2020 Q2 Reflection and Q3 Planning

This is a routine review of my progress toward my 2020 New Year’s Resolutions. I engage in this review process quarterly. You can find Q1’s review here.

Summary

For Q2, I give myself a C/C+:

• Not a huge amount of progress on my own projects
• Completed consulting projects for AVID Center
• Served as a volunteer section leader for Stanford’s Code in Place
• Received an offer for a part-time innovation / entrepreneurship coaching position with The Spike Lab
• Completed a half marathon, despite the heat and humidity of Taiwan’s summer
• Lost ~4.6% body fat, and about ~20 pounds since the start of the year
• Started dating someone in Taiwan
• Earned my PADI Advanced Open Water and PADI Enriched Air scuba diving certifications

Other lessons and observations:

• Now that I’ve been in Taiwan for 6 months, this is actually the longest I’ve spent in one place since college. So far I’m enjoying the ability to focus that this stability has been providing.
• It’s possible that dating someone affects my goals less when there’s no hard time limit on how long I’ll be in a particular place. There’s less of a feeling of “we only have so much time to spend together, so we’d better do everything we can as quickly as we can.”

In Q3:

• Travel plan is still to stay in Taiwan through the pandemic. I’m currently applying for longer-term visas so that I don’t get kicked out in September.
• I’ll be taking on a few students for The Spike Lab
• I’m making it a priority to get involved in politics in advance of the 2020 US Presidential Election
  • I have applied to be a Volunteer Senior Software Developer for VoteForward, and if selected plan to spend ~8 hours a week on this until November
  • If I don’t get the VoteForward position, I plan to spend ~4-8 hours a week making phone calls and sending text messages for key political campaigns
• When available, I am going to prioritize taking on new client work over working on my own work this quarter so that I have more than enough liquidity to weather the COVID-19 economic recession
• When time allows, I will be working on Tribe, and am aiming to get a new version released with trip recommendations, third-party travel information, and some kind of update to address COVID-19
• I’m going to slowly prepare to qualify for TopTal to improve lead generation for my consulting business
• I’m planning to set aside time every weekend to improve my software engineering skills, with a particular focus on architectural patterns, algorithms, and machine learning / AI

Q2 Reflection

Qualitatively, I feel pretty good about how 2020 Q2 went. Did I hit everything I had hoped to? No, not quite. For example, I barely touched the ukulele at all this quarter, despite having asked myself to practice for at least 10 minutes a day, and I lost the habit of meditating every day this quarter. I also can’t say that I made a huge amount of progress on my own projects.

I did have other professional breakthroughs this quarter, however. In particular, I completed the interview process and received an offer for a coaching position with The Spike Lab, a service which provides innovation coaching to high school students, helping them to explore their strengths and passions, ultimately culminating in a self-directed project that they can use as a focal point for college applications (and, hopefully, life direction in general). Since helping people self-actualize is a major drive for me, I’m very excited about the culture and mission alignment. This position will be part-time, and I’m hoping to take on a few students starting in August.

I also took on a couple of new clients this quarter. Specifically, I worked with AVID Center, a non-profit focused on closing the privilege and achievement gap in education, to produce AVID Open Access and AVID Discover. I also briefly served as a security consultant for My Dental Key, a startup out of Harvard Dental School aimed at disrupting online dental education, and I retained my position with I’m With Them, a non-profit focused on reducing work-related sexual misconduct.

My current personal project, Tribe, was on hold for much of this quarter. Since the product focuses on helping Digital Nomads figure out where to go next, and since it isn’t clear when international travel will really pick up again, it’s been hard to predict if and when testing new product features will be possible. Financially, this initially made me a little worried–I had been following standard financial advice to keep about ~6 months liquid, with the rest of my assets in longer-term investments like ETFs and Mutual Funds. With the advent of COVID-19, and the downturn of the stock market, I watched ~15% of my wealth evaporate in a matter of weeks, all while my current personal project looked unlikely to be able to produce revenue for a year, possibly longer. The desire not to realize stock market losses is what ultimately drove me to take on consulting work this quarter.

Though the future of Tribe remains uncertain, I started to pick things back up at the end of Q2. Ultimately, I think COVID-19 presents an opportunity: now that employees across several industries have been 100% remote for some time (with some larger tech players like Twitter and Square declaring that they are now permanently completely remote organizations), I expect that the trends of remote working and, in turn, nomadism will continue to rise in the eventual wake of COVID-19. Additionally, in the same way that COVID-19 seemed to spread at alarming and unexpected rates, I think that travel will actually thaw a lot more quickly than we expect. Many economies and businesses rely on travel and tourism, which means that, realistically, it is a priority for some governments and corporations to find safe and creative interim solutions that allow travel to re-open in some capacity.

Things probably won’t look the same for a while, and I expect COVID-19 will continue to affect travel for quite some time (likely the next 1-2 years at least), but this added complexity also creates new gaps in information resources. For example, there aren’t a whole lot of reliable sources that can help you understand based on 1) your recent travel history and 2) your passports where you can evenly potentially travel to, and with what kinds of limitations and restrictions. I’m hoping to finish up a version of Tribe this year that can start to address some of these needs.

On the personal side, it’s been interesting being in Taiwan this long. I was thinking about it recently, and I realized that this is actually the longest I’ve stayed in one place anywhere since college. Even when I worked at Palantir, I traveled so often that the longest uninterrupted period I had at home was probably about 6 months. So far, I’ve been enjoying the longer time horizon quite a bit. I like that I don’t have to worry about where I’ll go next, and it’s nice not to have to spend energy thinking about how I’m going to establish myself in a new place (i.e. where am I going to live, how am I going to make friends, etc.). I quite like how I’m able to think longer-term about my goals, and really have time to just focus on getting things done. I do miss traveling, though, and I’m starting to worry my Spanish will languish the way my French did… TBD as to whether or not this means I’m done traveling for good, but for now I’m hunkering down with the expectation of staying in Taiwan until at least the end of the year, if not longer. Most of the Taiwanese visas I’ve recently applied for are valid for between one and three years.

The stability of staying in Taiwan this quarter has contributed to successfully completing a half marathon training program, staying on track to hit my reading goal of 52 books this year, and doing a good job of sticking to my Anki flashcards habit, which powers my language studies (and, increasingly, my review of concepts from math and ML, and long-term maintenance of skills like scuba diving). I also made good progress toward my body fat goals, dropping as low as 11.9% on my scale, down 4.6% from my starting point of 16.5% in January. (Note: my actual body fat as reported by an InBody machine is closer to ~14.8% right now–I mostly use my own scale to help me measure the trend so I know whether or not my diet and exercise plan is working.) I now weigh the least I’ve weighed since high school at around 145 pounds!

Further down the personal side, I started dating someone this quarter. Ordinarily and historically, I’d have expected a new relationship to have an outsized negative effect on my goals. However, that hasn’t been the case with this relationship, which has been a pleasant surprise. I’m pretty happy with how much time, freedom, and independence I still have to pursue my own things, and how supportive she’s been. Given that COVID-19 has essentially forced me to settle in Taipei for the foreseeable future, this is the first time in a long while that I’ve had a relationship with no time constraints. It’s hard to say how much of my success in balancing the relationship with my personal goals is a function of her, a function of not feeling like we have to frantically every moment together because time is short, or both. Recently we took a trip together down to Kenting, in Southern Taiwan, where she received her PADI Open Water and I was able to finish my PADI Advanced Open Water and PADI Enriched Air scuba diving certifications, which, though it wasn’t something I had expected to do this year, is something I’m proud of :).

Where my goal around improving my family relationships is concerned, I feel I’m making progress, but in terms of actual outcomes I’ve potentially stepped backward rather than forward. My father and I had a bit of a falling out this quarter, and I’ve decided to take some time away from that relationship to regroup, heal, and strategize around how to try reconnecting with him again. My conversations with my therapist are finally focusing on my family relationships, and even though things haven’t improved yet I feel satisfied that I’m doing the hard introspection work on my end.

All-in-all, I feel like I accomplished a lot this quarter, even though I haven’t made much progress on my own projects.

Q2 Quantitative Review

Quantitatively, based on the data below, I’d give myself a C/C+ this quarter.

• Language learning
  • Learn Japanese
    • OKR: Memorize the first 600-1000 most common words in Japanese.
      • Q1: I haven’t started a concerted effort to take words off this list yet. So far, I’m mostly farming vocabulary from Duolingo, which I think is preferable.
      • Q2: I still haven’t purposefully started this.
    • OKR: Complete the Duolingo Japanese program
      • Q2: I’ve been completing 1 lesson a day. I have about 90 “skills” left to complete on Duolingo. If we assume each skill has an average of 5 lessons… I’d need to complete 2.5 lessons a day for the rest of the year to finish this. I’m pretty far off track on this one.
  • Learn Chinese
    • OKR: Spend 3 months in Chinese-speaking countries
    • OKR: Complete the Duolingo Chinese program
      • Q2: I haven’t been doing this at all this quarter.
      • Q2: There are about 17 “skills” left to complete on Duolingo. For Chinese, the average number of lessons per skill is ~3. This means that I should be able to easily finish this at a rate of 1 lesson per day for ~51 days.
    • Habit: Add at least 30 new Chinese Anki cards a day for the duration of my stay in Taiwan
      • Q2: Doing OK on this. I won’t add new cards on days/weeks where I’m feeling behind, or where I have extra reviews to do, and there were a fair number of those this quarter.
    • Q2: My girlfriend essentially only speaks to me in Chinese, which has been helping a lot :).
    • Q2: I did a self-diagnostic based on vocabulary lists published by Taiwan for the TOCFL, and I’m at about ~2000 words now, where ~8000 are required for “fluency.” (Note: A “word” is a combination of Chinese characters. One can know vastly more “words” in Chinese than one knows characters, since different combinations of the same characters can form different “words.”)
  • Habit: Complete Anki reviews daily.
    • Q2: I had a week or two where I was behind due to client work, but I’ve caught back up, and I’ve gotten into a pretty good cadence for this. I’m finding doing ~100 cards in the morning when I wake up, then ~50 before lunch and ~50 after, then ~50 before dinner and ~50 after, puts me in a pretty good place where I never reach the end of my day panicked that I haven’t started studying (which usually leads to losing sleep, and is kind of a vicious cycle that leads to Anki burnout).
• Improve my health
  • Get back into shape
    • Get lean
      • Reach 10% body fat
        • Habit: Measure body composition every day so I can tell if current efforts are working
          • Q1: I’ve barely missed a day of doing this.
          • Q2: Still going strong here.
        • Habit: Track the foods I eat every day so I can correlate diet to fat loss
          • Q1: I started out strong doing this, but then fell off the cart toward the end of the quarter.
          • Q2: I didn’t do this at all this quarter, in large part because I’ve been following the Slow-Carb Diet, one of the main advantages of which is that I don’t have to track calories or macros.
    • Habit: Take a full set of body circumference measurements once a week
      • Q2: I did pitifully on this, with only 2 measurements recorded this quarter. Normally I do this over the weekend, but I think I got thrown off track by working a few weekends in a row.

• • • OKR: Find a training program I feel I can trust and stick to it unless body composition results show I’m not moving toward where I want to go. Re-evaluate programs every ~12 weeks.
      • Q1: I chose this program and stuck to it pretty closely.
      • Q2: I chose a half marathon program and stuck with it closely, with the exception of one week where I went on a long vacation. I’ll be completing my half marathon “race” the weekend of this review :).
    • OKR: Find a diet plan and stick to it long enough to evaluate results.
      • Q1: I would give myself a 60% compliance rate with my diet haha…
      • Q2: I would give myself a 70-75% compliance rate with my diet, and things seem to be working well!
    • Habit: Exercise at least 3 days a week
      • Q1: I’m easily doing closer to 5-6 days a week.
      • Q2: I’m still doing closer to 5-6 days a week and crushing this.
• Learn to talk to attractive women
  • OKR: Delete all dating apps, and don’t use them for the entire year
    • Q1: I’ve caught myself kind of tempted to download these once or twice, but on the whole I’m finding I’m quite happy without them.
    • Q2: I’m in a relationship right now, so this isn’t really applicable :P…
• Launch a successful project
  • OKR: Launch at least 2 projects of my own this year.
    • Q1: Presently, potentially a little off-track to hit this.
    • Q2: This goal is currently at risk, and given other commitments I’m expecting to make, along with an increased priority given to client work due to COVID-19 economic recession, I’m not sure if I’m in a position to bring this one back on track.
  • OKR: Take on no more than 3 months of consulting work this year.
    • Q1: It helps that I haven’t had any leads this year yet.
    • Q2: I spent probably ~2 months of this quarter working on consulting work, though I suspect that I will take on more than 3 months of consulting work this year.
  • Habit: Work on projects 6 hours a day
    • Q1: I’d give myself 50-60% compliance. I’ve had a number of days where I felt like I didn’t quite hit the 6 hour goal, and then never made-up the time. Hoping my new implementation plan will help me to stay focused and motivated.
    • Q2: I crushed this most of the time. Doing client work this quarter has helped me to realize that I can actually do close to 9 hours a day of work and still get all of my other personal goals done so long as I’m really focused about it. I still struggle a little to apply this same work ethic to my own work, but when client work is involved it’s never an issue.
• Read more
  • OKR: Read 52 books
    • Q1: 17/13 books
    • Q2: 30/26 books
      • Highlights
        • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
          • I especially appreciated the parts where he challenges traditional economic theory by comparing actual human behavior to model “econ” behavior and the parts where he discusses using statistics to better understand the happiness and success of societies.
        • Atomic Habits by James Clear
        • Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
        • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • Learn to speed read
    • OKR: Eliminate subvocalization while reading
    • Habit: For at least 3 months, spend 10 minutes using speed reading training software each day
      • Q1: I had very high compliance with this for 2 months. Then dropped off.
      • Q2: I spent no time on this this quarter.
    • Habit: Take a reading speed test every week or two to measure progress
  • Habit: Read at least 2 pages a day
    • Q1: I was good about this for about a month, then started to totally blow it off.
    • Q2: Was also pretty bad about this this quarter, though I have recently picked up the habit of reading a few pages before bed again.

• Deepen my mindfulness practice
  • Meditate more (aim for once a day; consistency matters more than duration)
    • Habit: Use Headspace to meditate every day shortly after waking up
      • Q1: Near 100% compliance
      • Q2: Near 0% compliance. I missed a few days early in the quarter, and then kind of abandoned the habit :/.
• Write more
  • OKR: Write one blog post per new city/country I live in
    • Q1: I still owe the world a blog post about Mexico City, which I’m still drafting.
    • Q2: I still haven’t taken the time to finish up my Mexico City post :/. Perhaps I’ll try to spend some time on that this weekend if I finish my review quickly.
  • OKR: Finally write the blog post I’ve been meaning to write about “ideal love” theory
  • Habit: Write at least 100 words every weekend
    • Q1: I’ve done this most weekends, though again the last month of Q1 I started to fall off the cart.
    • Q2: I haven’t been intentional about doing this lately. Some of this was that I was working weekends for about a month.
• Improve my relationship with my immediate family
  • OKR: Find an online therapist I like to help me navigate difficult emotional issues involving family relationships
  • Habit: Call each family member weekly
    • Q1: Good adherence.
    • Q2: Haven’t done this nearly as much lately… also, currently taking some time away from my father.
  • Habit: Discuss progress on family relationships with a therapist weekly
    • Q1: My therapy sessions have been kind of all over the place. I’ve maybe talked about my family in 2 or 3 out of nearly 10 to 12 sessions. I guess I have lots of other things to talk about :P.
    • Q2: I’ve had a lot more time with my therapist to discuss my family relationships now, and I feel like I’m really starting to examine the deeper issues. There hasn’t been a tangible change in my family relationships yet, but I’m excited to be doing the hard work.
• Learn to play the ukulele
  • Habit: Practice at least 10 minutes a day for at least 3 months
    • Added Q2
    • Q2: Basically 0% compliance.

Q3 Planning

Risk Mitigations

As identified above, the following OKRs and habits are at risk:

• Launch a successful project
  • OKR: Launch at least 2 projects of my own this year.
• Language learning
  • Learn Japanese
    • OKR: Memorize the first 600-1000 most common words in Japanese
    • OKR: Complete the Duolingo Japanese program
• Improve my health
  • Get back into shape
    • Get lean
      • Habit: Take a full set of body circumference measurements once a week
• Read more
  • Habit: Read at least 2 pages a day
• Deepen my mindfulness practice
  • Meditate more
    • Habit: Use Headspace to meditate every day shortly after waking up
• Write more
  • OKR: Write one blog post per new city/country I live in
  • OKR: Finally write the blog post I’ve been meaning to write about “ideal love” theory
  • Habit: Write at least 100 words every weekend
• Learn to play the ukulele
  • Habit: Practice at least 10 minutes a day for at least 3 months

I’m going to address most of these in the “Changes to 2020 Goals” section, but I’ll discuss a few of them here. Particularly, I want to strategize around how I’m going to recover a few of the habits listed above, specifically body circumference measurements, reading, meditating, and writing.

For body circumference measurements, the issue is really just remembering. I’m adding a weekly repeating task in my task management system, as well as a weekly morning reminder to my Google assistant. Ideally, I’ll take care of this each week as one of the first things I do on cheat day (before the debauchery begins ;).

For reading, I’ve been having a lot of trouble establishing the habit of reading a few pages before bed each night. The issue here is mostly that I haven’t been disciplined and consistent about bedtime so sometimes I get to bed and it’s already so late that I don’t feel like I have time to read. I also sometimes forget to keep my Kindle charged and ready to go. I’m going to try to establish two adjacent, supporting habits:

1. Each morning after I make my bed, make sure my Kindle is charged and place it on my pillow.
2. Every evening, get in bed 30 minutes before my actual intended bedtime. Before I remove my Kindle from my pillow, make sure to read a few pages.

I think I fell off the cart on meditation because I shifted my sleep schedule for a California-based client for a couple months this quarter. I went from being an early morning riser to waking up around 9 or 10am and sleeping around 1 or 2am. When I wake up as late as 9 or 10am, I often don’t start working until 11 or 11:30am, which already feels quite late to me. As a result, I fall into the trap of feeling like I can’t spare the 10 minutes required to meditate in the morning. I think staying on an early morning routine and making sure I get plenty of sleep each night will help to rectify this. I’m already back on an earlier schedule after coming back from diving in Kenting, and I think a 7 or 7:30am wake-up time will leave me feeling like I have enough time to take care of this.

Writing is a tougher habit to crack… this really requires that I set aside some time when I know I’ll be high energy and able to do creative work, which is usually the morning after a nice, full sleep. Normally I set aside some time on the weekends, usually first thing Sunday morning. This quarter, I think I struggled to do this for a few reasons:

1. Half marathon training this quarter usually left me with a really, really long run to do on Sundays, which tended to leave me feeling like I didn’t have time and energy for much else on Sunday.
2. My client project this quarter was pretty urgent, and I worked a fair number of weekends in a row
3. Initially, my new relationship messed with my weekend schedule and routine a bit, since when I did actually have time on the weekend, I felt like I needed to carve out some time to make up for my relative absence during the week.

Fortunately, half marathon training and urgent client work are both over. My girlfriend and I have also settled into our relationship a little more, and are able to keep a fairly good routine. Lately, she and I have actually also been setting aside ~2-3 hours on the weekend to go to a cafe for a work session. I’m planning to use this work session for a new goal I’m adding, explained below, but I think it could be feasible to spend the first ~30 minutes on writing.

Changes to 2020 Goals

Here’s how my goals are affected by changing conditions in Q3:

• Exercise
  • Since I currently live in Taiwan, it should be fairly safe to return to regular weight lifting at a gym.
• Become more politically active
  • The 2020 US presidential election is coming up fast. If I’m going to get involved, now is the time.
• Launch a successful project
  • As COVID-19 continues to push signs of global recession, now is a good time to double-down on opportunities that will give me more liquidity to weather a bear economy, and potentially even give me extra cash to invest into the down market so I can see greater return as things eventually recover.

Nothing too surprising here.

Here’s how I’m adjusting my goals to compensate (items in green are being added, items in red are being removed):

• Launch a successful project
  • OKR: Launch at least 2 projects of my own this year
  • OKR: Take on no more than 3 months of consulting work this year.
  • OKR: Earn no more profit from coaching and consulting than the annual Foreign Earned Income Tax Exclusion limit ($107,600).
  • OKR: Release a new version of Tribe with updates for COVID-19
  • Habit: Work on projects at least 6 hours a day
• Grow my consulting business
  • OKR: Join TopTal
    • This will make it easier for me to find leads for high-end consulting work with prestigious clients
  • OKR: Complete a professional project related to machine learning / artificial intelligence / data science
    • I have these skills from my Machine Learning / AI Master’s degree, but haven’t used them much since college. I’d like to brush up on them and start offering these services to clients, and incorporate them into my own projects.
  • Habit: Do a practice problem on HackerRank daily
    • This will help me improve my algorithms skills and prepare me for TopTal’s engineering interview process
• Improve my software engineering skills
  • OKR: Read Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
  • OKR: Read Design Patterns by The “Gang of Four”
  • OKR: Read Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
  • OKR: Master dynamic programming (DP)
    • I don’t generally have a need for DP in my day-to-day engineering work, but this is an area that I always felt weak at, and which used to scare me a little. I’d like to push past that fear and master DP.
  • Habit: Every weekend, spend 2-3 hours working on something that hones my software engineering skills
    • This can be reading one of the books I’ve listed above, or doing extra problems on HackerRank, or playing with machine learning / artificial intelligence / data science projects on Kaggle.
• Language Learning
  • Learn Japanese
    • OKR: Memorize the first 600-1000 most common words in Japanese
    • OKR: Complete the Duolingo Japanese program
    • Habit: Add 3 new Japanese Core 10k sentences each day
    • Habit: Add at least 5 new Japanese vocabulary Anki cards a day
    • Habit: Every day, make grammar and example sentence flashcards for 1 already-completed Duolingo lesson
  • Learn Chinese
    • OKR: Spend 3 months in Chinese-speaking countries
    • OKR: Complete the Duolingo Chinese program
    • OKR: Reach 3000 words in Chinese.
      • This will roughly correspond to slightly exceeding the “B1” level outlined by TOCFL, and is also commonly the number of words people say you need to know in order to be able to read a newspaper. (I’m still skeptical, but for context, 8000 is supposed to be ~fluent.)
      • At a pace of 30 new Chinese Anki cards a day, I should be able to accomplish this with the 6 months I have remaining in the year
    • Habit: Add at least 30 new Chinese Anki cards a day for the duration of my stay in Taiwan
    • Habit: Complete 1 Duolingo Chinese lesson daily
• Improve my health
  • Get back into shape
    • Get lean
      • Reach 10% body fat
        • Habit: Measure body composition every day so I can tell if current efforts are working
        • Habit: Track the foods I eat every day so I can correlate diet to fat loss
          • I’ll consider re-adding this in a limited capacity as a supporting habit, if necessary, but for now the current diet plan doesn’t really require this.
      • Habit: Take a full set of body circumference measurements once a week
    • OKR: Find a training program I feel I can trust and stick to it unless body composition results show I’m not moving toward where I want to go. Re-evaluate programs every ~12 weeks.
    • OKR: Find a diet plan and stick to it long enough to evaluate results
    • Habit: Exercise at least 3 days a week
• Read More
  • OKR: Read 52 books
  • Learn to speed read
    • OKR: Eliminate subvocalization while reading
    • Habit: For at least 3 months, spend 10 minutes using speed reading training software each day
    • Habit: Take a reading speed test every week or two to measure progress
  • Habit: Read at least 2 pages a day
  • Habit: Each morning after I make my bed, make sure my Kindle is charged and place it on my pillow.
  • Habit: Every evening, get in bed 30 minutes before my actual intended bedtime. Before I remove my Kindle from my pillow, make sure to read a few pages.
• Become more politically active
  • Habit: Spend 4-8 hours each week on political activities
• Learn to play the ukulele
  • Habit: Practice at least 10 minutes a day for at least 3 months

Trade-off: Launching a Successful Project vs Growing My Consulting Business

Very notably here: I’m laxing the restriction on client work this year. I’ve been debating this, especially since coaching for The Spike Lab promises to bring a fairly steady part-time income, but I think that given the state of the economy right now, if I can get people to pay my consulting fee, I should take the opportunity.

Each consulting project tangibly contributes greatly to my longer-term financial security, not just because of the infusion of cash it brings in, but also because each project helps me to build up my portfolio and allows me to collect positive testimonials that make it easier to passively catch leads for new clients.

Since time is finite, removing my 3-month maximum on consulting projects this year and adding ~half a day to a day of politically-oriented volunteer work means that I can’t commit to launching a second product this year. I do still hope to find time to finish out the next phase of Tribe, however.

Explaining the new dollar limit imposed on my coaching and consulting work requires a quick note on taxes: as an expat, I am able to exclude my earnings from US federal income taxes (but not CA state income tax and self-employment tax) each year up to a specified maximum. The relevant tax exclusion is the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, and the annual exclusion limit for 2020 is $107,600. This means that I will pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes for every dollar I earn above that amount, which makes spending time away from my own work significantly less attractive.

New Goal: Improve My Software Engineering Skills

This goal is newly appearing here, so I’m going to write out my motivation for pursuing it.

Personally, I’ve always seen software as a means to an end. At times, I’ve cringed at being referred to as an “engineer” or a “programmer” because I hated how those labels sometimes felt like pigeon holes for my identity. I see myself as more of a problem solver or an entrepreneur who happens to have software in his toolbox.

That said, I do love writing software. I’ve always found the process enjoyable and interesting, and by now, having earned my 10,000 hours and then some, I think I’d be doing myself an injustice if I failed to recognize that software engineering is an important part of who I am.

So that said, I’d like to improve my software engineering skills for a couple of reasons:

1. Boost my confidence in engineering decisions I make on independent projects, or for client projects where I’m in a leadership or architectural position.
2. Gain experience in new and adjacent skills which I can then apply to my own projects or offer as services to clients.

Regarding the first point, I think every software engineer probably experiences some amount of self-doubt around certain design decisions we make in larger projects. Sometimes that self-doubt manifests in the form of severe tech debt. Worse, sometimes it manifests as an immediate need to entirely rewrite or re-design a piece of code (at the cost of days or weeks of time). Other times, it just creates a gnawing sensation at the back of our minds, that decreases confidence and, in turn, productivity going forward. I think reading more about how others think through some of these decisions and building more recognition around common patterns will help give me more perspective so that I can both make better decisions, and feel more confident in my decisions.

Regarding the second point, there are a couple of skills that I’m technically qualified in, but haven’t had much experience with since college. Chief among these is probably machine learning / artificial intelligence / data science. I actually have an AI and Machine Learning Master’s degree from Stanford, which should make me qualified to do work in these areas. However, since I don’t use these skills a whole lot these days, I can’t say I have a huge amount of recent experience or confidence in them. Developing these skills will make it easier for me to apply them to my own projects, or to offer them as services to clients. In this sense, improving my software engineering skills supports both launching my own businesses and growing my consulting business.

I’m also recently realizing that there’s actually a decent amount of fear holding me back in some of these areas. For example, with ML / AI, a lot of the theory is built upon some very complicated math (linear algebra + calculus). If I’m being honest, I think I’m a bit insecure about my math abilities. In reality, I’m probably decent at math. In fact, I’m probably well above average in terms of proficiency. However, growing up in the gifted and talented crowd and then going to Stanford where there were always a bunch of people who were naturally way better than me at math or who possessed a more intuitive understanding of some of the concepts, I’ve grown to become a little intimidated by math. This fear also exists for certain other areas of computer science like algorithms and dynamic programming in which I didn’t feel terribly proficient in comparison to my college peers.

Now that I’m more “mature” and I’m outside of the pressures of a traditional learning environment, I find that I have a desire to face those fears and prove to myself that I really can get better at these things. Throughout Q2, I’ve found myself beginning to experiment with reviewing these concepts on my own using tools like YouTube and HackerRank. Adding this to Q3, is really more formalizing how I spend that time than anything else. I’m excited to see where I can go now learning at my own pace!

New Goal: Become More Politically Active

I talked about this last quarter, so this isn’t exactly new, but since November’s presidential election is coming up fast, I think it’s time to formalize my desire to get involved.

I recently applied for a Volunteer Senior Software Developer position with Vote Forward, and am waiting to hear back. If they select me, I think the opportunity to apply my professional skills to a cause I’m passionate about is a perfect outlet for this goal.

If not, my plan is to use Swing Left to choose a few key races and start making phone calls or sending text messages, probably a few each day before I start working or in the evening before I go to bed (for optimal time zone overlap).

Adjusted Method: Exercise and Diet

Now that things have returned to normal in Taiwan, I plan to start visiting a gym regularly again.  I had a lot of success with weight loss and fat burning in Q2, but in the process I do feel I’ve lost some muscle mass. I’m beginning to realize that endurance running may not be something I want to focus on too much going forward. Yes, I have challenged myself with running in the past, but ultimately I’m not excited about having a distance runner’s physique. I’d like something more well-rounded with good amounts of lean muscle everywhere, but with a focus on function over aesthetics (though aesthetics are still important).

I’d like a more balanced routine that incorporates weight training, HIIT, and endurance cardio. The goals remain to:

1. Maintain a level of fitness that promotes a healthy body and mind
2. Create a functional fitness that I can apply to more physical activities and hobbies
3. Reach my body aesthetic goals

Though I don’t want to look like a distance runner, I also don’t want to be one of those muscle bodies at the gym who look huge, but then can’t run 3 miles to save their lives…

I’m finding that the training plans that fit me best are often oriented towards the military. Most other programs I find interesting are heavily weight-lifting-oriented, and I’d need to incorporate cardio on my own during off days.

Right now, I’m thinking I’ll get a membership at a real gym here in Taiwan, and then execute some combination of these 3 programs:

• Warrior Elite Workout Program
  • Probably do this one for the first 4 weeks, then switch to one of the other programs.
  • I like that this is 5 days a week so I can take the weekend off.
  • I like the combination of lifting with cardio.
  • I like that this looks challenging, so I can feel like I accomplished something if I get through it
• Chris Evans Workout Program
  • Chris Evans is a decent aesthetic role model for me ;).
  • I’d have to incorporate an extra day of cardio each week, probably 4-6 miles on Wednesdays or Sundays?
• Phase 1 Special Forces Prep
  • I did this one for a while while I was in Mexico. It really maxes out on “functional” and pushes the limit on strength, intensity, and multi-disciplinary endurance (running, swimming, and biking!).
  • Not sure I’ll have all the equipment needed to do this, but I can probably fudge it.
  • I’d likely substitute long-distance running for rucking.
  • This is the highest time commitment option of the 3… I’ll have to see how I feel time-wise after the Warrior Elite Workout Program.

Diet-wise, I’ve decided to stick to the Slow-Carb Diet, since I’m used to it by now and it’s working well. I really like the cheat day aspect of this diet, as it leaves me feeling non-deprived–I can have anything I want one day a week–and doesn’t seem to hamper long-term progress much. My only complaint is that, when combined with hard running, it tends to leave me feeling tired during workouts, so I’ve observed that my running performance isn’t great. I’ve solved this somewhat by allowing myself to cheat a little and eat some simple carbs (e.g. noodles or rice) on days with especially long or especially hard workouts.

I’m likely to combine SCD with tracking a daily protein goal of ~145 grams per day (~1 gram per pound of body weight), to help support my weightlifting efforts. Additionally, I plan to continue casually cutting with this diet until my body fat percentage dips below at least 13%, though more ideally something closer to 10%. Once I reach that point, I’ll start consciously increasing calorie intake to lean bulk and try to add more muscle.

Adjusted Method: Learning Japanese

I did the math, and it looks like I’d need to do about ~3 Japanese lessons on Duolingo each day to make this OKR. In abstract, 3 lessons on Duolingo isn’t a huge deal–on average, that takes probably 15-20 minutes. However, I have found recently that I don’t have the bandwidth to add a whole lot of new Anki cards for Japanese, at least not without sacrificing bandwidth to add new cards for Chinese, or risking being unable to get through my cards daily long-term.

I’ve also noticed, as I’ve noticed in the past with other Duolingo language programs, that my actual competence in Japanese is not tracking well against the perception of progress that Duolingo’s gamification leaves me with. Have I been exposed to a lot of new words and sentence patterns? Yes. Have I really internalized virtually any of them? No. In order to internalize these new concepts, they need to find their way into Anki… and if I can’t keep up with 3-lessons-a-day worth of Anki Japanese cards, it’s unlikely that going through the wrote task of completing the Duolingo Japanese program is going to help me much on its own.

I think the solution is, instead, to drop the Duolingo Japanese program OKR, and instead focus my efforts on:

1. Getting Duolingo grammar points and sentence examples from my existing Japanese lessons into Anki
2. Catching up on my already collected Duolingo Anki vocabulary
3. Memorizing my first ~600 words based on frequency with the assistance of the Core 10k Anki deck I already have loaded.

The new habits I’ve added are aimed at accomplishing all of the above:

• Habit: Add 3 new Japanese Core 10k sentences each day
  • Core 10k is a deck of 10,000 sentences where each sentence introduces a new high frequency Japanese word. If I get through the first ~600 sentences, I’ll have been exposed to my goal of the first ~600 most frequent Japanese words. 3 new sentences a day for the rest of the year should put me on track to hit this target.
• Habit: Add at least 5 new Japanese vocabulary Anki cards a day
  • This number has been chosen strategically to keep Japanese reviews at about 50 or less so that they stay manageable and don’t cut into bandwidth reserved for Chinese.
• Habit: Every day, make grammar and example sentence flashcards for 1 already-completed Duolingo lesson
  • There are about ~26 Japanese skills that have grammar tips that I’ve completed, which means I only need to spend ~26 days doing this at a pace of one skill per day.

Dropped Goal: Learn to Play the Ukulele

I added this for Q2, but then hardly followed-through on it. I think I’ve discovered that my motivation to learn the ukulele is likely either not strong enough or not clear enough to myself. Given that I expect to add a load of new commitments in Q3, it seems natural to cut this, or at least put it on hold. Right now, this doesn’t feel more important than anything else on the list, and also doesn’t feel more important than even just giving myself 10 extra precious minutes of downtime per day.

Summarized Q3 Goals

• Launch a successful project
  • OKR: Earn no more profit from coaching and consulting than the annual Foreign Earned Income Tax Exclusion limit ($107,600).
  • OKR: Release a new version of Tribe with updates for COVID-19
  • Habit: Work on projects 6 hours a day
• Grow my consulting business
  • OKR: Join TopTal
  • OKR: Complete a professional project related to machine learning / artificial intelligence / data science
  • Habit: Do a practice problem on HackerRank daily
• Improve my software engineering skills
  • OKR: Read Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
  • OKR: Read Design Patterns by The “Gang of Four”
  • OKR: Read Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
  • OKR: Master dynamic programming (DP)
  • Habit: Every weekend, spend 2-3 hours working on something that hones my software engineering skills
• Language learning
  • Learn Japanese
    • OKR: Memorize the first 600-1000 most common words in Japanese.
    • Habit: Add 3 new Japanese Core 10k sentences each day
    • Habit: Add at least 5 new Japanese vocabulary Anki cards a day
    • Habit: Every day, make grammar and example sentence flashcards for 1 already-completed Duolingo lesson
  • Learn Chinese
    • OKR: Spend 3 months in Chinese-speaking countries
    • OKR: Complete the Duolingo Chinese program
    • OKR: Reach 3000 words in Chinese
    • Habit: Add at least 30 new Chinese Anki cards a day for the duration of my stay in Taiwan
    • Habit: Complete 1 Duolingo Chinese lesson daily
  • Habit: Complete Anki reviews daily.
• Improve my health
  • Get back into shape
    • Get lean
      • Reach 10% body fat
        • Habit: Measure body composition every day so I can tell if current efforts are working
      • Habit: Take a full set of body circumference measurements once a week
    • OKR: Find a training program I feel I can trust and stick to it unless body composition results show I’m not moving toward where I want to go. Re-evaluate programs every ~12 weeks.
    • OKR: Find a diet plan and stick to it long enough to evaluate results.
    • Habit: Exercise at least 3 days a week
• Learn to talk to attractive women
  • OKR: Delete all dating apps, and don’t use them for the entire year
• Read more
  • OKR: Read 52 books
  • Learn to speed read
    • OKR: Eliminate subvocalization while reading
    • Habit: For at least 3 months, spend 10 minutes using speed reading training software each day
    • Habit: Take a reading speed test every week or two to measure progress
  • Habit: Read at least 2 pages a day
  • Habit: Each morning after I make my bed, make sure my Kindle is charged and place it on my pillow.
  • Habit: Every evening, get in bed 30 minutes before my actual intended bedtime. Before I remove my Kindle from my pillow, make sure to read a few pages.
• Deepen my mindfulness practice
  • Meditate more (aim for once a day; consistency matters more than duration)
    • Habit: Use Headspace to meditate every day shortly after waking up
• Write more
  • OKR: Write one blog post per new city/country I live in
  • OKR: Finally write the blog post I’ve been meaning to write about “ideal love” theory
  • Habit: Write at least 100 words every weekend
• Improve my relationship with my immediate family
  • OKR: Find an online therapist I like to help me navigate difficult emotional issues involving family relationships
  • Habit: Call each family member weekly
  • Habit: Discuss progress on family relationships with a therapist weekly
• Become more politically active
  • Habit: Spend 4-8 hours each week on political activities

Summarized Q3 Habits and OKRs

Habits:

• Daily
  • Work on projects 6 hours a day
  • Do a practice problem on HackerRank
  • Use Headspace to meditate every day shortly after waking up
  • Complete Anki reviews
  • Add 30 new Chinese Anki cards
  • Complete 1 Duolingo Chinese lesson
  • Add 3 new Japanese Core 10k sentences
  • Add at least 5 new Japanese vocabulary Anki cards
  • Make grammar and example sentence flashcards for 1 already-completed Duolingo lesson
  • Read 2 pages a day
  • After I make my bed, make sure my Kindle is charged and place it on my pillow
  • Every evening, get in bed 30 minutes before my actual intended bedtime. Before I remove my Kindle from my pillow, make sure to read a few pages
  • For at least 3 months, spend 10 minutes using speed training software
  • Measure body composition
• Weekly
  • Exercise at least 3 days a week
  • Take a full set of body circumference measurements once a week
  • Every weekend, spend 2-3 hours working on something that hones my software engineering skills
  • Every weekend, write at least 100 words
  • Call each family member
  • Discuss progress on family relationships with a therapist
  • Spend 4-8 hours on political activities

OKRs:

• Launch a successful project
  • Release a new version of Tribe with updates for COVID-19
  • Earn no more profit from coaching and consulting than the annual Foreign Earned Income Tax Exclusion limit ($107,600)
• Grow my consulting business
  • Complete a professional project related to machine learning / artificial intelligence / data science
  • Join TopTal
• Improve my software engineering skills
  • Read Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
  • Read Design Patterns by The “Gang of Four”
  • Read Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
  • Master dynamic programming (DP)
• Learn Chinese
  • Spend 3 months in Chinese-speaking countries
  • Reach 3000 words in Chinese
  • Complete the Duolingo Chinese program
• Learn Japanese
  • Memorize the first 600-1000 most common words in Japanese.
• Get back into shape
  • Reach 10% body fat
  • Find a training program I feel I can trust and stick to it unless body composition results show I’m not moving toward where I want to go. Re-evaluate programs every ~12 weeks.
  • Find a diet plan and stick to it long enough to evaluate results.
• Learn to talk to attractive women
  • Delete all dating apps, and don’t use them for the entire year
• Read more
  • Read 52 books
  • Eliminate subvocalization while reading
• Write more
  • Write one blog post per new city/country I live in
  • Finally write the blog post I’ve been meaning to write about “ideal love” theory
• Improve my relationship with my immediate family
  • Find an online therapist I like to help me navigate difficult emotional issues