I’ve been tracking “decade goals” since 2022. They sit in a few broad buckets: self, family, finances, quality of life, and career. This is the first time I’m publishing them.
2025 Goals In Review
✅ One Pull Up
Not pretty, you could argue (like my son does) that it’s not a full pull up – I’m counting it.
✅ Read 6 ‘entertaining’ books, and 6 ‘learning’ books
Finished 19 books total. The learning / professional books were:
- Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
- AI Engineering by Chip Huyen
- Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
- The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner
- Building a Large Language Model from Scratch by Sebastian Raschka
If I stretch the definition of ‘read’ : I re-read some essays from Mythical Man Month that’s 6.
For the ‘entertaining’ books I won’t list them (although I’m trying to track on GoodReads) I do want to mention by big unlock was my local library. Having both a way to get the books for free and a built in time limit was a good forcing function.
✅ Nightly Cards with my Spouse
Usually using Trickster as we sit together. We try and get the kids to play sometimes were a successful. One of the easiest habits to keep.
⚠️ Continued Family Meetings
Call this 50% complete. They happened but they drifted. Purpose is to talk schedule and what we want to get out of the coming week. Needs tightening.
⚠️ Vacations!
Call this 50% complete as well. They happened and they were fun/relaxing/needed just not as intentional as would have hoped. Did get to go skiing and to the beach. Keep saying “Asia next year”
⏳ Working with kids on time and money management
Hard to say done/not done with this, it’s ongoing.
✅ Continued Swim/Bike/Run (+Strength)
Fairly consistent year keeping up with exercise. Not as much strength training as would have liked, did add some flexibility and improved on from last year.
- Finished Sprint Triathlon (beating my 2024 time AND no walking on the run leg)
- Got a faster time in Turkey Trot 5k
✅ Figure out 2025 Career
My note at the beginning of the year was “2025 is going to be a weird time in tech” and I think that was largely true. With LLM adoption/hype everywhere plus lingering effects of over hiring during the pandemic/end of ZIRP it was (is?) a weird time to be in tech. My strategy was to work with smart people companies, and build on this new technology. I’ll say it worked.
❌ Do a “Thinky” thing
Besides some minor blog work and a project to summarize arivx digests emails didn’t do much to point to hear.
Decade Goals (Status)
✅ Career Optionality by 50
This doesn’t mean switching careers, just being able to. Financially and network-wise, things are moving in the right direction. College costs remain the biggest variable.
🚧 College Funding
Goal is to cover in-state tuition. Getting there. Beyond that, scholarships, work, and tradeoffs are part of the plan.
🚧 Read one non-fiction book a week
Getting there, I’m at one a month now (some of my entertaining book were non-fiction)
⏳ Raising Functional Humans
Still the underlying goal: productive, happy, decent people.
❌ Be ‘known’ for bread baking
Dropped. As I’ve cut carbs, the bread went to waste and life got busy to make it on a consistent schedule
🚧 Health-Span
Ongoing by definition. Physical and mental.
2026 Goals
Reading
20 books total, at least 6 “learning/professional”.
- Learning books (tentative):
12 academic papers (combination of new + seminal)
Fitness / Health
- Drink Herbal Tea – especially in the afternoon instead of caffeine
- Sub-30-minute 5K (ambitious, maybe doable)
- Attempt a half marathon
- Bike to Philadelphia from my house in the suburbs (~20 miles)
- Complete 250 Triathlon Units Inspired by people tracking yearly mileage.
Definitions:- 750-yard swim = 1 unit
- 5K run = 1 unit
- 10-mile bike = 1 unit
- 10,000 Push-Ups (if I start at 5 a day, then every week add 1 per day, will end the year at 5 sets of 10 and a cumulative of 11k pushups) – this is the big stretch goal
Career
New full time job next year – goal to stay and grow with that company until I am ready for career ‘pivot’ while still having a side advisory work continue. For 2026, the target is simple: if I can make ~$20k in consulting on top of salary, that’s a good place to be.
Learning
Complete a home automation / Local LLM project. Probably utilizing a Jetson Nano to host a local LLM and be the controller for the home automation sensors, cameras, etc.
Reasons for taking this one are two fold. First is my interest in small/local LLMs. I think the big models will always be part of the equation, however the edge is where there is still some interesting things to unlock.
Second is the Google’s handling of the Nest ecosystem is essentially forcing me to upgrade all my devices so why would I buy into that ecosystem again? Much rather my own setup.
Kids / Family / House
- Visit 3–4 schools.
- One screen-free day per week
- More structured family reading time
- Asia Trip
- I’ve got 2 house projects to tackle (Garage and Basement)
The “Dumb” Goal
Finish Baldur’s Gate 3. Video games keep getting deprioritized; I’d like to actually finish one.
End of year reflections + next year goals aren’t new for me; what’s new is making it public (which maybe counts as my “thinky” output for 2025…). I’ll likely miss things and adjust as the year goes on. If any of this resonates share!