2022 Retrospective
Based on the number of great conversations I had after posting about the books I read in 2021, I was compelled to write a more general retrospective for this year in an effort to garner similar conversations that led to some great suggestions. 2022 has been an incredibly productive and rewarding year and I figured the way I would highlight this is by going over 3 things that worked well, 3 things that I will work on next year and top 7 achievements.
The 3 Things That Worked Well For Me
1. The Japanese Philosophy of Kaizen: "Think Small Thoughts, Take Small Actions, and Solve Small Problems” in an effort to constantly improve. Where Kaizen has specifically helped me is taking the first step of a new problem or experience as overthinking problems leads to not making progress.
2. Stillness in the form of Meditation and Daily Walks: Meditation and daily walks give my mind a break; it is within these moments of stillness is where my best ideas or solutions to problems that I have stuck with evince themselves.
3. Deep Work: Uninterrupted and distraction free focused effort to get things done has worked very well!
The 3 Things I Will Work On Next Year
1. Taking a Step Back from Problems: There are times when I get overtly engrossed in finding the solution and without realizing it, I reach a point of diminishing returns. Next year, I plan to get better at identifying these instances by timeboxing tasks and prevent a drop in productivity and prevent burn-out.
2. Meditating More Consistently: My main goal to meditation 2x a day and to reduce inconsistency by tracking and not breaking my streak regardless of how busy I am.
3. Traveling More: Traveling and meeting new people along with observing how others live and solve problems has always been an enriching experience and I plan to do more of it.
My Top 7 Achievements
1. I moved to the .NET Runtime time at Microsoft where I specialize in developing the .NET Garbage Collector that facilitates automatic memory management. I am now working for my hero since I started programming in the .NET world.
2. I was promoted within <6 months of joining my new team.
3. Traveled to 15 cities in 15 days - most of them in Northern Italy and Munich.
4. Continued to learn Italian - currently at a streak of 750 days and learnt close to a 1000 words.
5. Recorded more music one of which was instrumental in raising >$8,000 for displaced Ukrainian families:
6. Implemented a performance centric version of the Bayesian Optimization algorithm in F#: bit.ly/3WNZO7Z
7. Read 10 research papers and 20 books this year and here are my top 5:
1. One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way - Robert Maurer
2. Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence - Daniel Goleman
3. Leonardo Da Vinci - Walter Issacson
4. Lessons From History - Will and Ariel Durant
5. Domain Modeling Made Functional - Scott Wlaschin