What is your new year's resolution?

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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Some of my achievements include:

- Reading ~20 technical books.

- Going through ~20 technical courses.

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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.

- 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.

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

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.

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.

* 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

To gain 400 pounds of muscle mass.

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

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.

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.

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 ...)

Cut down on screen time.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

I want to dunk and read fewer books.

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

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

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.

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."

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.

640x480

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.

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.

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

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

Not to make a resolution this year.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

Stay hired.

800x600

Get a job!

Survive.

Be nicer.

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.”)

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...