2025 Recap

  • Mon, Jan 5, 2026
  • 3-minute read

Achieved

In 2025, I:

  1. Explored 13 European cities. The differences between regions are enormous.
  2. Read 11 books, covering business, finance, entrepreneurship, autobiography, and technology. Unfortunately, I didn’t read any novels, which I’ll make up for this year.
  3. Published 7 blog posts on my own blog site, but there are still many drafts lying in Notion.
  4. Participated in three hackathons, gaining a lot of joy. Won an award once, thanks to my strong teammates.
  5. Created two useful open-source tools (decktap and hugo-translator), gaining over 300 stars.
  6. Academically, I passed all my exams. I did my best and learned a lot of professional knowledge, especially in cloud computing, machine learning, and AI.
  7. In terms of personal life, I restarted working out in July, recorded 27 workout sessions—not a lot, but at least I did it. Controlled my snack intake consciously and lost 10kg over the year.
  8. Said goodbye to friends I met in France, feeling reluctant to part with them. On the bright side, I made many new friends in Finland, which is quite nice.
  9. Took Jiajia on a tour across the European continent, visiting relatives and friends, gaining experiences.
  10. Experienced working life in Finland with an internship as a Cloud Engineer at KONE.
  11. Found a suitable Thesis work position in Finland—a stroke of luck.
  12. Received an offer from ByteDance, which is the job I want to do. Hard work pays off.
  13. Trying to build a SaaS product.
  14. On the entertainment front, watched many shows and anime, including, but not limited to, Black Mirror Season 7, How to Sell Drugs Online Fast, Chainsaw Man Reze arc, Rick and Morty Season 8, The Day of the Jackal, and Try It Yourself… Additionally, rekindled my interest in League of Legends—playing late into the night with friends in a foreign land is quite fun.
  15. Underwent surgery, and it seems everything is going well, resolving a concern.

Didn’t Achieve

  1. Sticking to English practice remained challenging, and I didn’t learn many new words. It feels like I’ve even regressed compared to when I was in France.
  2. SAP certification. I felt no motivation to complete it. It doesn’t seem like a good plan.
  3. Leetcode practice problems. But do I really need to do them? My inner self tells me it’s a waste of time.
  4. Going to bed early and getting up early.

Improvements/Reflections/Insights

  1. Health and peace are more important than anything else.
  2. Keep a low profile. Hold off big moves for 2026.
  3. Stop living like a greedy algorithm.
  4. There’s no need to force myself to do things that are supposedly about persistence. Learning and accumulating knowledge happen when the opportunity arises. When it does, things will naturally fall into place.Being able to accumulate relevant experience without pain.
  5. The key to waking up early is going to bed early. I hope that by 2026, I can avoid using electronic devices after ten o’clock.
  6. I hope that by 2026 I can drink enough water every day.
  7. Opportunities are always fought for. High agency brings more opportunities.
  8. Output is a very good way to internalize knowledge. In 2026, I want to produce more content. I also hope to find a more suitable platform to share on, as having positive feedback is important.