2016 Annual Review

January 15th, 2017 33 min read

The purpose of this annual review is for me to reflect on the year by asking these four questions:

  • What went well this year?
  • What didn't go so well this year?
  • What am I reducing or eliminating?
  • What am I working toward?

This Annual Review is for me. But I would like to share it with you. I want to grow into a more open and transparent person, so in this review, I will share the highs, the lows and all the growth and pain that comes with it.

What went well this year?

Writing: Writing used to be my most inconsistent habit. It was like the words were holding onto a railing in my mind. My mindset began to change when I started to care less about what other people would think about it or even what I would think, at least for early drafts, and just write. I stopped waiting to write when I was in the mood, as I would rationalize myself out of it. I needed to just sit my ass down and write, whether I felt like it or not. At times it felt like work, but soon my body and mind adapted and I found writers flow and streams of words would come out. I used the site 750 words to cultivate my writing habit. The site keeps track of how consistent you can write 750 words a day. There were a number of fun badges to attain while writing.

750words badges  

Back on July 9th, I reached the amazing goal of writing at least 750 words for 460 days in a row.

750words streak  

I use Grammarly as my proofreading tool. I would have LOVED to have this during my college days. If you do any sort of long-form writing online, I highly recommend it.

Grammarly also emails weekly updates of your most common grammatical mistakes.

Grammarly Weekly Update 1

Grammarly Weekly Update 2

Grammarly Weekly Update 3 Grammarly Weekly Update 4

Reading: I've met my reading goal of 65 books for the year. This makes it 3 consecutive years of reading at least 60 books.

Goodreads Challenge

Year in Books 2016

When I first started taking my reading habit seriously, I had finished with 8 books in 2010 & 2011. It was only after I left school, that I could start to better prioritize my reading. I discovered my love of reading, broadened my curiosity and built systems around reading consistently. Keeping quality over quantity when it comes to reading is important. The books that I end up reading have to go through a strict screening process and I've realized that the shorter books often don't make the cut for quality, there are some exceptions, like older time-tested books that happen to be short.

Here are two systems I've developed over time to help me build my reading habit:

Using Trello to Track and Manage your Reading

I use trello to manage my reading workflow. Using multiple trello lists allows me to read multiple books in parallel, divided by genre.

Trello Reading Workflow

The Book Purgatory List — Using Wunderlist

Organizing and curating books I've come across may read or that have been recommended to me are important to keep a good supply of quality books in the pipeline to read. I don't want to get to a point where I don't know what I'll be reading when I finish a book. It's best to have books queued up to maintain your reading momentum.

Wunderlist

Book Notes: Going into 2016 it was really important for me to work on converting my learning from consumption to sharing more of what I was learning. In March, I started publishing book notes every other week or so. I published 29 book notes in 2016 and will continue published more notes.

Books Page: In 2016 the books page crossed 100 books, currently at 139 books.

100 Books Posted

I developed a system to manage my book data, to help me gather the right info for reviews, keep track of what's on the site, which books I've made notes for, and what I won't publish on the main books page (usually highly technical books, check out the code page for that.)

book-spreadsheet-example

American Express: I'm proud and grateful I had the chance to work with such a great group of people and work on a product that is touched by millions of Amex cardmembers. I was also fortunate to work directly with three awesome dudes Jason, Nathan, and Hunter, working to rebuild the American Express Account Home experience. We all complemented each other and became a model for other teams in our department. For personal reasons, I decided to leave the company in June. Before I left, I was able to build two additional features for the company in the Shop Small section and the updated Amex Offers and Benefits, which received many positive receptions.

Amex Shop Small

Amex Offers and Benefits

On my final days at the company, I wrote and sent out 4,000 + word note of gratitude to over 50 people I had interactions with at the company. I chose to send one large email so everyone could read the positive traits I highlighted of their fellow co-workers. One co-worker who I had pointed out for excellent communication skills, had been a recent immigrant from India and said I made his day, as he has been working so hard on his English skills and hoped someone would notice. Another co-worker, had no idea the influence she had on me for me to mention her in the email for kindness and generosity and said it was the best email she received in her 10 years at the company. Telling people what makes them special can go a long way.

Directions: Friends who've been out with me, know, I'm horrible with directions, and usually just tag along like a sheep. I often arrive late to things, as I get lost on the way. I even get lost, using gps, ya'lI know...  Well, 2016, was the year, navigating the city finally clicked in my head. It turns out I wasn't paying attention.

First Time Skiing: I went skiing for the first time this year. Shout out to #teambunnyhill and Aaron for organizing. I went in expecting to fall, and that made me more open to learning. On the slopes, there were so many reminders of the art of learning, and the small steps needed to make big leaps. At the core of it, was learning and applying the fundamentals, relaxing and paying attention.

From Left to Right: Chris, Marianna, Andrei, Juvoni Skiing 2

Spending more time with my little brother Mishaun: It's easy to get caught up in the grind of life, where you feel like you don't have time to spend with family. I've been victim to this mindset, as soon as I made it into the professional world. I always felt like I had to sacrifice extra to catch up, and often times, family and friend time, were the earliest to go. I have a younger brother named Mishaun, who is seven years old now, quite the age gap. He also lives in an area, where there are not many younger kids around, and even if there were, the environment isn't safe for him to just go outside and play. These are very important foundation years for him and I wanted to make sure I was there with him to guide and show him as many awesome experiences as I could. I made a goal this year that we would both spend time together and go on one brand new experience each month. Unfortunately, my mother takes care of him herself as his father isn't a part of his life. My father wasn't there for me either and I want to be sure I can be there for Mish as his big brother.

Mish Adventures 2016

Monthly Dinners: I host a monthly dinner series called Growth, Life, Laughs, where I would bring together old and new friends to meet each other. I acted as the bridge between friends I have, who I think can make great friends with each other. I also brought together mutual friends, who potentially haven't seen each other in a while. All in all, bringing together amazing people over great food, was a positive experience and strengthened and formed new bonds between people.

Growth Life Laughs dinners

Personal Development Nerds: I've been leading, and then co-hosting with my good friend Sam, a community that meets up once a month to have healthy debates and discussions around wide areas of personal development. The group was started by Sam in the last half of 2015, and after an entrepreneurial calling inspired him to travel to Columbia, for six months, I reluctantly, at the time, offered to lead the group. A year and a half has passed, my bro Sam is back and we are leading it together. What started out as 6 dudes in the park, has grown to over 500 members in our facebook group, with strong monthly events. I am extremely proud of how the group has grown and the friendships and opportunities that have formed for many of the awesome people in the group.

PDN March

PDN December

Roommate & Best Friend Conrad: I am very fortunate to have been able to have such an awesome roommate of 2 years, Conrad, who is also one of my best friends in recent years. Our first encounter was by chance. I posted in a University forum looking for Sales candidates. Although that opportunity didn't come together, we kept in touch and a couple months later, found that we both looking to move and decided to go on a hunt together. Conrad is very strong willed, driven, works hard and is great at connecting with people. Our personalities and goals complemented each other so well, and it was great to see how much growth improved just by living together. Most of our conversations ended in amazement with how enriching they were. As our goals and living priorities evolved we decided to find separate places to help us get to the next step place, but man it's been a great couple years.

Conrad and Juvoni

Burning Man: Every so often I would hear of this thing called Burning Man. I usually try to be conscious of applying stereotypes to things, but I did notice a pattern among the friends I had who had gone or talked about it. Needless to say, I figured there would be a ton of drugs, dancing, and possible nudity. When I told some other friends I was considering going, many were shocked, some laughed it off as a joke. I get where they are coming from, I don't travel much, I don't party, I don't drink nor do drugs, I'm super regimented and like to plan and have control of my schedule. But I trust and respect the opinions of the friends I knew that went and were going. They're super passionate, smart, creative and awesome human beings.

Burning Man 1 turned out to be the highlight event of the entire year. At Burning Man, a temporary community of around 70,000 people, in groups of camps come together at the Black Rock City Desert in Nevada, in an environment of love, radical self-expression, art, music, discovery and the opportunity to create all kinds of experiences.

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Burning Man has Ten Principles that are a reflection of the community's ethos and culture and three that stand out the most to me are: Radical Self-expression, Participation, and Gifting. People are free to be who they are. Although sometimes dressed in costumes and masks, they still feel real, and you experience the essence of a person when you're out there. It's a judgment-free environment, and the wide range of art and expression are inspiring and spiritually enriching. Burners are invited to openly participate and contribute to the community. A lot of amazing things can happen when people from all over the world come together, and feel safe to participate and express themselves. Gifting was a principle that felt very core to human nature, and with thousands of people participating without monetary exchange, it was a breath of fresh air and added significantly to the Burning Man experience. There is a phrase, The Playa Provides, that embodies the serendipitous nature of good intentions and collective support of thousands of good samaritans.

I stayed at Burning Man for 9 days, in a small camp of 16 awesome people called No Boundaries. We had a lot of resourceful people in our camp to make the living situation and logistics in the desert bearable. I met so many amazing people, and am still to this day having flashbacks of many of the amazing experiences out there. I ran into 5 people I knew randomly, which is pretty insane when it's a vast desert of 70,000 people. I watched the sunrise, explored the many themed camps and danced for hours. I also biked for dozens of miles and remembered how much I enjoyed biking. Each day brought new experiences, art, and stories.

I went to Burning Man, to reset and open my mind, coming off of a very difficult period in my life. I was also curious to see how I would react out here, as I've never been to something at this scale, and I kinda just dived in head first. I reacted with awe, love, generosity, gratitude, and a reinvigorated spirit. I've already marked my calendar to go again in 2017. I published a post on my Burning Man experience through photos.

Juvoni at Burning Man

Comic Con: I decided to go to the annual New York Comic Con, which is a massive fan convention dressed as the superhero Black Panther, who was most recently brought back into the spotlight in Captain America: Civil War. I hadn't been back in three years and realized it's because it feels super commercial and is too packed. Regardless, I tried to make the best out of it and something really special happened.

Suited Up as Black Panter

The King's Ring

It's rough walking around in a packed convention center with a tight suit. You bake in your costume and a closed helmet meant sweat was getting in my eyes. As I was getting ready to leave, I heard a voice cry out "Panther! Panther! It's Black Panther". There was this little boy, looked to be around 5, with his father and he had been searching all day for his favorite hero, Black Panther and couldn't find one, they looked like they were heading home as well before they found me. He asked for photos with a beaming smile on his face, and I positioned myself to give him my coolest pose that my snug fit suit would allow. He was so happy. As I said my goodbyes, he said "Wait!" and pulled out this folded paper from his pocket and gave it to me. Opening it revealed this drawing. I immediately felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude. I could feel his joy as he looked on to see my expression, but I still had my mask on. Under it, the sweat began to mix with tears.

Black Panther Kid Gift

What didn't go so well this year?

Depression: The power of depression can wipe away your world. I thought I was safe, riding on the waves of life and success. I had forgotten this was part of the spectrum of emotions and I thought I could grind my way out of it, and then I couldn't. All these thoughts and now I would just feel. In the middle of 2016, I suffered from psychological depression. Many of the good things which I listed in this review, vanished from my mind during that period. I was close to writing off the year, and joining the '2016 sucks' crowd.

My mother told me despite the light that I give off, I've always seemed to have this subtle sadness she felt. My mother was one of the first people to detect I was going through stuff. Most of my friends didn't realize I was going through things, I've learned from my mother how to mask the sadness, as she did for many years with the burden of raising two young boys as a single mom.

I've been known to have a very strong mental fortitude, but we all have our breaking point.

My mother works in a nursing home and makes sure her patients have the best care. She often sacrifices her health, to extend the comfort and life of the elderly people she takes care off. She often has to lift up people twice her weight and has been injured because of it. She wants to leave her job, but there are not many options available. She was attacked by a patient and injured her back and shoulder and would require surgery that would put her out of work for six months, my heart sank. My younger brother (23) is also fighting battles with the law living in an environment and system designed to break young black males down.

My youngest brother, 7, has all the energy in the world. He's the standout kid, all his babysitters, and teachers either brag or complain about. In addition, to his schooling, my mother tutors him to help him stay ahead of the curve. His energy and smarts will take him far one day. Right now he's living in the Bronx, in an environment that's not open and fertile enough to help him in reaching his full potential. He often gets in trouble in school, because the work is too easy for him and when he doesn't have his mind occupied he looks for something to do, and some of these things may go against rules. My mother saw his potential and prepared him to take the New York State Gifting and Talented Exam, for exceptional students. After months of hard work and preparation, he took the test, and I heard the great news that he passed with excellent marks! Education is the key to success and progress they say, and I don't want my little brother to have to go through the same hardships my brother and I faced. A couple of days later, my mother informed me that program said that all the gift schools she selected in the area had no seats available. My little brother would have to stay in his current school until they had seats. A couple weeks later my brother was suspended from 1st grade for fighting.

The pressures of family issues and working in a job that wasn't fulfilling or technically challenging, among other things, prompted me to leave my job and take time off. With the extra time, I found myself alone with myself and many issues I've been hiding came to light. In an effort to distract myself, I turned to watching the news, something which I intentionally quit for good reasons. The first week of watching the news, a black man was shot every other day, and there was a graphic video for a number of the shootings, detailing the murders of innocent men. Immense fear drowned me. I watched as the Black Lives Matter started to take off, and soon the protesters were being assaulted like animals. I read facebook, medium, and tweets, and realized the scope of the victimization hundreds of thousands of people can feel from the loss of one at the hands of racism and broken systems. With the rise of trump, I witnessed hatred and sexism being normalized and deeply empathize with all my friends and family who would feel the effects for the coming years.

Many of these things I realize are out of my control, and a breakdown in mental habits to handle bad news turned my nature to deeply empathize into poison.

Relationships: Growing up friends of family and family members used to call me and my brother "my mother's little soldiers". Walking the streets, as little boys we would protect her as much as we could. I remember many years back hearing my mother being catcalled and trying to understand what was going on. All, I knew, was I didn't like it. As I got older, I began to understand more and even saw friends whistling at women, or strangers outwardly catcalling. There is also a culture of guy talk and braggadocious behavior about the conquest of women that I have been very opposed to. I could only imagine, what women go through on the streets. I set an intention from a very young age, to have honor, integrity and respect towards women.

When I tried online dating, while being mindful of respect, I had a lot of success in great conversations, which at one point led to five dates in a week. Although many of those didn't let into a relationship, I ended up dating someone I had previously known at the start of the year. We were very similar, and I realized I would have to compromise on things, and put extra effort into turning our shared communication weaknesses into something I could do better at. I had thanksgiving with her family the prior year and things seemed to be going well. And then she vanished.

Summer energy and romance have a certain drunkenness to it. Mix some depression into it and you have yourself intense passion that quickly dies out. I met mystery girl in a random series of events and we started dating. I met her mother, one summer weekend on the way to the beach, greeted by the infamous "Welcome to the family", followed by a quick response of "MOM!", from her. We were both going through things but were very attracted to each other, it almost seemed like we each just needed some company. She was the super chill and relax type, with Netflix recommendations for days as I would try to balance reading, with bras being thrown on my books. We learned a lot about each other, but there was a lot of change going in our lives. We planned to go to Comic Con together, the one where I'm The Black Panther. I bought tickets, for her, her brother and her friend. We had been seeing each other for four months, then she vanished. I didn't see her at Comic Con and haven't heard from her since.

The good guy in his honorable ways, had forgotten he could be the prey of others.

Years prior, I heard of this thing called ghosting 2. In 2016, I felt it. The feeling of abandonment is not a good feeling. Naturally, I would think to myself what went wrong? What could I have done differently? Is something wrong with me? I soon, came to the realization, that just because you're a good guy doesn't mean you'll be treated decently. What went on was disrespect, insecurity, lack of communication skills and lack of maturity. It took some time to realize these things, and I felt like a vulnerable blob of jello and began micro-analyzing myself for improvements. My honor was being tested and my finger hovered over Tinder as I felt the pull and temptation to get lost in lust, when all I needed was trust and care.

youtube: Novacane (Edited Version) Frank Ocean

I had lowered my standards, allowed myself to be open and vulnerable, but realized the hard way bad relationships can change good people. I do not intend to allow a damaged person to cause me to damage someone else. I will continue to be open, and have faith that my resilience allows me to be vulnerable and remember to love, respect, be honorable and be accepting of others. But I will also change a stance of mine where I used to look for someone who has potential, towards someone who has actualized potential and has room to grow. A part of me feels like I have a better chance of finding this from close female friends who I could be more open-minded about the possibility of a relationship with.

Top-Tier Interviews: When's the best time to get called by Google, Facebook & Amazon to interview? When you're going through severe depression at the same time as articles about the lack of diversity at these companies come out of course! I did feel very excited to hear from these companies all around the same time, but it was like an air bubble of happiness in a bucket of sadness. My mother had surgery and would be out of work for six months, so I couldn't push these opportunities back as I needed to help her financially. I tried to grind through, isolating myself for two months researching algorithms and practicing to get through these difficult interviews, but I think it made things worse for my mental health. Although I did ok on the interviews, ok is not enough for the high bar these companies set.

Broken Habits: Emotional and environmental stability is a crucial part in building habits consistently. Both were extremely imbalanced for me this year and many of my habits collapsed towards the end of the year.

Habitbull

Language Learning (Spanish): I was not consistent with my language learning and fell off towards the middle of the year. I spread myself too thin on a number of habits I was cultivating around the same time. I couldn't prioritize speaking Spanish and Duolingo and Memrise were good vocab builders but are supplementary and didn't work as primary learning aides.

Duolingo Memrise

Uber: I wasn't much of a taxi person before Uber came out, so I didn't really utilize Rental Car & Taxi services in my budgeting. Uber is too freaking convenient, and the lack of friction meant my spending significantly increased in this area; by 3x. Hopefully, moving to Brooklyn will help curb this area, as I can get into the city much quicker, compared to when I lived in Harlem.

Rental Car-Spending

Spending 2

youtube: Uber Everywhere song

Fitness: Around the third quarter of the year, one of my most consistent habits broke, and I found myself not working out for almost three months after working out consistently for three years straight. It's easy to rationalize myself into thinking it's good to have a break, yes breaks are good, but this wasn't intentional. I had lost myself, and I wasn't maintaining my number one destresser. Here is my Jefit data revealing the dip.

Number-of-Exercise-Chart

Session-Time-Graph

Productivity: There was a significant drop in my productivity towards the middle of the year, which impacted my overall productivity for the year. I am especially disappointed in the increase of my social media use which averaged over 1hr per day. I am most likely to overuse social media or entertainment when I'm sad or anxious and those were two very consistent feelings this year, which led to my lowest productivity score in the past 3 years. Here is my data from Rescuetime:

Productivity Pulse Update

2016

Rescuetime Productivity Score 2016

2015

Rescuetime Productivity Score 2015

Social Media Usage: Although, my social media use is below the national average for my age demographic, I didn't do a good job of curbing my use with the tools I have available. I ended up spending 1hr 30min on average per day across all social apps/sites.

Social Networking by Week

Social Networking Summary

Inconsistent with Planning and Pomodoros: Planning and Pomodoros 3 are key to my productivity and the emotional instability affected this area as well, with a significant drop off in the middle of the year as shown by Pomotodo.

Pomotodo Data

What am I reducing or eliminating?

Over the past 10 years, I have been able to eliminate and or reduce the following:

  • Alcohol (Never drank)
  • Fast Food (Significantly reduced since 2008)
  • Console Games (Stopped playing in 2009)
  • TV (Stopped watching in 2010)
  • Soda (Significantly reduced since 2010 [est.1 bottle per 3 months])
  • PC Games (Stopped playing in 2010)
  • News (Reduced consumption year by year since 2011)
  • Music (Reduced repetitive music listening, replaced with more podcasts since 2011)
  • Youtube (Reduced consumption, with blocking software since 2012)
  • Netflix (Stopped in 2014)
  • Coffee (Significantly reduced. Have not drunk coffee in 2015)
  • Article consumption (Cut article consumption in half in favor of reading more books)

Socializing/Events: I will be significantly reducing the amount of events and random hangouts I have in 2017. I'm grateful for all of the new friends I've made in the past couple years, but there's just too much going on and I have very little interest in much of it. I will be much more selective in the events I go to, people I hang out with and be more strict with time boxing activities.

Decisions that could be made ahead of time: I need to get back on my planning systems and reduce the amount of decisions I make on the fly and be more organized around planning my week and setting priorities for the day.

Clothing: I have too much clothing and I need to do something about it. I will organize a list of clothing charities and donate quarterly to reduce the amount of clothes I have.

News: I slipped up in 2016 being pulled into the news circus and found myself spending a lot of time watching the political drama unfold. I have already begun the process to unfollow all news organizations on my facebook and twitter as well as mute people in my newsfeed who mainly share negative news stories.

Youtube: My youtube consumption has increased as I find myself watching a lot more music videos, interviews and show reviews/reactions. I will work on putting the right systems in place to reduce my usage and end the context switching I go through when I work with youtube in the background.

Physical Book Purchases: Moving revealed the hassle of having so many physical books. I still enjoy reading physical books and will continue to invest in them, but I want to significantly reduce my purchase of them for the next two years and read more e-books; reserving physical book purchases in the mid-term to books I would gift, share or that have a high re-read value.

Email / Messaging: Although with no ill-intent, everyone wants a piece of your attention. I will work on disconnecting myself a bit from communication tools. Meaning I will intentionally try to be less responsive, and disable all notifications except for texts.

Communication & Scheduling Time in 2016

Rescuetime Communication & Scheduling

Social Media: The main category I will focus on reducing is facebook. I picked up on my increase in usage and have begun steps to curb my use.

  1. I have installed news feed eradicator as a chrome extension to remove my news feed.
  2. I have uninstalled the facebook app.
  3. I have set restrictions on how much I can open chrome on my phone to access facebook.
  4. I have disabled all notifications on messenger.

Facebook.com Rescutime Weekly Usuage

The drop in usage around June, reflects when I installed news feed eradicator.

Facebook Mobile App

The gap in time during March - May shows when I uninstalled the facebook app. When I installed news feed eradicator on desktop, my mobile use spiked. I uninstalled the facebook app again.

Facebook Mobile Site

There was a short spike in usage accessing facebook from the mobile website, the interface is much slower and clunky which adds friction and I end up using it less over time.

What am I working towards?

The 1,250lb combined lift: I am ramping up my weightlifting this year and aiming for a 1,250lb combined lift: squat, deadlift, bench press. My current 1 rep max are, squat: 385 lbs, bench: 275lbs, deadlift: 405lbs = 1,065 total. My target weights are: squat: 425 lbs, bench: 325 lbs, deadlift: 500 lbs. In addition, I will be attempting  9,001 pull ups in a year, to make up for missing my 5k goal last year.

Yes, 1 extra.because... Over 9000 gif

More Planning and Pomodoros: I experimented with planning less and saying yes more. There's a time and place for that, but I realize being focused on my goals and being involved in many things requires structure, which I will work on building back up.

New Job: I started a new job as a Software Engineer at Lifion, which is building the next generation of HR tools for ADP. I will be working on the team that builds the UI Engine running the platform. This is the most technically complex project I've been on and my teammates are extremely smart and great to be around.

/dev/color facilitator: /dev/color is a non-profit that provides a network, mentorship, accountability and other resources for Black Software Engineers, who have historically faced challenges being represented in the tech industry and reaching their full potential. This non-profit was formed in San Francisco, and this will be the first year of its expansion to NY, and I will be one of the NY facilitators leading a squad, providing mentorship and coordinating meetings.

Public Speaking: Towards the later half of the year, I had a number of successful talks, 3 of which led to more opportunities to speak to start out 2017. I want to do more public speaking this year, around productivity, technology, philosophy and life lessons.

Book Club: I will be organizing a book club this year, under the Personal Development Nerds group, with the help of two others, to read a wide range of books, non-fiction/fiction and to meet up once a month to discuss and provide reading support and accountability.

Reading with more intent: A large portion of my reading is in the abstract and future-oriented form. Learning about things on a high level and skills I usually don't have a need for in the near term. I will optimize my reading process to better prioritize books that solve immediate problems I'm facing or in acquiring skills directly tied to the goals I have.

Book data entry automation: I still have a lot of manual steps and data entry I have to go through to keep track of books I read and enter information for my books page. I was considering hiring a virtual assistant, and then I remembered, I'm a programmer and I can automate that shit.

Improve note-taking process: It currently takes me 40%-50% of the time I read a physical book, to go back and transcribe the notes. So an 8 hr read would take 3-4 hrs to type out, depending on how good I was at flagging sections. Blocking out that chunk of time isn't easy, and I've slipped on releasing book notes more consistently. I need to develop a better system to spread out my note taking overtime.

Mental Models Page: A mental model is an idea or concept in your mind about how something works or can be interacted with. They are the tools you use to reason and think. Studying them you can learn about flaws in your thinking and make more sound decisions. Similar to the books page, I would like to organize a collection of useful mental models.

Learning Data Science: I strongly believe, the data science profession and industry will have a huge impact in the coming years. Many of the products and services we use already utilize data science to make smarter business and future decisions. On a personal level, I use data a lot to inform my personal and professional development and it has enabled me to think more analytically. The next steps for me will be to invest 2-4 years in building my Mathematical and Statistical foundation.

Asking more questions: When I talk to people and they learn about my life, it's like I'm being interrogated. It's cool that people find me interesting, but I want to get better at exploring other people's stories instead of my own.

Feel more comfortable about my drive: Being ambitious and driven can be lonely at times. I often get asked, "So what do you actually do for fun?". I enjoy learning, growing, enriching conversations and getting shit done, that's my fun, there's more to add but that's what comes to mind right now. Still, I find myself slightly conforming to doing things I don't enjoy or toning my intensity down, although it's mostly internal. I want to be better understood, although I'm aware people's perception of me is out of my control and I am working on accepting that.

Creating "The Manual": I want to write a personal document detailing who I am at different points of time and emotional states. It will be the Juvoni Manual, containing deep insights I learn about myself, values, insights, quirks, stories, goals, and motivations. I learned a lot about myself going through depression and I've learned a lot through my successes and interactions with others. I don't want the small or big moments of my life to go unobserved, I want to know myself, so I can focus on tackling external problems out in the world. The Manual, is what I will reference in times of need when I feel lost or need to remember who I am or who I'm building.

Footnotes


  1. Burning Man is an annual gathering that takes place at Black Rock City — a temporary community erected in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The event is described as an experiment in community and art, influenced by 10 main principles, including “radical” inclusion, self-reliance and self-expression, as well as community cooperation, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy and leaving no trace.
  2. The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just "get the hint" and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. Ghosting is not specific to a certain gender and is closely related to the subject's maturity and communication skills. Many attempt to justify ghosting as a way to cease dating the ghostee without hurting their feelings, but it in fact proves the subject is thinking more of themselves, as ghosting often creates more confusion for the ghostee than if the subject kindly stated how he/she feels. - Urban Dictionary
  3. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks.
#2016 #annual review

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