Since 2022, I’ve been making yearly goals (some people call them New Year’s Resolutions) and they really help me stay on track with what matters most to me. My top priorities are health, money, and learning, so my goals usually fit into one of those areas.
The following are my goals for this year (2024) and I am also sharing my progress as of September.
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Education Goal #1: read 100 books
status: very green 🟢
I have finished 90 books so far. Because I was on parental leave most of August and stuck at home with the baby, I was able to finish 12 books in August alone. This leaves me with only 10 books to go for the remainder of the year.
Just like the previous years, I plan to continue reading after I complete this goal, for educational purpose.
Here are some of my favorites (not in particular order):
Parenting Without Borders
For parents who are unsure of the “correct” way to raise their children, Parenting Without Borders is an excellent book that summarizes parenting styles from different cultures around the world. The author, Christine Gross-Loh, was able to make the comparisons leveraging her own experience living in the US and Japan, visiting China, as well as citing other books (like French Kids Eat Everything).
I find the book easy and fun to read, and I have learned about different parenting styles. At the end of the day, there is no one “correct” way to raise children. To me, it comes down to personal preference and trial-and-error along the way.
I myself mostly follow the Northern European style – encourage freedom of movement, provide a calmer environment, embrace nature. The reason I choose this style is because I believe that it helps develop my son’s confidence and independence, and it will help him become successful in the future.
Status Quo Thinking Is Harming Your Health
Status Quo Thinking Is Harming Your Health was an autobiography by Dr. Sarah Hallberg. She documented her life as a physician who ran an obesity clinic, and worked on researches and trials to prove that the keto diet is effective to lower obesity. Unfortunately, despite being a very health person, she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer (which was surprising because she was not a smoker) and passed away in her 50’s.
Although the ending of the book is incredibly sad, I really like the book’s message to think outside of the box instead of thinking in status quo only. I have always been that guy with the weird ideas – alternative investments, functional medicine, anti-aging, worldschooling, baby-led weaning, libertarianism, infinite banking, to named a few – and I am proud of being different. With that, I will share one of my favorite quotes with you: “If you are doing what everybody else is doing, you will end up like everybody else.”
Fire Yourself
In Fire Yourself, Bronson Hill makes the case for syndications as the investment vehicle that brings you, the investor, an early retirement via passive income. Having been a syndication investor for a few years now, I am not new to the concept, but I find the book to be a great introduction. After reading this book, I also joined Bronson’s investment group and virtual-met Bronson himself – seems like a great guy! Maybe I will meet him in person one day since we both live in Greater LA area.
I don’t want to spoil the book here, but I want to share the 2 “secrets” that brought success to Bronson – education and networking. I feel that I am doing well in the education part with all my reading, so I need to network more. The current plan is after the baby gets older, then I will start traveling to conferences to meet my fellow investors.
Get Your Assets to Work
Get Your Assets to Work is another good investment book that is easy to read (notice that I keep emphasizing this – I have read a lot of investment books that are more complex. Too complex). Through the author’s own experience, I learned a couple new things including how to read my K-1s (the tax form) and how to calculate equity %. I recommend giving this a read.
Outliers
Outliers was a fun read. Malcolm Gladwell studied what made certain people successful and not others, and basically it has to do with timing (or opportunities) – being at the right time at the right time, so to speak – and a lot of practice. As an example from the book, Bill Gates and many big tech company founders were born around 1955, and that was the perfect age (to understand why, read the book!). Gates himself was extra blessed because he was able to access computers through his environment and connections as a teenager at the time when most universities don’t even have computers on campus! This access gave Gates and friends a lot of practice on the machines, allowing them to become successful later on. On the other hand, Chris Langan has an IQ of 195, even higher than Einstein, but because he was not nurtured, he ended up not contributing anything meaningful to this world despite being a “genius”.
This book allowed me to do a self-reflection. I can say that I am fairly blessed – despite making tons of mistakes and not being successful until I was close to 30, I have a great and flexible job, a supportive family, a Master’s degree, and a viable path to financial independence. I was able to be where I am now because of a series of unique opportunities and circumstances, and I am grateful for them. But that’s another story for another time.
Wealth Goal #1: invested in 3 syndication deals
status: green 🟢
If you are not familiar with syndications, think of them like crowd-funded (mostly real estate) projects with the contribution from multiple investors. It’s not the same as REIT.
I started investing in syndication deals since 2022 so this is my 3rd year. None of my deals have completed yet because on average, they last 5-7 years, so I don’t have any significant returns to show besides the still-very-small passive income that I get every quarter.
Because each deal takes a substantial amount to invest ($50k minimum), I have been doing 3 deals each year, and this year is no exception. In other words, if I complete this goal, then I would have 9 syndication deals total – a good start.
I have invested in 2 syndications before May this year. Since then, I stopped investing and instead waited for my bank account to replenish. I also started networking by joining more investment groups (like Bronson Hill’s group, as I have mentioned previously), so right now I am ready to complete my next investment, probably sometime this month or next month.
Other goals
The following goals were completed earlier this year:
- ✅ create a blog. You are reading it right now!
- ✅ get 4 tech industry certifications. These are all from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- ✅ 140 pounds in the morning, empty stomach. I started at 132 pounds and am now around 140 pounds.
The following goals have been abandoned:
- ❌ achieve 100 e-printable sales – I took an e-printable course from Gold City Ventures to learn how to sell e-printables on Etsy. The content of the course is excellent and I learned a lot, but I don’t have time to work on this right now.
- ❌ finish LLMOps and MLOps specializations on Coursera – I don’t have the motivation to finish the specializations. However, I found the LLMOps class Introduction to Generative AI very useful to understand how large language model works and they also taught me more prompt engineering techniques. I would recommend at least taking these classes for prompt engineering alone.
- ❌ go through the bullworker muscle-up program – I worked on it for a week, but it was hard to find work out time while taking care of baby Boba Money, so I removed it as a goal. I want to come back to it though when the baby gets older.
Thank you for reading. If you are also working on some goals, how are you progressing? If you don’t have any goals, I would highly recommend setting some goals so that you can continue to push yourself to where you want to be in life.