Year of Learning

First of all I am grateful that I am still able to pursuit my goals. I am still the immature son of my wonderful parents and aging grandparents. I am still the talk big do small brother of my careful brother. For that I am very grateful to have them with me.

2015 I failed. I am still the rich-wannabe boyfriend of my girlfriend. I am still the dreamer among my friends, the yet-to-be-proven “startup” guy. One of the first thing to confess is that I am really a bad friend this year. I am out of my mind where bonding with close friends. I hope they won’t mind and I am going to fix that this year. I will be the lunatic that won’t care if you find the joke funny or not, and won’t stop to bore you with my life.

Another confession is I am not really “get” it in the startup world. I am more used to chasing metrics. Scientific training is not in my blood. Startup pre product market fit should focus on experimentation on basic assumption instead of execution, which I failed miserably. This is my biggest learning in 2015.

The third regret is that I managed Javascript course with CityU App Lab badly. I should put more time to prepare the materials and enable my teammates to help out by specifying smaller tasks. I am really not capable in terms of energy to drive 2 initiatives. This is my failure and I have to take full responsibility.

But failure is also the most efficient learning process. All my learning this year mainly focus on myself and running a company. It is an excruciating process. Luckily I am a guy that can sleep easily, so no sleepless night for me. Understanding that Gilbert Wat is (still) a passionate, humane, opinionated and thoughtful technologist should be an anchor for my adventure in 2016.

One of the highlight, apart from being one of the founding engineer of my workplace, must be the trip to United States. Attending the wedding of my best pal Edwin brought me a whole new perspective on American dreams and marriage. Thanks Ed! Experiences in the Death Valley (I didn’t hear Obiwan calling sorry) and Yosemite have cleared my mind. I connect to the nature more than ever. This unintentionally connect me and my mother more and now we share the joy of nature.

Looking forward, I will be in ideation stage in the first week of 2016. I am setting up some frameworks to do virtually anything related to my career.

• Time-boxing: 8 work hours per day is my maximum. I will be the most efficient me in my work. (FOCUS)
• For experimental things: I will set up a hypothesis, a procedure and a success / fail metric within a certain period of time.
• For professional things: Metrics, measurements and continuous improvement. Setting goal for me in this stage is a bit tricky. So, first goal of this year: figure out what to do in 2016!

Happy new year!