internet more going forward"

What is it about the Internet that we want to get away from? What do we think is out there that would be "better"? It seems very hard to cut something so stimulating. Say we're on the Internet randomly browsing 4 hours a day. I don't think it's realistic to say we're going to do pushups/go for walks 4 hours a day every day. Weather, self-control, etc.

Between a walk, which can be done in almost any weather, exercise, and cooking well for one's self, plus a short amount of time for medidtation/self-care, I don't see why not.

For people in a place where weather or the area is truly not conducive to walking/running/riding, a home setup is an option. Watching a show while on a stationary bike is a great option.

The Internet is a mood organ (among other things.)

> The book is full of delights, but one of my favourite parts is the opening passage, four pages long, in which Rick Deckard and his wife Iran are arguing about the Penfield Mood Organ as they get up in the morning. The Mood Organ is a device with which, by punching in a number, a human user can instantly alter his or her mood. Deckard routinely sets it to have him get up in a cheerful mood, and advises his wife to do the same. Her objection to this is almost exactly the same as my objection above to sentimentality. Emotions need to be earned. She tells her husband that her mood organ schedule for the day includes a “six-hour self-accusatory depression” and when Deckard asks her why on Earth anyone would want to schedule that, she argues that it’s healthy to feel emotions that are congruent with the situation you find yourself in: in their case a poisoned and depopulated world. In fact, she tells him, she has programmed the organ to plunge her into despair twice a month.

>> “But a mood like that,” Rick said, “you’re apt to stay in it, not dial your way out…”

>> “I program an automatic resetting for three hours later,” his wife said sleekly. “A 481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future: new hope that—”

>> “I know 481,” he interrupted. He had dialed out the combination many times; he relied on it greatly.

> Without reproducing the whole passage, I can’t convey just how funny it is. Among the other settings they discuss are 888, “the desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it” and 3, which stimulates the cerebral cortex into wanting to dial.

https://www.tor.com/2015/05/21/that-was-awesome-the-penfield...

>What is it about the Internet that we want to get away from?

For me, it has become overtly adversarial: rampant "advertising"/manipulation, pervasive use of dark patterns, content for the sake of content, and the bulk of discourse is overly pedantic/in bad faith. It's not so much about finding something out there that's "better", but more about removing activities from my life that are low or negative ROI, and the ROI of the content slot machine that is the internet I expect to fall even further with the advances in AI that ChatGPT is demonstrating.

If the OP weren't so far down the front page now, I would fully expect a reply along the lines of "Well that's not the internet's fault; it is just a tool and people are the problem [..]", or "Well unless you want to pay for content, advertising is required", or "Well why don't you create the community you want then? Be the change!". To continue with the investment analogy: this is why I avoid participating in online communities - the ROI for publishing a comment (or more) is low. At best, I can expect a few upvotes which feels quite hollow, and at worst, several comments patronising me or giving my comment the least charitable interpretation possible for Internet Smackdown Points. Yes I know, I left a comment on HN; you caught me in a weak moment :) I do like writing, putting some structure and physical form to my thoughts, but dealing with the conflict it can bring online is taxing - maybe too taxing.

I don't think New Year's resolutions are a good idea. There's a whole cultural phenomenon of them not working.

I think, if you're going to set a particular time to focus on changing behaviors, you really want to start right away, with very small steps, and ramp up as you approach the time of focus.

Q1 for me will emphasize going even deeper on sleep improvements, and on organizing events / making friends.

If you're in the bay area, feel welcome to reach out

This may sound a little odd, but I want to be more hedonistic.

I’ve spent my entire adult life up to now saving and investing so that I could buy a house. Now that I’ve done that it would be nice to indulge just a little bit.

Sounds familiar. That’s why I will spend a bit more for my next car. It should be not too old model X performance.

My goal is to chill the fuck out.

I'm going to pare down the number of goals I've set for myself, and divest myself of any physical detritus associated with the ones I've abandoned so that I have less clutter to deal with. I'm going to make simpler, more standardized meals with fewer ingredients so that I spend less time cooking and cleaning the kitchen. Any time savings I realize from these efforts will be redirected toward relaxing with my partner and kids.

I'm also going to be much less ambitious at work, spend less time working late, stuff like that. I've already told my new boss (I recently went through a reorg) that I'm not interested in angling for a promotion or raise this year, and instead want to just focus on doing the work that's already on my plate more efficiently and with less fuss. I'm going to start keeping my nose out of team debates about things like architecture and coding standards, and move toward sharing my opinion only upon explicit solicitation. I'm going to stop pitching ideas for new projects, because those invariably get added to my workload in addition to the things my boss assigns to me, so they ultimately serve to add to my stress levels. I won't worry about how cool or impactful I think the idea is. Implementing it still only serves to enrich the company's investors, and, as a salaried employee, I will not be compensated for any additional time or mental energy I spend working on it.

That's a very good thing to aim for :D Good luck in the new year :3

> I'm going to start keeping my nose out of team debates about things like architecture and coding standards, and move toward sharing my opinion only upon explicit solicitation.

I've felt the need for the same.

Do 40 hours a week at work, clock off and not think about anything else computer related. I spent from 2012-2020 job hopping to gain new experience, recover from a lot of…bad career decisions…, and more money. Now I make “enough” (not mind blowing by tech standards), enjoy my job and there is no larger place for me to hop to for my specialty. It was officially 10 years in May that my career turnaround started.

Stay on budget with our new lifestyle. My wife and I settled on being “hybrid digital nomads” for the foreseeable future. Live in our investment property/winter home from October/March and fly across the US staying in hotels for the rest of the year. This year we got rid of house, cars and everything else that wouldn’t fit in three suitcases.

In that same vein, find “something” interesting to do at least every weekend in whatever city we are in while traveling. Our itinerary puts us in 13 cities next year.

Run a 5K. I last ran over a decade ago. While at 49, I’m not trying to put my body through the grueling training it took to do a half marathon, from my recent training, I don’t see any reason that I couldn’t get back to an average pace.

Eat better.

Learn Spanish. I started using DuoLingo 3 months ago. One of the places on our itinerary is three weeks in Los Cabos. I want to at least be able to muddle my way through speaking Spanish.

Mine are mostly centered around simplifying to remove distractions and diversifying my skillset:

1. Purge/sell off some of the technology I accumulated over the pandemic when I was stuck at home as much. Do I really need both a gaming console and a high powered graphics card? I barely have time for playing games on one platform let alone multiple.

2. Become fairly well versed in a second public cloud provider (in addition to AWS).

3. Remove Windows from my life. I don't use any software that requires Windows in either a professional or personal setting, and the only thing that has kept me there for a while is gaming (which may not be a thing after number 1 on this list). I already use a M1 MBP as a laptop, but my desktop could be switched over to a Linux distro to better immerse me in that world. I spend most of my day building stuff in cloud environments where Windows is a complete afterthought.

4. Get proficient at a second language/runtime (in addition to Python). I spent the pandemic trying out lots of different languages and runtimes, exploring frameworks, building small things, and the time has come to stick with one and be able to use it when I need to for work. Leaning towards Go currently but haven't made up my mind.

I recommend choosing yearly themes instead of resolutions! Themes are a little more flexible :)

For example, next year will continue to be my Year of Trailblazing!

In 2022, I tackled fatherhood and sobriety; in 2023, I'm starting a company and doing a 550-mile bicycle ride.

---

[1] https://taylor.town/yearly-themes

[2] https://www.aidslifecycle.org

Oh you're in for a treat in 2023 then!

550 mile is very specific. Already planned the route?

And please do tell us about that company you're starting:)

Whatever happens, best of luck! Both are gonna be a wild ride, but you'll keep great memories for a lifetime!

I'm bicycling from SF to LA as part of the 2023 AIDS/LifeCycle! Please donate!

My mission for this company is to (1) prevent AI from devastating human economies and (2) fix gig work. My investors won't be happy if I say more than that, but I should be making some exciting announcements later this year on my website.

I'm also organizing a tiny tech conference in Southern California (Sept 2-3) so email me at hello@taylor.town if you'd like to join us!

---

[1] https://www.aidslifecycle.org

[2] https://taylor.town

I have appointments for two different therapists coming up this next week, have been losing 2 pounds a week for like a month on average, and am in a job I actually want to stay in for the first time in years. So mostly just continue and follow through with all of the above.

I think time is passing by too fast. I want to go on an outing every weekend (mostly local, maybe domestic/international locations 2-3 hours away) to learn more about the world nearby me.

  - Start renting our apartment

  - Buy new home

  - Keep pouring money into S&P500

  - Meditate daily first time in the morning

  - Excercise three times a week

  - Familiy travel to Italy

  - Keep working at current job (at least 1st half of the year)

  - Start a consulting/freelance venture (2nd half of the year)
  
  - Level up on Python best practices, solid architecture design, then level up on Machine Learning knowledge

My most important resolution this year is to find a therapist - that's quite challenging where I live, because most therapists are fully booked and have waiting lists spanning months or even a year. I was already in therapy a long time ago and this year I had multiple lows which should have been the signal to start therapy again.

The second resolution is to find some social hobby I am passioned for and to find a group of good friends to socialize outside of work.

Besides these two resolutions, I have some minor ones: - Get some strength improvements in the gym (I started this year but the progress could've been way better) - Try out some new recipes and try to get good at cooking the ones I like - Get some decent sleep hygiene & morning routines

Make less money. I want to be ramen-profitable with my side projects so I can take a year or two off working for various personal projects. I have savings but rather not burn through them if possible.

Kinda been through that myself this year.

A few words of advice, if you care to hear them:

- do not sacrifice on food quality, sleep, or health in general. That'll bring you nothing good.

- find other places where you can save money. Identify and reduce waste first

- when you make less money, you have a lot less disposable income than you would think. Say you earn 25% less next year, but your fixed costs (rent, food, health, insurances) take up 60% of your current earnings. It means you'll have less than half the disposable money you have now. (100% - 60% = 40% of disposable income today. -25% diminished earnings next year, you only have 15% left.)

That being said, after struggling for an entire year, I think making your life cheaper is a good choice in the long run. If your time is cheaper, you can invest more of it into vacation, leisure, health, or simply your next product.

Good luck. Tough times ahead, but if you're careful, you could be a lot better off soon. Not richer in money, but in everything else.

Don't forget to sleep!

Thank you for your kind words! Health is definitely one of my top priorities. I've also reduced my costs a lot this year in preparation as well.

This year, I've been doing financially well but has been feeling unfulfilled. Next year, I'd like to be "richer in everything else" instead, as you've said :)

I wish you a good tough happy year :D Keep believin'

To learn how to stop saying "yes" to everything.

This is actually a pretty good one. Possibly life changing and yet not intimidating.

A very simple way to improve work life balance

https://www.amazon.com/Start-Negotiating-Tools-that-Pros/dp/...

Excellent YouTube channel about a group of friends that say "yes" to things: https://www.youtube.com/@YesTheory

Very inspiring!

To consolidate, concentrate, and collaborate.

Consolidate: I have too many things going on at the moment. A day job, freelance consulting gigs, side projects, family and stuff. Need to sort my priorities and consolidate some of the stuff to avoid burnout.

Concentrate: Multi-tasking is more of a bane than a boon. It usually impacts concentration, leading to some not-so-good decisions. My goal is to reduce the number of active tasks at a time and focus more on things in front of me than worrying about the future.

Collaborate: Another goal of the upcoming year is to collaborate more. There are so many interesting problems around us that can be solved with collective wisdom. I am all for active collaboration, without spreading myself thin, of course.

Professional: (1) Understand more about what roles are best for me in this world. Start-ups? Big corp? Programming? Pre-sales? Data analytics. Doing well by most objective means but have long been anxious and indecisive about what matters in my career

Personal: (1) Be a reliable communicator with my friends (2) Consume much less alcohol (3) Finally complete a side-project using either technology I've regularly used (Python, SQL) or something brand new (4) Write regularly with no excuses instead of feeling like I need to deliver the perfect newsletter post (5) Hit new PRs in my weight training regimen

I want to start keeping a journal and by journal I mean having daily note with:

- In the morning: make a list of what I want/have to do - doesnt have to be exhaustive just write SOMETHING.

- TIL - "Today I learned" section with anything in it that caught my eye that day.

- At least 2 sentences about how I felt or experienced today

I am hoping this will help me being organized a bit more and maybe some of it will be usable in terms of publishing it on my website as fully fledged post or even just short note about cool stuff I found.

Plan is to not make any of this tiresome and to just create a habit out of it.

> - In the morning: make a list of what I want/have to do - doesnt have to be exhaustive just write SOMETHING.

One pattern I used for a long time was "2 BIG THINGS, 3 SMALL THINGS". Each day, I tried to tackle 2 scary tasks and 3 easy tasks.

If you allow me to recommend something to that:

Add a line about what are you thankful for. Doesn't need to be something grand or phylosophical, something banal like "I'm thankful for for the paved road that connects to my house." works best IMHO. It vastly improves with the average mood in my experience. [1]

[1]: https://namica.org/blog/the-impact-of-gratitude-on-mental-he...

Two weeks ago I started a new ai project, to develop an artificial mind (short and long term memory, self reflection, chat(of course)). In 2023 my aim is to get this to work so well that I can plug it in a telegram bot and create a truly useful personal assistant

Perhaps you could test it by asking It what Its New Year's resolutions might be =P

Ahah I'll give that a try

I have same old new year resolutions but past few years, this is what I have been doing.

For the year that passed, I go over my phone photo album, recall key events in life of family members, friends I met, books I read, major purchases, basic fitness parameters (mostly from Apple Watch, weight etc), financial health, progress made in hobbies. I write these down on a paper. Not very detailed though.

Looking back it’s been a great experience to see the life progression.

For Christmas this year, I gave my wife a booklet of my sketches (I am not very good at drawing). Each doodle was a memory we had together in 2022. Our whole family had a blast looking through my crappy doodles and laughing at ourselves!

I think going back through your phone photos and synthesizing your memories into writing/art is an excellent way to bookend the year.

This is brilliant. Your sketches would also highlight what really mattered to you as opposed to the factual details from videos/photos. I am going to try it, starting with the fireworks watching last night.

One of my main resolutions is not to write a programming language for GPU compute shaders. I've written a bit more about my 2023 wishes here: https://raphlinus.github.io/personal/2022/12/31/raph-2023.ht...

Here is my personal way and not necessarily a New Year's resolution/Plan.

- A very fuzzy 10-year horizon plan-ish thought play. It has a few multiple scenarios and I let loose with no constraints. I gleefully calls this the "Big Picture" and I even have a folder with that name, complete with text, diagrams, inspirational pictures, etc. Some of the key timelines pivots around my kids -- 10th grade, 12, college, etc.

- Then a yearly plan that kinda/sorta/hopefully align with that 10-year thing.

- A more concrete quarterly actionable items that are an entanglements of work and family.

- Of course, then the monthly, weekly plan follows.

A lot of these plans moves around a lot and I'm fine with it. Recently, I have added a fork -- what are my Minimum Viable Failures as I age -- say, if I don't retire from active earning by 50-years, what should I change, focus, et al.

It is a fun exercise that I did. I'm also thinking of, one day, cleaning it up and write it out and hopefully help budding founders/entrepreneurs/doers/adventurer learn and adapt their own.

Monitor my thoughts and choose which are worth attention and which to shut down/replace with better ones.

Everything seems to follow from this.

I’ve learned woodworking at a level that will allow me to rapidly produce inexpensive but sturdy caskets for people who can’t afford one for cremating their loved ones (you could also be buried in it depending on the state).

The global situation is exhausting, attempting to focus more locally. Do what you can where you are with what you have.

Continue working on my app, with the end goal of writing a book about the development process. I did a Show HN few days ago but didn't get traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34163473 —will try again when I add new features.

I'm retiring my home Exchange 2003 server. I haven't picked a replacement yet, but over the Christmas break, I started fooling around with Mail-in-a-Box. I want to look at iRedMail, too.

Professionally, I have big plans to transition my team to GitOps. It's going to take a lot of cross-training, but I'm really looking forward to it.

I’m going to graduate! Just one semester left and my undergrad thesis.

I'd like to learn a little Italian, I should keep trying to pickup bits of French too. If anyone knows any technology based news sites in Italian it would be really helpful

I haven't personally used LingQ, but it seems to be the best way to pick up new languages. It provides a feed of news in other languages with a neat vocab tracker! I haven't learned a language with it yet, but I'm very interested. There's also an excellent interview with LingQ's creator.

---

[1] https://www.lingq.com/en/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKg23ZFURX0

I've used it personally and it's fantastic. If you're like me, the most productive language study is just reading and looking up the individual words you don't know. LingQ facilitates that beautifully.

As an Italian I sometimes read about tech news on this website section: https://www.ilpost.it/tecnologia/

But AFAIK there isn't an Italian equivalent of HN, if that is what you are looking for.

A fun way to learn new languages is a chrome extension for having dual subtitles on Netflix movies. I find it’s a good way to pick up slang and idioms of the target language.

Nothing compared to HN. hwupgrade.it forum was a good community as far as i remember hdblog is a not-totally-sponsored tech news/reviews site

I used the free podcasts from Coffee Break Italian. They're very good. https://coffeebreaklanguages.com

A non-tech method perhaps. Find Italian friends, community or even better a partner to practice with

I released a double pendulum video in August 2021 and after a year it got about 100 views. It was almost my only video. About 2 weeks ago the YouTube algorithm somehow decided to pick it up and it has of the order of 100,000 views.

So 2023 I want to make an actual effort to create some content and see if a decent amount of people view it.

- Read more books/long form essays.

- Less Procrastination

- Less reading the tutorials and start doing more "practical" stuff. i.e. write more code.

- A blog post a week on my measly blog - https://blog.yelinaung.com/ - write anything that I find fun and learned!

- Find a new job!

How do you plan to procrastinate less?

I'll figure that out later.

Hahaha

Understand why i avoid some specific tasks, try to approach them differently and reduce them to the bare minimum if nothing can be done.

I've had reasonable success with applying the pomodoro method. Also try spending time at the begin or end of each day planing tasks for the coming day. I found that the main source of my procrastination comes from not having clearly defined tasks to work on.

Good question! On top of my head, this is what I plan to do

- Timebox some activities (e.g browsing Instagram/Reddit/HN to 10 min a day or so)

- Set a deadline for the activities I have been avoiding to do

- Do some activities not just by myself but also with some friends. e.g reading a book together.

I have quite a few different resolutions, namely:

1. Find somewhere else to live. I'm getting tired the area I'm living in, and feel a change would be most welcome in 2023.

2. Eat more healthily and get in better shape. I have to admit, I really like chocolate and sweets a tad too much, and exercise a tad too little. So dealing with that would be nice next year.

3. Finally, I really want to wrap up a lot of my side projects and ideas I've had for a while, since I start a few too many things that I don't get around to finishing. I've got scripts for videos that have laid dormant for months, my main side project has been incomplete since about 2013, and there are tons of other things I want to code that I've mapped out, but never properly started. Finishing off these would get rid of a fair bit of stress hah.

> Finally, I really want to wrap up a lot of my side projects and ideas I've had for a while, since I start a few too many things that I don't get around to finishing.

Shoot me an email at hello@taylor.town if you need somebody to kick you in the pants :)

I suppose it's kinda cliché but "start living authentically". Coming out, doing that thing where you meet people not for work, stuff like that. I cheated and started working on this a few months ago though.

Oh and get a better job preferably with more money. This is still Hacker News after all.

This year, my resolution was dedicate myself to study distributed systems.

After spending 6 months with every day 4 hours after work. I can seriously, its been a ride and I feel like I realized am not even close to mastering (e.g, studied atleast 100 papers) it.

I woke up with a lack of exhaustion and disappointment.

-------------------------------------------

Some of my achievements include:

- Reading ~20 technical books.

- Going through ~20 technical courses.

-------------------------------------------

Observations at age of 31 studying tech material:

- My memory is good, but isnt as stellar as it used to be when I was 21 :(

- Accepting that, dedicating some take good notes.

- Being pragmatic and doing introspection at your current skills.

- Re-reading notes immediately after the course or chapter ends, and materials has helped me retain my understanding.

In 2023, I promise myself to play a hard ball with anyone requiring my presence on periodical meetings.

I love to meet people, but not agenda-less people.

Same! I started doing it this year, and it's... surprisingly difficult.

I got tired of devoting diffuse attention to meetings that don't really need me. So I've been slowly disappearing.

---

[1] https://taylor.town/decline-invitations

At my last job, I would simply reply with "Agenda?" before accepting a meeting invite. Nobody ever complained. Also, setting a good example helped.

This is a good one. In some company cultures, unfortunately, recurring meetings are group therapies in disguise.

Of course. And group therapies are great! Especially, if you are trying to get a rid of addiction or get over some thing from your past.

But group therapy make a little sense for a person that is in a different stage of his/her life.

In other words, calm and happy person in Europe, cannot help structurally unhappy person in the US, just by the means of happy hour meeting.

- Drink less

- Dress better, looking good makes you feel good

- Travel to new places

- Stress less, stress is always unnecessary

- Focus mostly on the positive sides

- Find a sustainable exercise routine

- Continue side projects

- Master reactjs!

I'm making it the year I break up with shitty tech companies. Google is first.

Migrating my email starting today.

On another note, I always start my new year resolution when I think of it, I don't bother waiting for the year to turn.

Which service did you choose? I'm using migadu but always interested in others choices

I use fastmail and love it

I went with Fastmail for the email. I have seen a lot of praise on HN for Fastmail and that influenced my decision. I went with the standard plan for a year on a domain I have for 10 years. I'm incredibly happy with the switch already as well as the savings over Google's ever increasing price for gsuite.

I went through this about six years ago. Migrated from Gmail to Fastmail.

Still happy with my decision.

Became a father in 2022, had to deal with the 'stress' that came with that however, I'd say its the most beautiful feeling.

So next year, want to: - grow my social-app, and get some pre-seed/seed funding. We just got to 40K users in Dec. Incase anyone can make an intro :), or I could pick your brain on growth

- Learn more about RE and buy 1 or 2 MF unit. - Read more. Less time starring at screens (phone, laptop, e.t.c). - Music (want to try recording :) -- more an hobby than anything else.

Work:

* update my already published ebooks rather than working on a new one, will likely take more than a year

* create interactive apps for exercises

* contribute to FOSS (been doing some small PRs, filing issues etc, want to do more)

* find something new (that's not related to writing) to keep me creatively busy

Personal:

* this month I finally went for a trek after about 5 years, planning to make it a habit again

* may be start cycling again too

See my blog post (https://learnbyexample.github.io/2022-year-in-perspective/) for my 2022 year in perspective

> * find something new (that's not related to writing) to keep me creatively busy

I'm a hobby collector! Feel free to to reach out at hello@taylor.town if you'd like to chat about creative outlets :)

I don’t do resolutions, I’m just trying to do what I did before, but better. Like you have to do every single day.

yup. same here.

Though I did decide i need to better document my tech fiddlings within the house better.. so I just run up a tiddlywiki for internal documentation and am spending the day filling that out :-P

I have only one resolution: to do the greatest year of work of my life.

With that in mind, I bid you a very fond farewell, HN.

Good luck! Watch out for burnout.

* eat more junk food

* spend more time in social media

* decrease my productivity, it seems too high!

* watch all new TV series with rating 6.5+

* sleep as little as possible

1) I want to be organized, I have learned this hard way many times but still fail to be organized. 2) Think big not small. For example solving any problem where I should think how does my solution impact overall system 3) learn about my strengths and weaknesses. I know I am not gifted coder but I should be using my strengths to overcome this weakness 4) write daily journal. This is to see if I can stick to an habit or routine for long time 5) record lot more podcast episodes

To actually begin doing something with my photography. It has been a hobby/passion of mine for 7+ years, but so far I do not really do much with the final images. I put them on my private Flickr as a backup and upload the highlights to Instagram, but that's it.

I feel like Instagram is a hard medium because the photos that are trending are mostly the same overdone and oversaturated landscape or travel photos, and while I do take landscape and travel photos myself, I try to not fall into the "bright oversaturated"-look that so many seek.

In the end I guess I want to do more people photography, showcasing cultures etc., but it is a challenge to find good subjects for more serious work rather than just the occasional snapshot. I guess you have to go more all in while traveling and actually travel with the purpose of photography if you want it to become an occupation, rather than just taking pictures along the journey as I do now and not explicitly planning for it.

Has anyone had any experience in this field?

If you want to check out my work I post at https://instagram.com/madscphoto

Improve my nutrition. I want to lose weight, but I first need to fix my relationship with food. To do this, I plan to cook food myself and reduce preprocessed food.

Been a while since I used it, but MyFitnessPal was a great simple tool for me.

This is the best place to start. You can't outrun the kitchen.

I eat a lot healthier when I make nutritious foods convenient.

One thing that works for me is preparing raw vegetables into "to-go" packs when I bring my groceries home.

We use glass tupperware, but plastic resealable bags work great too.

I also recommend purchasing an instant pot! You can throw frozen fish or chicken in there with some water and you have lean meat fully cooked in 5-10 minutes.

Good luck! I hope cooking is fun and habit-forming for you and doesn’t add too much friction. Our brains can be such slippery weasels when it comes to food. :P Losing weight and improving nutrition is a very mental task. FWIW counting calories with an app helped me with both because I started to feel how expensive the bad foods are; I could eat veggies until I feel bloated and still have room for dinner, but snack on a couple of cookies and I’m immediately out of budget. Doesn’t work for everyone, but it also helped me to save room for a small treat at the end of the day.

I don't consider them resolutions, but things I am just focusing on more/top of mind:

1. Swimming. Kids are in swim lessons and my wife and I will be swimming laps in the same pool area. We've only just started this in December but I think we will stick it out for many months. I would like to get away during work hours to exercise too (I already WFH and need to take advantage of the flexibility more).

2. Nix and Nix OS. I've been interested in it for many years but just decided to not pursue much new technology in 2021 and 2022. Reading about Flakes and some nix projects sounds a lot more interesting to me lately.

3. Rebuild my homelab and build out the automations I have wanted but have let slipped away. I have current clamps for my breaker box, zwave and ZigBee networks, run k8s with a couple dozen services (home Assistant, *arr, etc.) and lots of other fun things. I haven't touched it in a few years though and some parts stopped working. At the time I specified all my manifests in Ansible + some Jinja. I don't have a machine that can push updates to it heh. I'd like to move to some mashup of gitops/nixops/argocd and really get into Home Assistant. I started installing zwave switches this week to kick start my interest again.

4. I'd like to build some small electronics with two of my daughters. We watch a lot of YouTube creators that build and program interesting things. I'd like to turn that interest into more actions for them. It's a little to much entertainment and not enough learning. I picked up parts and we'll pick an idea to pursue soon. I also got them crunchlab boxes for us to build together.

5. Set up a Minecraft server for my family. Also make available to them some of the more classic games. Likely refurbish some laptops for us to play something like Civ 4 together.

Well, by how new year resolutions are usually going my resolution is to eat more cake

This is going to be the year I improve at climbing. I absolutely love the hobby and have done it on and off for years.

I’m at the age demographic where I see a lot of folk feeding into the hustle culture. While I think it’s important to keep the future in mind, I also want to recognise I’ve reached a pretty good point in my life and would like to do something that won’t improve my career in any way.

Learn TLA+. I have been doing the usual things for software verification like reviewing PRs, writing tests, but these are all after implementation. As a senior engineer doing more design work, I am wondering if I can do some sort of verification at the design stage. Not sure how much I can apply TLA+ to regular enterprise software development, but I want to explore.

Finally get my Extra-class amateur radio license, and get on the air. Got an 'Advanced', which they don't even issue anymore, decades ago and never did anything but renew it every so often. I want to build a low power (5-10W) transmitter and reach out like it's 1929.

It's specific, it's achievable, has better than 50% odds of success, so there is.

I always like reading these, but in my case I find I check in and re-evaluate my goals often enough that this is redundant.

Currently I'm looking for a large pay increase to support my family.

Another side-goal is to generally improve my day-to-day interactions with the SO, mitigate stress, and take over more daily chores. I expect stress and cognitive biases are barriers to her losing weight. I'll never chastise or pressure to that end, I just try to improve the environment and social support. This is a touchy area because you can't make someone lose weight, but obviously I admit I want it to happen, primarily for her health, to be a role model for the kid, and for quality of life. There are obvious cognitive biases that I point out but there's hardly any use arguing (e.g. "I don't have time to { eat at regular intervals / take a walk to lower back pain }" - she watches like 2-3h of tv a day, flat on her back).

2022 was a year of big professional achievements and some aspects of my personal wellness took a back seat.

My primary goal in 2023 is re-focusing on fitness, wellness and reclaiming some personal time that was ceded to work.

I’m also looking to try some lifestyle experiments like not shopping on Amazon for a month in an effort to reform our household shopping habits.

I think context is important.

This year I mostly spent it planning for the later half. I had a toxic employer and was upset with how dating was going post-divorce (in that - nothing was happening at all. I’ve still never been on a date and find it incredibly hard to meet single women in real life.). I quit my job, traveled, and moved away from SF with the plan to tie someone down and move back eventually.

So, some goals…

Continue lifting weight but get more dedicated. Pursue TRT in the later half of the year.

Go back to work but - preferably with an employer I want rather than one I had to always settle for. I spent the second half of the year not working because I traveled a lot and moved to Manhattan.

Find a life partner. I’m turning 33 next year and time is quite finite. Children and all the other things are quickly falling away as possibilities. Since my divorce - this has been my number one goal but it hasn’t been moved any closer at all even though I’ve taken drastic steps. Peers are now suggesting maybe the $100k matchmaking services should be considered more heavily - but I think it’ll be a waste of effort. (And I don’t like the ethics of it tbh)

Find another city to move to. I’ve spent a few months in Manhattan with nothing to show. I hate to move on so quickly but time is finite. So, I need to move to two other places before the year is up. The biggest hurdle isn’t moving but figuring out where the best place to spend my time is. So far, literally no one has any ideas. Which speaks to how bad things are overall.

Keep traveling through the year to meet new people and keep the pipeline full. This is difficult cause the things I used to travel for more often aren’t happening with the frequency as they did.

Develop a plan to get out of engineering. It’s super bad for my social and dating life. It’s the number one social reason I have a hard time making friends and relationships. It’s akin to being an incel as far as professional stigma goes.

Rely entirely on SaaS income by the end of 2023. 100% bootstrapped!

reenhanced.com is presumably parent SaaS they are referring too.

Eating less processed food and working out a bit - not trying to get the next Arni though, just a bit healthier.

Last year:

> 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746344#29755793

Progress: Not much. I'm not sure where the year went.

This year: the same resolution "to really buckle down and get it done."

There's one big difference this year: I have about $10k to spend on it. :) So that's nice.

I have a mailing list: https://lists.sr.ht/~sforman/heliotrope.pajamas

Besides losing weight (same as many on here it seems!) would be finding a job. The market has been terrible in the last few months across APAC and I've just taken a breather as opportunities weren't favourable and I was mourning the loss of my mum.

But would be good to go back in fully in 2023.

Stop with excuses and workout at the gym 2 times a week. Get healthier.

Find a way to tame procrastination and get more things done. Consciously tell myself that it is better to do something okay than not doing because I can’t see the path to perfect.

That’s it. Keep living happily with everything else.

I don't recommend trying 2 days per week. For me, doing something EVERY DAY is much easier than trying to maintain 2 a gym-day-schedule.

Last year, I started doing 10 pushups every 90 minutes. It's not strict, but now I do 20 pushups whenever I transition between parts of my day.

I purchased a Yesoul indoor cycle at the beginning of this year. My goal was to sit on that cursed bike for 1-minute every day. And I did. I didn't even pedal some days haha

But after a few months, I was naturally doing 20 minutes per day. I'd hop on the bike during meetings and phone calls or listen to audiobooks.

Next, I purchased some Nuobell dumbells. I'm still in the "5-minutes per day" phase, but my friends and family have already noticed my major muscle gains.

So what's worked for me is focusing on TINY workouts AT HOME. Going to a gym introduces too much friction when you're just trying to get going.

E-mail me at hello@taylor.town if you'd like any support or tips. Good luck!

Kinda hard to get a good work out for your posterior chain with home workouts. Need a barbell or a couple of real heavy kettlebells or something so you can do deadlifts or RDLs.

But to each their own. I personally like going to the gym. I'll be there a couple of hours. Clears the mind. I'm not always motivated to go, but I've never regretting dragging my ass over there even if it's just to phone it in that still does a lot.

> I don't recommend trying 2 days per week. For me, doing something EVERY DAY is much easier than trying to maintain 2 a gym-day-schedule.

On a strength-building regimen, and accounting for time during the week, daily gym might be impractical. Normally on rest days you work on conditioning, which can usually just as easily be done at home if you're opting for cardio. At any rate some people seem to prefer daily exercise and others don't, it should be possible to stick with it either way.

Dec 2021: I resolve to not spend christmas+new years in the office again.

Dec 2022: looks at schedual: hard fail.

At least this year the covid rules are gone. But it seems that all the same people are still working at home while all the same other people are at thier desks again over the holidays.

Time to find a new job, friend.

Are you the dad from Elf?

Just left the company I worked at for way too long to be comfortable to share. My plan for this year is to enrich my stack, dig wider, learn more, restore from the burnout. Then I’ll try to make something that I would find meaningful, useful, whatever ticks my boxes. It will likely fail commercially, but “backed experience reduces anxiety” is my main goal. Also I have to find a way to socialize with similar people, not sure where to start though.

Are you going to learn a new programming language? Familiarize yourself with a concept? Spend time with family?

Was going to say that it’s worth like just a couple of months, but then realized that a job makes free time scarce. Another argument for taking a great sabbatical, I guess.

Or for a standard 4 day week.

The most trite of goals: go to the gym.

More specifically, hire a trainer and exercise outside my home.

For many real and imagined reasons, my lack of a fitness routine is becoming the greatest risk to my life being miserable. I'm already in daily pain and sleep poorly.

Started working with a trainer midway through 2022, and it was a great decision. I only go to the gym 2-3 times a week, but I do supplementary workouts at home. This is a nice balance, and I highly recommend it.

Nice. Ya, I've had difficulty finding a trainer. Tried one last year but they just gave me cookie cutter workouts irrelevant to my goals. I have injuries that I need to both program around and help rehab, and someone to keep me honest. So going to try a fitness coach I think, or a small class based gym where I can get 1:1 attention.

To gain 400 pounds of muscle mass.

lol gl.

I've never been much into new year's resolutions, but perhaps if I actually write it down, then some of them will come to fruition?

- tidy up my stuff, sell some of them off

- play more video games

- learn a bit of Japanese

- learn how to fall asleep anywhere

- convert some of my mass into muscle mass

You can combine "play more video games" and "learn a bit of Japanese" into "play more video games in Japanese only"!

It helps you practice listening to and reading Japanese.

Why do you think I want to learn Japanese? ;)

Not to die. It's might sound funny but I kinda do everything else along the way, it's just all wars and viruses and petty criminals that are trying to interfere... I know chances are extremely low but still.

Professional: - Primary goal is to kickstart my career in AI/Data. - Improve my understanding of Pytorch, and the popular papers in paperswithcode. - Prioritize writing (code/text) over reading.

Personal: - Reduce my weight, considering doc's warning. The focus is on cardio over weights. - Improve relationships, to give proper listening space without judgement. - Better utilization of time.

Wishing everyone in this thread a great 2023, and the strength to fulfil what they're wishing and striving for.

more books less drinking get a job get a stable living space and get a girlfriend

I just feel I need to concentrate on the basics. - Eat properly ( A balanced diet 3 times a day ) - Sleep at least 7 hours everyday

These are the first steps I want to take this year. health is more important to me than anything else

I don’t feel like I have the luxury of a NY’s resolution but I have a lot of change coming.

I’m both excited and wary of next year. I’m moving countries, to a more expensive city (Sydney), a bit too old to break into a new network. Fair chance of a recession next year.

But the restrictions create an interesting puzzle. I like optimising. I’ve got a couple safety nets: at least 4 months remote to land and find my feet, wife has solid role if all hell breaks loose, and some very interesting money-spinning projects I’ve been involved in. If I just do what I’ve done, for new clients, I should be good!

My resolutions are about crafting a daily routine that will have positive longterm outcomes - So, 3 main things: (1) Workout everyday (2) Read everyday(50 books for the year goal) (3) Meditate daily

Find a way to train AI to do my job, based around feeding it relevant docs in a certain format.

It'll probably be quite iterative, e.g. giving it reqs and bits of relevant code to output a draft spike doc, feeding the API docs to complete the spike doc, getting AI to ask questions of scenarios I didn't think about.

And then generating tests and drafting architecture from that spike doc.

Goal at the end of the year would be to have an actual pipeline for creating code from reqs.

The final test would be creating a ray tracer with it - something I don't know how to do yet, but it should be quite doable.

I'm actually running out of personal goals, so I suppose this year, it would be to teach my 4th grader to cook her own breakfast before school (a whole other pipeline).

Oh and lose 20 kg.

Mine is to get better at my adopted country’s language. My Swedish is conversational, but not much more. So at a minimum I’m going to reread my grammar books, and attempt a couple of novels.

I'd love to hear more about how Sweden became your adopted country and how the social aspect has been. I've read that it's hard for newcomers to make friends.

Left the UK post-Brexit, and my partner’s Swedish which made the choice of where to go easy. Social aspect isn’t easy, but I’ve made a bunch of acquaintances through work and a handful of close(ish) friends too. Really it’s down to you to work at it.

If you’re interested in Sweden, https://reddit.com/r/TillSverige can help. But with the latest government it’s only going to get harder, unfortunately.

Make My Wife Pregnant Again --- might well make and sell merchandise.

Dopamine detox, I'm going to stop coca cola zero, open twitter/Reddit/HN 30 times. Avoid being exposed to a recommendation system (youtube, Netflix etc ...)

It’s extremely hard to quit HN.

- It’s important to keep in touch with IT news,

- It trumps boredom. Boredom makes me have internal dialogue; Internal dialogue makes me angry at the social situation. I need to forget, and fortunately I don’t enjoy alcohol, so I indulge myself with news.

It’s extremely hard to quit HN.

Quitting HN is easy. I've done it loads of times.

Cut down on screen time.

In 2022 I dramatically reduced my time in THE SMARTPHONE ABYSS by choosing a single spot in my home and always leaving my phone there to charge. I don't bring my phone into other rooms -- it stays on the kitchen counter.

But my "phone home" didn't help the compulsive notification checking, so I "extinguished" all notifications. The only notifs I now receive are for phone calls.

In 2023, I'd like to go on phoneless adventures! A cellular Apple Watch (or whatever) makes it relatively safe to go places without a SMARTPHONE ABYSS in your pocket.

---

[1] https://taylor.town/phone-home

[2] https://taylor.town/extinguish-all-notifications

[3] https://taylor.town/leave-your-phone-at-home

It's been researched that not seeing notifications makes one more anxious and likely to check phone more often. Instead I've found using an app like Daywise to batch my notifications that don't need real-time attention every 2 hours (package delivered, bill is due) and still keep messaging notifications real-time.

Thanks! I'll check out that research.

And yeah, having NO plan for notifications sounds like a bad idea.

I've made a habit of checking my emails/texts once per day and checking Slack every 60-90 minutes. I think Apple products also have a way to aggregate notifs during focus modes.

Absolutely nothing! January 1st is a day just like any other day. If you believe turning of the year will give you some magical outcome, you are gullible. If you have or had a resolution, you should've started working on that, the very same day you though about it, not waiting for Jan 1st to come.

To work on procrastination and improve my focus

To improve my writing, I'd like to learn how to evoke emotions in the reader

To make my friendships more meaningful and to meet more interesting people

To make an impact on people for the better, hopefully using tech but not necessarily

To smile more and have try to not be stressed

To try and figure out what I want to do and work towards trying it out

If I get the time(which I wont), learn the math behind machine learning and gain the technical chops to build a MVP.

Even more exercising. I’m doing a half-ironman in Deauville next year. I do fine in swimming and running, but I still need to train for the biking part.

Great! A question - Did you ever get Covid? What effects did it have on your performance in swimming and running?

Not really new year's resolution but my latest goals:

1. make $200/day with freelancing gigs

2. ship more projects

3. adapt the mindset to put in real work rather than wishing for outcomes

4. write/tweet more

I have a similar New Year's resolution as (1). Send me an email about freelancing gigs, maybe we can share some or do some together or just talk about strategies.

Loose 25 pounds between January and March and another 25 between Mai and September.

Find another paid side project. It was fun having one for a while, but it slips into development hell. The client wants to do minor changes continuously. These minor changes end up in complete restart. It will be 4th time soon and I am tired of it. 3 times new hardware and 1 time new algorithms.

Spend more time with family. Work requires too much time.

De-technologify. Ideally this is the year where I stop having a smartphone, very few active use-cases are left for that for me. We'll see ...

Professionally, I have some plans for TVL with our Nix rewrite in terms of CI systems and interesting developer tooling. IME, making it too concrete reduces the chance of it getting done though, so I'll leave it at that :)

Oh and also, get back to using Bulletjournal properly.

> De-technologify. Ideally this is the year where I stop having a smartphone, very few active use-cases are left for that for me. We'll see ...

I posted a few pointers on reducing smartphone attachment in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34195542

I'm actually mostly over the attachment at this point, it's more that I haven't found a workaround for some of the practical things:

* music (this one I'm working around now with a focused music-playing device) * navigation (this one a watch could do, but I don't have one (yet)) * ordering taxis / e-scooters / etc., - this is the sticking point, not sure what to do about it

1. Improve fitness. I'm currently at 225 but I'd love to be at 170. 2. Get better in tennis (my first service percentage is awful - 50%). 3. Get better at SRE core competency (specifically programming and architecture). 4. Get good grades for next year in preparation for graduate school. I'd love to get a professional masters for personal and professional gratification.

Personally: design, code, produce, and sell a PCB to the high power rocketry hobby. Not really to make money but just for the experience of going form zero to product on the market

Professionally: get the salesforce certified technical architect cert (I have all the prereqs) that’s good for another ~$75k on my base salary. Yes, I’m familiar with the process and what it entails.

A friend mentioned they aim to make sure that each and every month they experience at least one thing that is new / orthogonal to previous experiences (trips, projects, interactions etc)

While maybe too mechanical its recursive and agnostic nature means that it is more resilient than concrete resolutions that tend to collapse at the first unexpected turn of events

Pretty much 3 things:

1. All in with Swift.

2. Go deeper on React, NextJS, and MLOps (see point 3).

3. Finish launching my startup once and for all (almost 3 years working on it).

What’s your startup? :) good luck!

Thanks. Logistics/Retail.

I just canceled my Twitter account. I tried to stay far from it, because I know it's potentially addictive. I've had an account for a year, without posting anything. And I recently started to comment and argue with people. This thing is toxic (well, at least for me) and bring the worst out of people.

- Write a lot more and start publishing blogposts.

Starting with this one lol https://medium.com/@petyak.mi/what-okrs-taught-me-about-sett...

Stop using social media and start reading more. I will start reading more as a result of consuming less social media. Right now I enabled a schedule of when I can use Instagram etc on my phone. Fingers crossed it will work out

After 13 years in big tech, I want to make my approach to work more strict and avoid things that I really don't like.

    loop do
        job.work_your_ars_of! unless job.nil?
        job = Job.new if job&.jira? || job&.pr_reviews?
    end

What I actually find is that teams that don't have jira or pr reviews have something else. They have the most senior people engaged and watching what is going on. Instead of being asleep at the wheel and requiring you to follow the process.

That is exactly my experience too. Very poignantly put.

At my org they went away to their high towers and decreed that scrum is what we need to solve all our issues.

Do you think they engaged with us about challenges, performance etc prior to this? Nope.

And any complaints are ignored and all efforts are going towards being Scrum oops sorry I mean agile. (The word scrum is almost verboten despite hiring a Scrum consultancy to shove Scrum down our throats)

Haha, you even have a consultancy involved?

Don't let this opportunity pass, create some memes for the community. Consultants provide a lot of inspiration...

https://awesomegoat.com/blog/assets/meme/agile.png

While we’re on the topic…

https://ifuckinghatejira.com/

I violently love this site!

Tweaking Jira and making sure all the fields are set is what gets my boss up in the morning.

I wish I could have a life so fulfilling

Of course we got a consultancy involved! What do the developers, many of whom have been working in agile ways for many years (at other companies, successfully), know about agile working? Probably too much - they’ll say things like stakeholders need to get involved and people over process and nonsense like that!

You think that VC money isn’t meant for companies run by the friends of the CTO!?

I want to dunk and read fewer books.

Less wasted time (primarily reducing gaming time) Less/no alcohol. Find another job.

My best friend and I quit drinking in 2022, and it has been life-changing for both of us!

E-mail me at hello@taylor.town if you're looking for tips or support :)

How much did you drink before, and how has it changed your life?

I consistently drank 4-6 cups of wine/beer per day for ~5 years.

A few major ways it changed my life:

1. I suddenly lost weight! Drinking calories makes it difficult to stay healthy. My friends and family noticed my weight loss before I told them about my sobriety.

2. I make better decisions in group settings. I no longer stay at social gatherings where I'm bored while sober, and I don't embarrass myself nearly as often.

3. Sobriety adds an extra 1-3 hours to my days. It's unsurprising that a CNS depressant sapped my motivation and energy!

4. No more chronic heartburn! No more headaches!

---

[1] https://taylor.town/8-weekends

Very kind of you to offer. Its been a gradual process from me, my heavy drinking started 30+ years ago. Only puzzle left to solve is how to turn my brain off during mega work hectic/busy times. So far that has almost involved booze or effectively no sleep as my brain continues to work on work issues whilst I'm trying to get to sleep.

The same as the years before: [0] To not have any "New Years Resolutions" and to prepare for 2030 instead.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29752304

What are your plans for 2030?

Seems like you've been thinking about this for several years now!

Since it seems no one has yet asked: what do you consider significant about 2030?

And how one prepares for it? :)

Get back to cross fit. Get down to 160 from 177. MBA, Covid, job and new baby took that from me. Get my 6 pack back.

I am struggling to get into 700k pay job (Atlanta metro) and higher scope ( I have 150 people org). I aspire to be CIO Of fortune 200 some day. so improve my interview skills by improving communication skills

Continue to : Read 1 book a week Read 1 article from MBB or HBR and Watch 1 tech video per day.

Start writing articles on leadership, strategy and macroeconomics.

Invest better - invest in a new business in India.

Increase my contribution to VC i have invested in as well as time I give as board of director to two of series B companies.

Spend 1 hour minimum with my 11 year old in her studies (besides the outside tutorials she has each day)

Spend more time with my 20 month baby.

Most of all improve my leadership skills, communication skill with everyone.

Become super patient, better listener.

Reorg my team - fire couple of underperforming folks. Set right expectations and accountability with my directs (director level)

Getting back into learning my 3rd language: Sesotho/Southern Sotho, my wife's native language. I kinda petered out early this year, and I want to at least be fluent in the very basics when we visit her family in March.

I have few.

- Eat better and lose weight, like every year :D

- Change job, the one I'm at now is brain dead and I have become everything I hated.

- Make a short animation movie

- Write, record and produce a song with my wife about my newborn

- Try to record a podcast for fun

I haven't thought about it. But something I would like is to participate more on HN. Also find communities around me with similar programming interests and be more active there. So there you go! Happy 2023 everyone

Stop buying anything Chinese

for 2023, my resolution is to loose 15lbs.

my 2022 resolution was to be able to do a set of 5 pull ups. I only got to 3. I felt like my weight was holding me back, so I hope loosing a bit more will help me get closer to the 5.

Get better at English. Find a new and better job. Start a workout routine.

Intermittent fasting + walk to work and back. I will slowly get back to running, and then lifting again.

I want to get into reading for pleasure.

I will try to get a promotion by April, or change position plus a promo by August.

party harder, start a class-action lawsuit since that's something I haven't done yet

get into gfx cosplay, starting with the blender default cube or suzanne

switch out tea for energy drinks, i want to see what happens

- No phone or laptop to bed.

- Wake up early. 5:30am or so and get a run or workout in before the day starts.

- Do better to keep up with relationships. They are the most important thing.

- Spend more free time productively.

Cheers everyone.

Work: just launched my new, first VC fund in Europe. I plan to make it successful in 2023.

Also, I want to finally have kids. And a dog.

I love writing. Perhaps I'll manage to write more stuff in 2023.

Introduce the dog after the kids are old enough to appreciate it. I have a newborn, and the family dog just feels like extra work right now. We love him, but it’s a lot to take on.

initially, i was going to try to 'launch' a side project each month of 2023 but after getting my first one to MVP for 1/1, i realized that's probably a pretty unrealistic goal (even with simplish ideas), haha. i guess i'll just work on side projects like normal and not stress about it.

as a real 'goal', i want to invest more time into being active in community stuff. i feel like i've never truly been a part of any community

Regain fitness. Walking more and kettlebell exercises.

Read more books. Minimum 20 mins a day - with the aim being that once I do the first 20 mins I will continue longer.

Consume a lot less and produce a lot more, especially drawing and painting. Improve my second language further and work less and more efficiently.

Less analysis paralysis, less perfectionism.

"Fuck it, ship it."

How do you plan on battling your perfectionism? It's something that's been holding me back for a long time...

Cliche, but getting fit. Sitting at home eating junk for two covid years didn't do me any favours.

Already dropped booze in Sept so off to a running start...

Stay consistent with learning, exercise and be more mindful of digital content consumption which don't add any value to me in long term.

Develop my ability to be relaxed and take it easy, no what the situation. Don't stress about things, just work them out easy.

To not fix other peoples bugs on my github repos.

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Happy new year :)

- Be kinder to myself.

- Setting up backups/archives. It's easy for just myself, but I have family and remote family to consider.

Learn C++ 11 for use in graphics programming.

This is cool. Any particular path you’re going to follow?

Sort of.

1. I want to start with working through applying shaders to a 3d scene using the Panda3d library (https://github.com/panda3d/panda3d) . This repo covers that: https://github.com/lettier/3d-game-shaders-for-beginners.

2. Create a simple, custom, graphics-only (no collisions / physics) game engine using Entt (https://github.com/skypjack/entt) and Panda3d. The engine would rely mostly on simple inputs, like mouse clicks, and 3d graphics.

3. Configure clangd to error on features outside C++11 then refactor both projects (1 & 2) to use C++ 11.

4. Run experiments on the game engine while working through the Vulkan book: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Overv/VulkanTutorial/maste...

That’s super cool. I hope I can see some of your progress this year. Have a good one!

Showing more affection towards my loved ones.

I have only one this year: to own my own time.

I want to learn how to MIG weld, but I’m so far finding it difficult to find a good hobbyist class in Southern California.

If you're anywhere near El Cajon I know a guy that'd teach you for free/some odd work around the shop

I'm up in LA, but I'm strongly considering going up to SF (or down to SD) for a day or two to learn as I can't seem to find anything where I am.

I am sick in the bed for 4 days, so I thank you for posting here and thus giving me a chance to improve my moods!

More vacation. At least 1 big weekend a month off to a remote location (fri evening -mon morning)

- Write more blog posts

- Delete more JavaScript

- Run a calmer business

What's your blog? And how do you plan to run a calmer business?

My blog sometimes appears on this website and generates some interesting discussion. I most recently wrote about making database tables smaller, and I plan to write more posts exploring what “make it smaller” means to me. It’s usually about the size of the problem space, and the economics of expediency.

https://jezenthomas.com/

I plan to make the business calmer by further establishing a culture of conscientious writing among my colleagues. I’m a big fan of 37 Signals and I often (but not always) follow their lead in business. I have been pushing (and leading by example) for written pitches paired with fat marker sketches for proposed feature development. Previously we have plugged insufficient specification and iteration directly into high-fidelity UI design, leaving developers to infer product behaviour from graphics they see in Figma. I think this hasn’t worked.

I also plan to continue aggressively cutting features. I would rather sell half a product than a half-assed product, and I think the benefits of paring a product down to the good bits has a positive compounding effect on both the user experience, the developer experience, the sales pitch, etc.

Eliminate coffee OR artificial sweeteners. I still have a few more hours to decide which.

Not to make a resolution this year.

Haven’t you kinda failed already? Resolution not to make a resolution is the resolution

No, that's rhetorical.

I'll make it next year I swear.

Personal: work on slowing down build up of chronic pains from computer work.

Launch a bunch of AI toy products to keep up to speed with SoTA and make some money!

- Sign a new contract, my target is $1000 per day, but seeing how the economy is atm, I’ll probably be ok with anything over $750 per day.

- Buy the penthouse I’ve been saving for. With a bit of luck the housing market will crash and I’ll get it at a discount.

- Sign up at least one more client for my side hussle consultancy.

- Cross the 100 n-count mark.

- Start aviation lessons.

Please can you explain to me what 100 n-count means?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=n-count

Yeah, my carbon footprint isn't nearly as big as my over-sized ego either and I need to step it up too.

Learn how to be comfortable without constantly improving and being productive :)

- Find a new job and get a serious pay bump

- Move country to make my relationship work

- Find a therapist

- Buy my (our) next house

Stop eating anything with white sugar added to it and limit added sugar.

I've been running my M1 MacBook Air (and all retina Mac laptops before it) at the "more space" 1680x1050@2x resolution for years, but my eyes are finally getting worse. Text is a bit too small.

So, I think 2023's resolution is going to be 1440x900@2x.

Just be myself and never plan anything. Nothing ever goes to plan.

That sounds like a good plan :)

On a more serious bend, though, if you don’t plan ahead at all, after a while life’s random walks tend to lead to low energy dead ends.

So even if you don’t set out with a plan for everything, then at least do some regular (eg weekly) reflection, so as not to lose your bearings.

1. Eat better: less red meat, more vegetarian meals

2. Run and walk more often

3. Swim more often

I will gain full control of the igraph R/Python library.

I want to learn how to speak conversational Spanish!

Same here - how are you planning to learn that?

Same. I'm hanging out in Mexico taking lessons every day.

Hired a tutor from Mexico for about $20 an hour, and do one lesson every week. I have been learning it for a year and happy with the progress. Btw I dont expect to be completely fluent for a few years, but the journey is fun. Plus we have developed some great cameraderie, and I look forward to the class every week.

Get started with a complete apartment renovation.

To try and be less of an asshole frankly...

Scare of having ones. So let it be for now.

Work less, have more fun. Relax.

nothing... I reevaluate what I should be doing every night before going to sleep

Climb a V10 boulder outdoors!

Good luck! I would love to hear more about your training plans if you have set up any.

Mine are modest, send 3 v5~v6 benchmarks in my area, red point a 5.11a and solo a multi pitch.

It sounds like if your goal is V5-6, you better be bumping up that 5.11 sport climb goal! Certainly at that bouldering level 5.12 is in your future in no time.

In terms of training plan, I’m generally very loose. I’m definitely blessed to be very lightweight naturally, and I think I’ve developed some pretty strong fingers over time. That combination lends itself to crimps which is definitely my preferred style.

Board climbing like on a moonboard or kilter board are fantastic to build power, but be careful how frequently and how intensely you climb on those. My fingers tend to feel quite tweaky after a lot of board sessions.

Ultimately climbing is a game of time and consistency. Listen to your body and keep grinding at it, and you’ll definitely see progress!

Good luck to you as well!

What is a V10?

Outdoors in Aus. on the Ewbank freeclimbing scale, the blade line to Federation Peak is an easy (albeit highly exposed) 17 [1], whereas Cape Raoul poles [2] rate about a 22.

[1] https://zenandtheartofclimbing.com/50-classic-climbs-austral...

[2] https://zenandtheartofclimbing.com/50-classic-climbs-austral...

It’s hard to compare v scale to aus scale and I’m definitely not very familiar, but googling says that v10 is roughly equal to 31 on the aus scale. Of course bouldering is also typically 5m tall or less, and it’s very hard to compare boulders to routes. I think the equivalent font grade is 7c+

Stop reading 24 hour news.

less social media. work on a side gig and enjoy life more.

Move to New Zealand.

1080p unfortunately

Getting therapy.

Learn to Juggle

Lots of fun, very addictive, in my experience a good way to meet nice people

Stay hired.

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Get a job!

Survive.

Be nicer.

And then of course:

- Take it outside

- Expect the unexpected

Natch

Full send.

Anarchy

Capitalism achieving metamorphosis

don't have any

WQXGA

To generate at least one AI tentacle porn. (I’m quite serious; it’s why I got into AI, and the tech is finally here. It’s a difficult challenge for many reasons.)

Also, I’M GONNA BE A DAD! We’ve been trying since 2017, and I got a job two years ago specifically to help us do IVF. It’s incredibly expensive — artificial womb tech can’t come too soon. My dad’s over 70, and I was worried he might not get to see his grandkid, so my new year’s resolution is to proudly show him his grandchild for his birthday.

We’re very worried about the possibility of a miscarriage. Apparently something like >20% of pregnancies miscarry; had no idea the stats were so grim. But fingers crossed!

IVF is hella cool. A very “living in the future” moment. It has a surprising number of advantages from a parenting perspective: no need to worry about Down’s syndrome (a condition you might suppose I have, though you’d be wrong) — genetic screening eliminates that possibility, and with it, the trauma of an abortion. We had six healthy embryos: four female, two male, so it feels like having a bunch of babies in your garage’s deep freezer. Literally cold storage. We wanted a daughter first, so it’s nice to have a guarantee of it.

And the process itself was fascinating. They pull up the embryo on a big TV during implantation, so we got to see Kess go from dish baby to real baby right before our eyes.

Can’t believe we finally did it. 2023 feels like my lucky year. (NARRATOR: “It was not.”)

Great news about the baby, etc, but can we go back for a minute to what an "AI tentacle porn" is?

Yup! So you’ll notice that hands are particularity challenging for AI. Gwern’s written at length about it. https://www.gwern.net/Crops

The reason is because hands are sort of a limit case. Humans are very adept at knowing when a hand looks weird. If you draw someone’s shoulder and get it slightly wrong, no one will notice. If you get their hands wrong, everyone notices.

But the same is true for eyes and faces, which AI can do quite well. So why are hands so hard? Because they’re “tentacle-y”. Fingers : humans :: tentacles : octopus. They’re long dangly things, and AI has a limited sense of geometry.

Tentacle porn is hilarious to me, so I chose it as a target shortly after I started fooling around with GANs. There’s also limited data; it’s surprisingly hard to collect thousands of high-quality drawings. So it’s a real challenge to get an AI to understand how to make them, which is why I like to try.

I hate new years resolutions. I feel like if you need to wait for a new year to change, you don't want it bad enough.

I remember maybe 10-15 years ago I was at the gym on December 31st at around 7pm. There was a snow storm outside, so the gym was completely empty except for me, my friend and few staff. We had a two hour good workout.

Then we came back (it was either Jan 1 or 2), and the gym was packed like I had never seen before. Every single piece of equipment was being used. The gym continued to be busy until around March. Once March came around the gym levels went back down to normal, and stayed that way until the rest of the year. Then Jan came and the process repeated...

I feel like the people who need some sort of external factor to change/do whatever, won't want it bad enough to sustain that change over time, until next year...

Who cares...

I think only you know answer to this.

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