I have been sitting on this for the past week, having written the bulk of it and then fell into the limbo that are the days between Christmas and New Years Eve. It usually doesn’t take long for the drafts of these retrospectives to reach the 10000+ word range because involves turning the microscope on all the major aspects of my life: noting the highlights, lowlights, and lessons learned. This year was no different. On the other hand, the year was pivotal in such a holistic way that I can anticipate looking back on my life years from now and referring to things as being pre- and post- 2020.
In reflecting on my year, I realized that there were 3 core things that made a profound impact on everything else I did and was involved in. They were:
Introspection
Writing
Communities
An introspective year
For the first few months, I was glued to pandemic stats and the sentiment on social media as everyone was trying to come to grips with what was happening. This quickly became overwhelming to keep up with because it felt like all most of us could do was observe the situation and not make it worse, without being able to help in any significant way.
So I retreated. Not just in the sense of quarantining, but turning inwards instead of exclusively looking externally to see what I could do. The year turned out to be very inward-focused for me and I'm glad that I had made this pivot early on because it gave me ample time to develop habits and attitudes that I can bring into 2021 and beyond. One of which being a daily meditation practice.
I rediscovered meditation in a profound way this year. For the first time, I explored the practice outside of the religious context, which gave me more flexibility to experiment with different techniques and figure out what worked best for me. Despite my studies into stoicism, I hadn't taken the time to internalize attitudes that kept my inner state in check. So I started doing 30-minute meditations every morning, and gradually increased this to 60-minutes. I’m deeply pleased with the impact that meditation had on my life. Not only is it a great way to start the day, it has made me less reactive to whatever situation came up. From my reflections on meditation:
Meditation is not an escape from reality, but a tool to help us live in it. Every thought, every emotion, and every physical sensation is an opportunity to practice. The majority of the time, you won’t experience the outcomes of meditation during the 5 or 60-minute sit. The benefits manifest themselves in how present and engaged you are in conversations, how observant you are of your surroundings, how you react when someone cuts you off in traffic. The summation of these little things is how meditation “transforms” you. The summation of these little things is life itself.
I also started journaling again: once in the morning, and again before bed. I use a simple daily template on Roam and use block references for the prompts (more detail here). The idea was to combine gratitude journaling, bullet journaling, and day planning all into one workflow. At this point, I have no idea how I ever got anything done without writing everything down at the beginning of each day. And Roam has become an indispensable tool for both my personal and professional work.
In 2018, I completed the self-authoring program and discovered just how effective writing is as a tool to learn about yourself and improve self-awareness, especially if you are writing under a framework that works for you. Last year, I only did retrospectives every few months and found this feedback cycle to be too long. So I looked to develop a habit that allows me to surface hidden opportunities and constraints more frequently.
In addition to daily journaling, I also did weekly retrospectives using the Plus Minus Next method. You can also see this under “Night Pages” in the screenshot above. This is a simple framework in which you list what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what to do on next. The last portion is a game changer because it made me think of actionable next steps as opposed to just rehashing the day or week.
I continued to do quarterly reviews. The 3-month time frame helped surfaced patterns like time on social media, sleep patterns, social life, my relationship with technology, community involvement, and general progress towards goals. These operate at the scope that isn’t easy to evaluate with daily or weekly journaling. Doing retrospectives for different time scales is like changing the lens on a microscope: some are for zooming in on the details, others for seeing higher-level patterns. I found that daily, weekly, and quarterly journaling complement each other well.
Writing
One of my goals this year was to publish more often. I was already writing a lot - from work-related notes, to nuggets from articles and podcasts, to journaling - but I wasn’t shipping enough. I wanted to be more confident in sharing my own opinions instead of passively taking in whatever the public sentiment was. So I experimented with more subjective articles instead of sticking to the purely educational or technical content. I shared things from my thoughts during quarantine to my favorite NFT projects. The best part about learning in public is the chance to meet people who resonate with the ideas and being able to continue the conversation with them.
In October, I was lucky to join the On Deck community in their inaugural Writers Fellowship program. Ever in the introspective mood, I wanted to write to explore how we can cultivate more inner stillness. The result of this was Samadhi City - a newsletter based on the thesis that you can develop a sense of inner stillness even in the chaos of everyday life. Without waiting for a meditation retreat, taking expensive courses, or going on vacation to “escape”. So far, I’ve written about self-authoring, meditation, and how to craft your path of least resistance. I’ve been sharing the articles with specific individuals instead of doing a big push on my social media. But now that the series has been seeded, I’ll be making a bigger effort to build an audience for this type of content.
On Deck hosts multiple fireside chats weekly on writing related topics for ODW Fellows
On Deck also gave me an opportunity to conduct peer reviews for fellow authors. Much of the cohort already had an existing newsletter or audience. Their content covered anything from investing, marketing, and productivity, to parenting, mindfulness, and food. These peer-editing exercises taught me to look at my own writing with a critical eye and pay attention to the technicalities of the craft in addition to its creative aspects. Having a community of peers to review each others’ work has been immensely valuable, and I’m excited to continue honing my craft with the group moving forward.
finding solace in Community
The crypto industry made great strides this year, both in terms of the quality of emerging projects as well as the incoming technical and creative talents. Blockchain and web3 is showing promising signs of its ability to reshape the relationship between creators and their communities. While I’ll save industry commentary for another post, here are some reasons on why 2020 has so far been the most exciting year for me as a participant in this ecosystem.
Firstly, it’s not whitepapers and promises anymore. In 2017, it was impossible to keep up with the coins that were debuting every week. This year, I could hardly keep pace with the products that were launching and available to try out. Though most are still in beta and understood by an enthusiastic few, these teams are pushing the envelope in enhancing the ecosystem from many standpoints, whether it be usability, scalability, fun, inclusivity, privacy, or security. The cherry on top was that thanks to Gitcoin Grants, I also had the opportunity to support my favorite individual contributors and teams to help them keep doing what they’re doing.
I joined a few DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) which ended up really shaping my year. The first of which is Meta Gamma Delta, which started off as a meme “sorority” to get individuals together to support and fund women-led projects in web3. What began as an introductory call with strangers with an idea became weekly, purposeful catchups with a community of friends I look forward to seeing every week. We went on to host public knowledge-sharing sessions, and did grassroots-fundraising from the community to eventually be able to give $25k in grants to three amazing projects.
Meta Gamma Delta End of Year meetup
I am very grateful to have served as a mentor for Consensys Academy again this year. I took part in their blockchain developer bootcamp last July, and have them to thank for the solid foundation that I have as an Ethereum developer today. Because of the program, I was able to build out the MVP for Last of Ours and got my first freelancing gig as a smart contract engineer (thanks to someone I met through Meta Gamma Delta DAO). I loved this opportunity to be able to come back and pay it forward - and the reciprocal, small-world feeling that the ecosystem has despite the industry’s accelerated growth this year.
So despite all the looking inward and self-work, my 2020 was very much shaped by the communities I had come to be a part of. If I had to summarize the most important thing I learned this year, it would be that I am ultimately a product of my relationships, and so the introspection and efforts to keep inner state in check serves to ensure that these relationships remain healthy and balanced.
Introspection helped me pin down the ways I wanted to contribute value and grow. Since I had to spend more time online anyway, I took this opportunity to be more intentional with how I wanted to grow and who I sought to grow with. This created a great signal-to-noise ratio for the people I met and content I consumed this year. That being said, I really miss seeing people without having to be separated by a screen. Despite the impressive developments in conferencing platforms this year, we still have a long way to go in figuring out the how to design online interactive experiences that makes more natural and less… rectangular. Even when VR hangouts become as ubiquitous as Zoom, it won’t be the same as actually being in the same room with people. So let’s hope 2021 with its vaccines and new norms paves the way for us to be together again off-screen.
To round it off, here are some miscellaneous things from my life in 2020
Photo I took
My parents checking out the view at dusk in Northern Thailand
made some art
It’s no Seth Rogen pottery but it’s the most artistic thing I’ve done for a while
Books I will continue to think about for a long time
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Exhalation - Ted Chiang
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (review)
Autobiography of a Yogi - Yogananda Paramhansa (review)
A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Albums on repeat
Superclean, Vol. II - The Marias (2018)
Telefone - Noname (2016)
things that happen at day // things that happen at night - Milo (2013)
Lucid - Raveena (2019)
Es War Einmal Indianerland OST - Acid Pauli (2017)
Man on the Moon III: The Chosen - Kid Cudi (2020)
Covers - Marika Hackman (2020)
Bella Donna - Stevie Nicks (1981)
The New Abnormal - The Strokes (2020)
BOY - RAC (2020)
Shows
The Midnight Gospel
Dark
The Crown
When They See Us
Don’t Fuck with Cats
Happy Holidays and I hope everyone is staying safe and sane. See you in 2021 🙏🏼