The biggest thing that happened this year is that I handed over the reigns at CodeCombat, which has been my work baby for 12 years, in order to work on AI safety to reduce existential risk from future superintelligent AI systems. I've been doing Me Days annually for just a few months longer than that, with the first one in October 2012, and CodeCombat started in January 2013. Feels a bit unreal to be moving on, but duty calls.
Technically, this year's Me Day personal inventory should have been done on October 4, 2024. But, I apparently am bad at making time for myself, in a surprise to no one but me. I captured some of this data around October-ish, but didn't sit down to really think, reflect, and plan until two months later–the weekend before I start a new job, in a new leadership role at an AI safety research startup, Gray Swan AI.
In the world of AI, there's so much to do, and timelines are short, so this year's entry will also be a bit accelerated! Let's oh so briefly pause and reflect.
Each year in the summer or early fall, I backpack up a mountain for a couple days. Reminding myself of the recent trip helps me look up, figuratively, and ideate some mountaintop experiences for next year, and then work back from there to plan the year's training. This past year, George and I camped at Upper Wildcat Lake, the hike for which which crosses Snow Lake on the way up. My foot endurance was low–I needed to practice wearing shoes more–but it was a gorgeous trip.
This next year, we are aiming for attempting a Mount Rainier summit, which will go well beyond the hiking I'm used to and into some very aspirational levels of mountaineering. We did just Camp Muir a few years back, and that was a cardio challenge at altitude for me. A lot of training is in store for me this year to try to keep up with George and Zach to go all the way.
Third year of working out on the Tonal home gym, 245 total workouts. Got upper and lower body strength a little more balanced, but didn't do as many workouts this year and didn't make much progress (strength score 1314 -> 1341). My main limiting factor is still endurance, as measured both by my observed workout stamina during strength workouts and hiking and by measured VO2 max. That, and lower back health–I recently threw out my back sitting too much after doing a long workout with poor overhead press form. Approaching 40 and rethinking how I approach fitness–maybe there are other aspects I should balance other than seeing how much I can deadlift until failure. Yes, yes, so obvious. I'm hiring an online coach to fix blind spots in my training and help keep me honest on preventative mobility work.
Also unpleasantly, for the first time in my life, I gained some unwanted weight, going from 143 lbs to 150 lbs over the year. I think I mostly haven't been training enough, but I may need to pay some attention to nutrition–even, perhaps, eating something other than MealSquares. Lame!
Goals for next year, which I hope to achieve by setting and sticking to a more balanced training plan with the coach:
44 push-ups, +5: fast, strict, chin touching the ground.
21 pull-ups, +3: fast, no kipping, chin above bar.
This is very similar to two years ago; last year seems to be just a temporary dip. This is still without training push-ups or pull-ups, just similar moves on Tonal. I was considering starting to report Tonal deadlifts here on a recurring basis (40x200), but now I've decided this sets the wrong incentives.
I didn't take any special time to read a favorite book this year, although I really liked most of the books I did read. No 5-star books this year. I did finally give up on finishing Liu Cixin's Dark Forest trilogy in the original Chinese and read it in English–that was perhaps my favorite of the year.
Year Books Pages
2008 28 8,946
2009 18 7,244
2010 12 3,312
2011 16 6,469
2012 35 13,985
2013 33 11,760
2014 15 5,796
2015 30 18,694
2016 16 8,487
2017 17 6,824
2018 14 7,423
2019 21 13,901
2020 7 3,408
2021 3 1,538
2022 6 13,460
2023 22 17,459
2024 19 9,541
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I continue to enjoy the kids more the older they get. We did a lot more in the way of family activities, less in the reactive "take care of young kid" mode.
TODO: update this when I get results back.
The year went ok. I handled the money side according to my convictions.
(If you're me, you get to see finance stats here. Since you're not me, you see nothing.)
I had to resurrect Quantified Mind on a new domain, and it's working, but a bit buggy, so the age variable didn't capture correctly, and so automatic trendlines didn't work. Still, we can see that I didn't really see any signs of cognitive decline yet. Random new best ever score on choice reaction time, within-range scores on other tests.
Note that all these graphs have cut-off vertical axes, and in most cases very little variation compared to population variation.
Chloe really outdid herself this year with the cutest, fanciest, local-est Fliippino/Pacific Northwest fusion place in Seattle. I couldn't get enough, and then at the end of the tasting menu, they were like, who's still hungry?, brought out some extras, and then I did get enough! Generally, frequent date nights with Chloe have been fantastic this year, and the kids are no longer even acting out with the sitters.
I followed my convictions to change industries from edtech to AI safety, which was more strategic than I've been in a long time.
Planning the big summer mountain hike is a good motivating anchor for the year's fitness goals.
Getting rid of the "take a long walk" section in favor of the mountain thing.