By Daniel Chiu in Quarterly Review — Oct 9, 2022

2022 Q2 and Q3 Review

Diving with sharks in The Bahamas! They're really kind of cute once you stop shitting yourself.

💡

I gave myself a D for the last couple quarters. I fell off the cart for most things traveling for 3 months from May through July—even skipping my Q2 review. I felt kind of burnt out upon returning, and struggled to get back on track. I’ve learned a few things in the absence of structure, though, and travel is always its own reward!

Here’s the lowdown:

😵‍💫 April was a blur. I spent my time prepping my Taipei apartment for sublease and getting ready to travel while ramping up training for a half marathon and trying to keep a steady pace on work.
✈️ I traveled for 3 months from beginning of May until end of July in order to celebrate my Dad’s 60th birthday and attend one of my girlfriend’s cousin’s weddings. I spent time in San Diego, Mexico City, Sanibel Island (Florida), The Bahamas, D.C., and New York City. My girlfriend and I traveled together and worked remotely whenever we weren’t with family.
🦈 I crossed a few fun things off my bucket list while traveling: diving with sharks, seeing Hamilton on Broadway, and having a meal at Pujol in CDMX.
⏭ I postponed my Q2 review while on the road, then decided to skip it entirely since it was already a month late and I didn’t want to plan for a short quarter.
😷 My girlfriend and I finally caught COVID-19 toward the end of our trip, unfortunately ruining plans for a send-off party in NYC and a roadtrip to Yosemite before returning to Taiwan. We’ve since made a full recovery.
🧘 Since returning to Taipei at the end of July, I’ve been slowly recovering from the freneticism that sometimes accompanies traveling. It’s been nice to have weekends back and not feel obligated to do or go somewhere new with limited time.
🧱 My work focus has turned away from feature development on specific products and more towards reusable and scalable architecture to be used between products.
🚀 Midana is still in progress, though work is delayed in the short-term as I build out tools to accelerate long-term progress. The product still isn’t profitable, as I am researching up the tech tree toward creating a reusable purchases module for use in all of my products.
🏁 I completed two half marathons and an Olympic triathlon. Performance in all of these was a bit disappointing, but has brought new focus and determination to improving my health and fitness for the future.
🍅 I have almost completely abandoned the Pomodoro technique. At the same time, I’m rediscovering the magical flow states that can keep me focused on something interesting for hours at a time.
💥 Many of my other key habits fell apart while on the road, and I’ve been working to re-integrate some of them since returning to Taipei with mixed success. Most of my quantitative tracking of things has also fallen off.

In Q4:

😅 I’m hopelessly behind, so I’ve gotten clear with myself about what’s important for the remainder of the year and dropped the weight of expectations for the rest.
🤙 I’m loosening much of the structure, in favor of experimenting with more naturally and consistently finding flow, a process that started while I was away.
🛠 Work-wise, I’m focused on creating common, scalable building blocks for all of my ideas, and then plugging those into Midana as they’re ready.
🇹🇼 I plan to take some version of the TOCFL in November.
🚴 I’ll be participating in a 100km bike ride in northern Taiwan organized by Trek.

Reflection 🤔

It’s been an eventful half year. Enough so that I’m not quite sure where to start or even where I left off. Here’s what I remember:

😵‍💫 April was a blur. I spent my time prepping my Taipei apartment for sublease and getting ready to travel while ramping up training for a half marathon and trying to keep a steady pace on work.
✈️ I traveled for 3 months from beginning of May until end of July in order to celebrate my Dad’s 60th birthday and attend one of my girlfriend’s cousin’s weddings. I spent time in San Diego, Mexico City, Sanibel Island (Florida), The Bahamas, D.C., and New York City. My girlfriend and I traveled together and worked remotely whenever we weren’t with family.
🦈 I crossed a few fun things off my bucket list while traveling: diving with sharks, seeing Hamilton on Broadway, and having a meal at Pujol in CDMX.
⏭ I postponed my Q2 review while on the road, then decided to skip it entirely since it was already a month late and I didn’t want to plan for a short quarter.
😷 My girlfriend and I finally caught COVID-19 toward the end of our trip, unfortunately ruining plans for a send-off party in NYC and a roadtrip to Yosemite before returning to Taiwan. We’ve since made a full recovery.
🧘 Since returning to Taipei at the end of July, I’ve been slowly recovering from the freneticism that sometimes accompanies traveling. It’s been nice to have weekends back and not feel obligated to do or go somewhere new with limited time.
🧱 My work focus has turned away from feature development on specific products and more towards reusable and scalable architecture to be used between products.
🚀 Midana is still in progress, though work is delayed in the short-term as I build out tools to accelerate long-term progress. The product still isn’t profitable, as I am researching up the tech tree toward creating a reusable purchases module for use in all of my products.
🏁 I completed two half marathons and an Olympic triathlon. Performance in all of these was a bit disappointing, but has brought new focus and determination to improving my health and fitness for the future.
🍅 I have almost completely abandoned the Pomodoro technique. At the same time, I’m rediscovering the magical flow states that can keep me focused on something interesting for hours at a time.
💥 Many of my other key habits fell apart while on the road, and I’ve been working to re-integrate some of them since returning to Taipei with mixed success. Most of my quantitative tracking of things has also fallen off.

In measuring my progress against my annual goals, I have no doubt that I’ve come up short in the last couple of quarters. I lost a lot of my key habits while traveling, and I’ve been struggling to pick some of them back up again. Exercise has been half-hearted at best, though I mostly kept up with training for a recent Olympic triathlon. Language studies have been halting, as I’ve once again lost the rhythm of my Anki habit. I missed the registration deadline for an adaptive computerized Chinese reading test around when I returned to Taiwan, and have found myself a bit unmotivated to register for an upcoming test date in October / November, largely because I know I won’t be well-prepared for it, and haven’t wanted to stress myself out with a commitment to prepare for a test.

I’d attribute these shortfalls to the difficulty of balancing everything while traveling and then to a relative sense of burnout from trying (and failing) to juggle. Though I had been to most everywhere we traveled to, most destinations were novelties to my girlfriend. Given how much harder I know it can be for Taiwanese people to travel, I felt an excitement and a responsibility to show her as much as I could and make sure she didn’t miss any important experiences (or flavors). Most of our weekends were packed full of sightseeing—despite relatively long stays in Mexico City and NYC, a month really isn’t so long if trying to limit most of the touring around to two days a week.

Needless to say, though I was sad for the traveling to end, it was ultimately relieving to return to Taipei and have work days and weekends without the pressure to constantly do or see something new. I’ve been many weeks in recovering, and am only just recently (~2 months after returning) feeling some of the energy and motivation for things beyond work return these past couple of weeks.

Still, a lot of good came out of the last 6 months! It’s hard to quantify much of it against my annual goals. Though it was exhausting, traveling was simultaneously reinvigorating. The pandemic made the world feel small, and it was inspiring to remember that the world is bigger than just my humble base in Taipei.

Despite many of my habits failing to bear the weight of being on the road, the failure of those structures has forced me to rethink them. I’ve been forced out of familiar patterns and expectations, and have found my way to the beginnings of something new and a bit different. As a result, both the nature and the mode of my work have been evolving since leaving Taiwan and since returning.

In nature, I’ve started thinking beyond Midana. While I was away, I came to an important realization: I am no longer a startup. I shouldn’t be executing as if I’m all-in on any single product, because I’m not. Midana is the first of what I hope will be many of products I birth into this world. Building and maintaining many products simultaneously instead of just one is going to require a paradigm shift in my approach to engineering. Since realizing this, I’ve been spending less time on feature development and more time on architecture and re-usable foundations.

In mode, I’m more focused on creating the conditions for greater flow, creativity, and inspiration. In practice, this has meant cultivating a sense of abundance about time and directing my available energy effectively rather than ruthlessly squeeze out more productivity per unit time. I’ve dropped the Pomodoro technique and am no longer explicitly tracking my time. I’m attaching fewer and less granular expectations to my days so that it’s harder to misstep and stress about being constantly “behind.” I spend more time in places that energize and inspire me, and less time forcing myself to work when I’m clearly feeling tired or distracted.

I’m encouraged and humbled by the new sense of balance that’s slowly emerging. I hadn’t planned to travel this year. I didn’t plan well for how traveling might affect my annual goals. At the same time, I don’t think I could have planned for how traveling would change my perspective. Though the version of me that writes this is still tired, and certainly behind where past me had hoped or expected, I think that I am no worse for the wear.

Rather than write one long piece, I wrote several shorter pieces with deeper reflections on my thoughts and experiences from the last 6 months:

Quantitative Review 🔢

Summary 💯

I’m going to give myself a D. Most of the goals below are in the red, and I have to admit that I’m far enough behind on most of this this year, that there isn’t much hope of catching up. A few scattered things are still on track, and I’m grateful for that, but on the whole it’s clear that travel and travel burnout put things through the blender.

Break Down 🧨

Habits 📅

Daily
- Morning
  - Wake up by 6:30am
  - Meditate for 20 minutes a day
  - Write in my journal
  - Leave my phone silenced until my morning routine is complete
- Evening
  - Get to bed by 10:30pm
  - Leave my phone and all other electronics (Kindle excepted) charging far away from bed
- Work Days
  - Take no longer than 1 hour for my lunch break
  - Do a pomodoro of reading from a book that helps me sharpen and advance my professional skills
  - Leave my phone in Do Not Disturb during work sessions
  - Clear my inboxes
  - Plan tomorrow today
- Do a pomodoro of Chinese active immersion
- Stick to my diet plan
- Complete my Anki reviews
  - Complete 25 backlogged reviews for Chinese
  - Complete 25 backlogged reviews for French
  - Complete 25 backlogged reviews for Spanish
Weekly
- Complete an average of 16 pomodoros each day for a total of 80 pomodoros each week
- Stretch: Complete at least 85 pomodoros each week
- Exercise 5-6 times each week
- Find something adventurous to do every weekend
- On weekends where I fail to find something adventurous to do, complete a rejection challenge
- Call my parents and sister
Bi-weekly
- Complete a sprint planning session
- Complete a sprint retrospective and implement actionable takeaways for the next sprint
- Participate in a family therapy session
Quarterly
- Host an event that will allow me to meet friends of friends
  - We had a not-so-BBQ BBQ at my place in September. Met a few friends of friends and it was chill :).
- Attend at least one new meet-up and aim to meet at least one person to grab coffee or drinks with
- Attend a networking-style event and aim to meet at least one person to grab coffee or drinks with
- Participate in a race event of some kind
- Increase weekly pomodoro target, if feasible
- Pick a dieting method each quarter and stick to it at least 80-90% of the time
  - Q2 + Q3: Unless tacos and pizza count as a diet, definitely did not achieve this.

OKRs 🎯

Launch Midana to the general public
- Resolve long-term scaling issues for the Midana mobile client
  - I've made some strides towards resolving this, but lately there are some concerning reports about scanner crashes that could be related to client-side scaling.
- Resolve long-term scaling issues for the Midana backend
  - I've made some strides towards resolving this, but there's still more to do here, particularly around ensuring that new lottery draw results get imported smoothly.
- Resolve stability issues in registration and onboarding flows
  - I've made some strides towards resolving this, but there's still more to do here.
- Implement backend infrastructure to track receipts for in-app purchases and subscriptions
  - I've made some strides towards resolving this, but there's still more to do here, particularly around ensuring that new lottery draw results get imported smoothly.
- Implement at least one premium feature to ship with the app on launch
  - Pretty far off from having time to implement something one-off for Midana at the moment.
Achieve a 4.5/5-star average rating for Midana
- Given the strategic focus changes, I'm unsure if Midana will launch publicly before the end of the year. I'm driving toward that outcome, but it will depend on how quickly I finish the reusable infrastructure work.
Make at least $1/month of passive profit with Midana
- I'm feeling a little like this probably isn't going to happen in the next 3 months given strategic focus changes, but it's in the outer realm of possibility.
Reach at least 50 active users for a new project
- Feels likely that I won't finish quite enough of the foundational stuff to get to this point with a second project this year, but I'm moving as quickly as I can and am mindful of this intention.
Get my weight back down to the ~145-150 lbs range
- Still closer to 170lbs right now. Losing weight definitely did not happen while traveling, and I haven't put quite enough focus into it since coming back.
Reach 10% body fat
- Hahahaha
Go on 100+ bike rides
- I haven't been keeping track of the exact number, but with the exception of a hiatus while I was abroad, I feel pretty good about how often I've gotten out to go cycling. I'm definitely getting value out of my bike haha
Clear out my backlog of old Anki cards
- I was close to having this under control part way through my travels, and have since lost the habit twice. My backlog is probably even bigger than it was before now haha.
Register for a TOCFL Level 4 test in early November
- Registration deadline is soon... I should just go ahead and do it. Maybe register for level 3 instead of level 4.
Pass the TOCFL Level 4 test this year
- I'm feeling very pessimistic about my Chinese skills leveling up a whole lot more this year.
Reach out to friends to build a bank of 40 rejection challenges
Complete at least 10 rejection challenges
- I haven't done any of these :(. Though the thought has crossed my mind from time to time.
Read 40 books
- I don't have an exact count of books, but have been on a serious reading binge lately, and would guess that I'm up at around ~20-30 books so far this year.

Metrics 📊

% compliance for daily, weekly, and bi-weekly habits
- I don’t have exact numbers this quarter, but fair to say very low.
Body weight
- Q1: 163.7lbs at last weigh-in
- Q3: 169.8lbs at last weigh-in
Body fat percentage
- Q1: 15.4% at last weigh-in, but scale is questionably accurate
- Q3: 16.1% at last weigh-in
Pomodoros completed each day
- Q1: ~17.6 pomodoros/day
- Q3: ???
Average number of pomodoros completed per week
- Q1: ~88.1 pomodoros/week or ~176.2 pomodoros/sprint
- Q3: ???
Midana average star ratings from Apple App Store and Google Play Store
- Q1: N/A since have not launched yet
- Q3: N/A, still have not launched
Midana profit per month
- Q1: Negative ~$53/mo at the moment. Still not profitable.
- Q3: Negative ~$53/mo. I also turned off the only part of the app that was generating revenue due to difficulty transferring money to users.
Weekly active users across all products
- Q1:
  - Midana: ~300 weekly active users, though probably better to ask how many users were active since the last lottery draw
Number of bike rides completed
- Q1: 26
- Q3: 49 (total)
Number of rejection challenges completed
- Q1: 0
- Q3: 0
Minutes of Chinese active immersion
- Q1: 725
- Q3: 725
Number of new Chinese Anki flashcards learned
- Q1: 2060 new cards for an average of 23 new cards/day
- Q3: Effectively 0 new cards/day
Number of backlogged Anki cards remaining
- Q1:
  - Chinese: 5277
  - French: 900
  - Math: 128
  - Spanish: 3771
- Q3:
  - Chinese: 7544
  - French: 397
  - Math: 128
  - Spanish: 1097

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