Always set goals, and always measure them. Here is a list of things I’ve done in the year of 2016.

Reading

I managed to read 26 books this year, that’s exactly 1 book every 2 weeks. I was hoping I could read more but there were too many things to work on at First Code Academy. My secret is carrying my Kindle everywhere with me when I know I will be waiting, flying, or having no Internet. I did not really have a theme for the year, I would say towards the end of the year, it became more focused on Leadership and Personal Growth.

• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

• Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

• How I Lost 170 Million Dollars: My Time as #30 at Facebook

• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel

• When Breath Becomes Air

• How to Lie With Statistics

• Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People

• Delivering Happiness

• The Internet is My Religion

• Tribal Leadership

• I Love You More Than My Dog

• Shoe Dog

• Augmented Age

• High Output Management (yet to finish)

• Building Great Software Engineering Teams

• Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

• Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)

• Mindset (paused)

• The Course of Love

• Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup

• Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most (stopped, not interesting)

• Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow

• Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind

• The Amazon Way

• How Google Works

• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Traveling

Compared with a lot of jetsetters out there, I don’t think the list is even worth sharing. Anyway, I would like to travel more with purpose, say running an overseas half marathon.

• Cape Town & Johannesburg, South Africa

• Bangkok, Thailand

• Bangkok, Thailand

• Rhode Island and Maine, USA

• Phuket, Thailand

• San Francisco, USA

• Singapore

• Siem Reap, Cambodia

• Bali, Indonesia

Blogging

Including this post, I wrote 5 blog posts this year, far from my initial plan to get 12 blog posts out the door. Definitely something to work on in 2017.

• 7 Books to Read in 2016

• 7 Life Mottos I Live By

• How We Define Our Company Culture at First Code Academy

• You Have Been Finding Jobs The Wrong Way

• 2016 Year in Review

Public Speaking

I set myself a goal to take on the challenge of speaking in public this year. It just so happened that WHub was hosting an event about “working at a startup” and they invited me to be a panelist. It was my first ever public speaking gig and I was excited to share my startup experience with the audience.

Running

After my 1st half marathon in 2014 in Singapore, I told myself that the next one would not be coming soon. 2 years later, I figured I needed some new challenges in my life, and so instead of joining another half marathon, I joined 2. With a training plan in mind, I ran regularly throughout the year and achieved a personal best of 2h4m at the Angkor Wat Half Marathon, 4m behind my target yet still a major improvement. I’m thinking of signing up for more half marathons in 2017, anyone?

• HKDRC Half Marathon - 2016 Oct

• Angkor Wat Half Marathon - 2016 Dec

‍