2025 Goals

June Update

Lots has happened since January! I got very busy in February and dropped some of my initial goals. I also shifted effort towards music and away from mathematics.

Successes

• I exceeded my initial goal to develop a richer social life and stopped counting.
• I've maintained some consistency with exercise, meditation, and journaling.
• I've picked up music practice (singing and piano) as new focuses.

Failures/abandonment

• I initially kept up with the mathematics goal but have since abandoned it.
• I've also deprioritized the ARENA program for now - it would have been fun to do, but I don't have the time and it doesn't align with my direction at work.
• My consistency hasn't been as high as I had originally hoped.

Current Goals

My current focus areas include:

• Developing musical skills through daily singing and piano practice
• Staying organized with task management and time blocking
• Writing on this website to maintain an active online presence
• Exercising daily for health reasons
• Meditating regularly
• Journaling daily

To stay on track with these goals, I've captured them in Beeminder and published them here for accountability.

Develop musical skills

Some of my friends and coworkers are very musical which has inspired me to start practicing music more. I got a piano and a microphone and have started to practice playing the piano and singing more.

Exercise every day

I've found that one of the most important factors for sleep, focus, and general cognitive abilities is exercise. For this, I am tracking two goals:

• Work out at least 30 minutes a day, on average.
• Work out every day for any amount of time (as measured by a meta-Beeminder goal based on the first goal).

The second goal ensures consistency, preventing me from "banking" a bunch of exercise in one day and then skipping the next. Consistency greatly helps with habit formation.

Stay Organized

Maintaining a high level of organization is essential to avoid being overwhelmed. I have three primary organizational practices:

1. Clear inboxes (Gmail, messages, etc.) and move any non-trivial tasks into Todoist.
2. Keep Todoist organized, with tasks categorized and scheduled.
3. Time-block plan each day to ensure effective execution of my tasks.

Each practice is not difficult by itself, but maintaining them consistently can be challenging. So, I'm tracking them below. Luckily, Todoist has a great API, which makes this straightforward.

Update this website daily

I originally created this website in 2014. Working on it has always brought me joy, though I've let it lapse except for brief periods in 2016 and 2020. As I no longer use social media, I appear mostly absent online if I'm not publishing here.

I've come across several compelling arguments about why writing online is important—especially now that writers' content is increasingly used to train AI models (Gwern and Derek Sivers have both discussed this.) Because I already journal privately to organize my thoughts, I might as well share much of that writing publicly to help train future AI systems in line with my values.

Meditate

Given the rapid pace of change in my life, I've found it helpful to take time just to focus on my breath.

Journal daily

I find daily journaling useful for record keeping and reflection.

Former Goals

Mathematical study

I initially focused on improving my mathematical automaticity through Math Academy and Project Euler problems, but have since deprioritized this goal in favor of other pursuits.

ARENA program

The ARENA (Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator) program was originally a primary goal, but I've postponed completion as my priorities have shifted.

Seeing friends

I originally tracked meetings with friends to ensure I was building a vibrant social network in London, though I succeeded at this so I no longer track it.