Thank you to everyone who supported me throughout the year. From Elevate, to TKS, to Mannlabs, to everyone in between — a huge thanks for investing your time and energy into helping me throughout the year. I really couldn’t have worked with super smart people on crazy projects without your help.

Thank you :)

To wrap up this year...

I thought it would be cool to go over some of my highlights of 2019. This year has been the most interesting and event full so far, and it’s only going to get crazier.

TL;DRs of what I've been up to:

3 research papers published (1 accepted into IEEE so far)
10000+ lines of code written
10+ books read
50+ meetings with awesome people
15+ blog posts / articles written
150+ podcasts listened to
3 startup projects launched
5 hackathons attended
2 speaking opportunities
150km+ ran

Most important lessons

Meaning > Happiness

Happiness is short, it comes and it goes. Meaning is long lasting and fills you with excitement. I would rather wake up every day filled with excitement and meaning then feel spikes of happiness throughout the day. I also think that sometimes we’re so hard set on “solving problems” and “making a mark on the world” that we forget to enjoy the present moment and feel excited about things. I also think a lot of meaning comes from feeling a sense of belonging with a close group of people. After visiting poor countries, it’s obvious that monetary wealth doesn’t have as much impact on your level of happiness as community and belonging.

First principles thinking

Nearly all our thoughts and actions can be boiled down into fundamental truth if you reason logically through consequentiality. I got to learn a lot more about Socrates and the way he thinks by reading “Plato’s Republic”. Reasoning by analogy means reasoning from what has already happened in the past. The problem is that whatever happened in the past isn’t necessarily the optimal outcome, so if you base everything on a poor outcome instead of the objective it’s trying to achieve, you end up stalling progress. Ex: “If I asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses”.

Taking ownership

Meaning comes through adopting responsibility. When your actions have little effect, you feel empty and without meaning. When your actions drive big decisions and growth, you feel a deep sense of meaning. It’s why mothers feel their lives are very meaningful when they have kids — they adopt a large responsibility (aka a large risk) and perform the best they can. It’s also why fathers often feel a lesser sense of meaning for their children if they aren’t providing for them financially. Taking ownership of my shortcomings and seeking growth gave this year much more purpose.

Building something people want is hard

I thought based on all the startup blog posts I’ve read and talks by famous CEOs that “building something people want” would be pretty easy. It’s not. There’s a lot of ambiguity and there’s no guarantee of success. It’s really fun and exciting though, and it’s something I want to keep doing until I nail it.

Take a step back.

When there is a paper deadline in 48 hours, and you’re trying to do something with brain computer interfaces that’s never really been done before, and you’re balancing a whole lot of other work on the side, things get stressful. I learned it’s important to take a step back. To ask “why am I doing this? what is the outcome I want from this?”. I’ve done a lot of things to impress other people. To boost my ego. To make other people like me. Those things make me feel weak, and avoiding that feeling of weakness means taking a meta perspective on the actions I take and understanding the “why”.

Don’t be arrogant.

The more I talk to people, the more I realize how many smart and experienced people there are out there. My life experience is a sliver of what some people have done. The person I’m talking to will always have some knowledge that I don’t know yet, or that I don’t know that I don’t know yet. If you pay close attention, they’ll always drop knowledge on you.

Mental strength is a magnet.

There is something about having a strong capacity to persevere in the face of uncertainty / uncomfort that is inspiring and beautiful. Willingly facing danger is the only way to truly be free from social shackles.

Most important actions

Building things

I learned a lot about linux, app dev, web dev, apis, cloud infrastructure, random hardware components, and a bunch of random software things along the way. I built 2 apps, and feel much more confident in my ability to produce and figure things out.

Research

I worked in a tech research environment for the first time and co-authored my first research paper. Because it’s tech, content is relatively easy to produce so paper cycles are pretty short 1–5 weeks. I like the fast pace build-or-die type environment.

Adding value through tech

Adding value to other people makes me feel very good. Building a product that people use often and enjoy makes me feel happy and excited to keep building.

That’s a wrap. A huge thanks again to everyone who supported me this year. Happy new year! :)