This is our yearly review for 2024. Previous editions: 2023, 2022.
Scorecard
Here is a snapshot of the last year. Lessons are in the next section.
- Reading: a handful of papers, 9 books (goal: 24 books)
- Writing: 8 posts (goal: 24 posts)
- Work
- Like last year, the focus this year was on AI. Shipped two AI productivity projects for enterprises.
- Six prototypes. 5 for AI and one for a large engineering refactoring. Did some LLM finetuning without much luck.
- Authored a few guidance documents, one got picked by office of the CTO.
- Short-circuited and closed few experiments early. Similarly, happily said no to several projects where I believed impact is not proportional to the effort.
- Decided against shifting to an ML engineering role. An architect creates and ships more 🚀
- Balanced work and life well this year. We now run a different and more holistic race ☯️
- Home
- Lab and projects
- Multiple releases this year: spekt test loggers, noted, arey and habito.
- I had big plans for arey but couldn’t do much because of other pursuits.
- Adopted AI for my vim setup with code companion and minuet.
- Moved out of Google search in favor of self-hosted SearXNG.
- Decided against pursuing Philosophy for an MA degree. Curriculum was awesome, but we have to go beyond intellectual pleasure.
- Body and mind
- 3 trips this year: beaches, mountains and 8 days road trip through some of the offbeat places in a neighboring state.
- With experience, the goals and priorities are clearer this year. Our identity happily grew beyond the little bubble of work.
- Good progress on patience and non-violence virtues.
- Philosophy practice went well with lectures and books.
- Ran some Ayurveda experiments on self. Changes are slow but positive. Will continue this.
- Spent a week on the bed due to an ailment. Its aftereffects are continuing for months now. This is a timely reminder that I’m nothing if this body fails, and I dug this hole for myself.
- Lab and projects
Lessons learned
- Large refactoring projects never work without a customer.
- How do you know something’s never going to ship? Too high a bar, no clarity on the scope and lot of bike shedding to find the right thing.
- A lot of projects ship just around the time for appraisals. Guess the reason?
- We create solutions which create more problems, and we set out to solve them. Is this is a virtuous or a vicious cycle?
- Saying no is a necessity. And you will inevitably disappoint a few people. Know the impact and go for it.
- Disillusionment is healthy. But don’t be a pessimist.
- Inertia of action is better than inertia of rest.
- Time is extremely limited.
- Open LLM models have won. Gap is small within the models in a given param range. We have seen open win the cloud, and now it is a repeat.
- Artha (remember the purusharthas) provides a sense of security. Money is one means. Good health and relationships maybe the others.
- Segregation of reading by a topic allows diving deeper and framing a concrete opinion. We did this for Philosophy, Ayurveda and Biology this year.
- What you read fuels what you think and eventually your future actions.
- A little practice in philosophy goes a long way. Don’t go by the quantity. The small exposure fills our mind with inquiries that last for days at a time, even while all the mundane activities are running.
- We need a teacher to help go beyond the words and appreciate the truth. Self-study can complement but not replace.
Year ahead
- Reading: 24 books. Papers is not an explicit goal this time.
- Writing: 24 posts.
- Work: 5 experiments, ship at least 2.
- Home
- Lab and projects
- At least 2 releases for every active project
- Body and mind
- Journal: daily with weekly reviews.
- Exercise: 3/week.
- Philosophy: practice daily.
- Lab and projects
Thanks for reading this far. Wish you a great year ahead!