A year for a 5-year-old is one fifth (or 20%) of their life so far, but a year to a 50-year-old is one fiftieth of their life (or 2% of it), so it seems to pass ten times faster. If you are 33, a year is 3% of your life so far, so time passes almost seven times faster than it did when you were five. Time for an 80-year-old passes almost in the blink of an eye, sixteen times faster than it does for a 5-year-old.

Every December I look forward to writing about the year in retrospect. I spend some time collecting how the year went, going through what I have written, and then I just try to compile it as fast as possible. The more you try to refine it, the more you lose the essence of your speech. So I am gonna jump into it. It is gonna get a bit philosophical, so feel free to quit if something feels too cringy, I get it.

Wrote more

Last year, I wrote a total of 6 blogs. This year I went beyond that and wrote 15. What changed from last year to this is the intent. Last year I was trying to force myself to write more, but this year I felt like I wanted to write. Of course, I had to sit down and do the work, but the motivation felt internal.

The funny thing with writing is that you always think you have nothing impressive to say. You always look up to people and think to yourself that you do not have anything as interesting as that to say. What we often forget is that someone out there might find what we write meaningful.

Sharing ideas is how you get to refine them, sharing insights is how you can learn more, sharing what you have learned is how you can help someone else learn. Just take the leap.

Reading

I used to read a lot when I was young, but ever since college this habit faded. I went from reading multi series fiction to not being able to complete 100 pages in a year. But this year I tried to change that. Instead of keeping my books on a shelf somewhere, I bought a small side desk just to keep my books within reach, and I also made sure to buy a book out of my wishlist every 2 months. This way I would always see them and at least that would help me read them. And it worked out well.

Here are some books that I read this year worth mentioning:

• Let’s Talk Money
• Psycho Cybernetics
• Man’s Search for Meaning

If you can read one out of these, I would recommend going with Psycho Cybernetics. It confirmed what I saw in athletes and people who perform at the highest levels. Just buy it, especially if you are in your 20s. Trust me.

Life is better when you are building something

Life is better when you're building something. It gives you purpose and meaning. It fills your days up. It gives you a level of excitement about the future. It often connects you with other like-minded people. If you're lost, start building something. A business, your body, your career. You might find that most of your problems are solved just by focusing on something that's worthy of your attention.

I cannot recall where I heard this quote from to credit it, but it is true. I have been noticing this around me for some time now. For example, I have been noticing this with my grandfather. He always has a project going on. This could be planting a new set of vegetables, renovating a corner of the house, building new kitchen storage, or ploughing somewhere in the field. Something that takes a lot of effort and commitment. Something that is rewarding but only in the long term. I noticed the same thing in everyone around me, especially the previous generations. And the surprising thing is that I notice it less in the current and upcoming generations. This might be a result of boredom. Their generation gets bored pretty easily, and I’m starting to realise that this was by design.

Have something that you are building, working on, something that rewards long term commitment. This could be anything from building a better physique, building a business, working on a hobby, or even curating a community. It could be anything, but have something that does not give away instant gratification. I think this is very important. And if you don’t know what to start with, the simplest step is to allow yourself to get bored.

Being bored is something that I was intentionally trying to do. While waiting for a bus or waiting in a queue or in any situation where I would usually pull my phone out, I tried not to reach for my phone. I tried just to exist. I tried to get bored more. And it feels rewarding in a way. It feels like your brain got a breath of fresh air. My head felt so clear and vivid. Try it.

Further reading if this resonates: Die Empty by Derek Sivers

Being behind in life

I turned 26 this year, and it hit me differently than I expected. I get now why age matters to people, not in a dramatic way, but in a way that makes you look at your time a little more carefully. I used to see age as something distant and abstract, but now it feels like a reminder that life keeps moving no matter what.

This is when I started to get the feeling of being behind in life. I do not know if you have felt this. But if you have, then hear me out. What does being behind really mean? How does that even make sense? The present is all that exists, but we talk like we knew what was gonna happen and now say that we are behind?

This is something that our education system planted in us. It taught us to compare and compete. It trained us to fear falling behind. It tried to make us stand out when we tried to stand out, and it told us that life is a zero sum game. And we still carry the burden that we should have left when we left school or college. In the real world, it is not zero sum. Someone else winning does not mean we lost. This feeling of being behind should not exist in the first place. Take it at your own pace. Give yourself room to be inspired by other people.

So instead of comparing on shallow terms, I try to figure out what every step means to me in the grand scheme of things. I am writing this down mostly to remind my future self, because this is the kind of thought that is easy to forget when you get caught up in the noise.

Embracing AI

AI got crazy good this year. I still remember the first time I asked AI to build me a web app for visualizing some data. I was awed at how good it did with just a one liner prompt. Crazy.

I was trying to figure out how all I can use AI, and I found some interesting use cases for it.

• I asked for cooking advise.
• I asked it to track my macros based on just giving a one line of what I ate.
• I asked AI to guide me on improving my form when lifting weights. (Do this at your own discretion. If you do not know anything about lifting weights, do not do this. Get a trainer.)
• I asked AI to find blind spots and unknown unknowns in my thinking.

We should be glad that we live in the same era as all these technical advancements.

Being intentional

Similar to the being bored approach that I mentioned, this year I tried to be more intentional about my time. I made sure to do things that were intentional. Spending 3 hours arguing and laughing with your friends is time well spent, but 3 hours doomscrolling is not.

Photowalks

I took out my camera a lot more this year. I went on a lot of photowalks. And the more solo photowalks that I did, the more I started to appreciate going out with someone else.

You take your camera out and then you realize that for the next 2 to 3 hours your only job is to observe. I cannot express how meditative that feels. You are just existing without judging anything around you.

Another challenge I set for myself was to shoot only at F11. This forced me to think about compositions instead of just chasing aesthetics. It meant I had to shoot a lot of lousy images, but it feels extremely rewarding when you end up clicking something you like.

Poker

This year we bought a poker set at our place. What started with just 4 people quickly grew into a whole round table of people. I love poker. There is this insane feeling that even if you are handed a bad hand, you have the opportunity to make the most out of it. It reminds you that "life comes from you, not at you". I do not know, maybe that is all too philosophical. But knowing that you can change the outcome regardless of how lucky or fortunate you are is empowering.

2026 and beyond

I am not entirely sure what to write here. Knowing that there are more books than you can ever read, more people than you can ever meet, and more ideas than you could possibly imagine makes it interesting.

Mood board

This is probably my favorite quote of the year, mainly because of how vulnerable it sounds. Everyone tries to be effortless, to act as if they are not even trying. But from what I have observed throughout my life, people who go on to do great things actually try really hard.

I am not talking about big things like winning Oscars or Olympic medals. I am talking about people who are great at what they do, whether it is work, art, or anything else. They put in a lot of work behind the scenes. We often see what they become, but we rarely get any insight into how they became.

What you need to realize is that everyone who becomes good at something tries really hard at it. And that is not a bad thing.

Trying hard is cool again.