2019 Year in Review

This blog continues the 2018 Year in Review, so it will start with the status update for the goals set earlier, and then:

• Some good things happened this year
• Some bad things happened this year
• Some goals of the new year.

Status update of the goals

• ✅ “Finish one marathon.”
• ❌ “Run at least 900 KM.”: 809 KM in total
• ❌ “Spend at least 21 hours every week on algorithms study & practice.”: 8 hours in fact
• ✅ “Practicing at Project Euler or OJ platforms like codeforces.”
• ❌ “Finish my current reading list(I might not be able to finish CLRS, let’s see…).”
• ❌ “Read two more math-related & one more AI-related books.”
• ✅ “Read other books I like if time allows.”
• ✅ “Finish a web project in Jan, have to cover front/back-end, don’t have to be fancy stuff, just some utilities I might use from day-to-day. Maintain it during the year, when it’s broken, need to fix the service.”
• ✅ “Practice more Golang, learn one more language I’m not familiar with right now.”: C++
• ✅ “Finishes some courses at MOOC platforms, at least two.”: Machine Learning, Algorithms on Graphs, Data Structures
• ❌ “Joining contest like halite end of the year.”

Some good things happened this year

Running regularly

Finished one in September, at that time, the longest run I did was 21 KM, felt “you have to run this one!” strongly though, so made the risky choice.
Commuting to work via running became a habit.
Finished 809 KM in total this year, running made me felt better physically compares to one year before.

While running, I often re-listen the What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, love the “Pain is inevitable; Suffering is optional.” part a lot 😃

Read some books

Books I read(or listened) this year:

1. Harry Potter 1–3
2. The Shawshank Redemption(to me it’s better than the movie)
3. The Rosie Project
4. The Second World War: Milestones
5. The Second World War: Alone
6. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
7. How Google Works
8. Work Rules!
9. You Don’t Know JS
10. The Idiot Brain
11. Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior
12. What Do You Care What Other People Think?
13. The Pragmatic Programmer
14. HTTP The Definitive Guide
15. Accelerated C++
16. The Design of Everyday Things
17. Quiet

The picture below contains two stacks of books, the left side contains the paper books I read this year(gave some books away though), the right side contains books I bought this year but hasn’t finished the first round yet, hopefully, I can reverse the height of two stacks at the end of 2020 😂

Made some encouraging progress at work

I extended the responsibility for my job, also learned lots of new stuff during the year 😃

New Friends!

As the title :)

Started paying more attention to my personal finance

Just some basic stuff though, e.g., review how money was spent monthly, using better saving accounts, and spending more rationally.

Some bad things happened this year

I didn’t finish the goals I set up 1 year ago

Root causes:

1. I didn’t work hard enough
2. Some unexpected stuff happened which consumed lots of time(not regretting it though).

Felt Extreme sad a few times this year

Gonna improve the emotion management this year.

Some goals of the new year

Physical strength

• Run 1300 KM in total(2.5 hours per week on average)
• Practice boxing 1 hour per week
• Run Marathon once.

Hobbies

• Practice music instrument(for now, ukelele) 6 hours per week, recording one video per month for fun
• Make 4 Youtube videos.

Skills

• Spend at least 10 hours every week on algorithms study & practice
• Finish 3 online courses, and writing a blog for each.

Work

• Keep getting out of the comfort zone, proactively work on tasks with uncertainties
• Read the source code of Chromium and writing some blogs about what I found.

Emotion management

• Meditate 3 hours per week
• Keep write journals.

Reading

• Apart from reading, join a book club event at least every 2 months.

Finance

• Save 15% more compares to what I saved in 2019.