New Year’s Resolutions for Naohito 2020
Money
Will I utilize my morning time more productively?
- Objective: I will follow my morning routine, which includes checking the headlines first thing in the morning, learning new things with online resources while exercising, and finishing the morning chores before work.
- Risks:
- Sleep Problems: Work stress may affect sleep quality and duration, resulting delays in my morning routine.
- Risk Mitigation: I use a 24/7 activity tracker to monitor steps, distance walked, calories burned, and sleep along with stress and recovery. Sleep tracking data helps me understand my sleep patterns and achieve healthy sleep hours.
- Time Consuming: Certain articles are more difficult and time consuming to read.
- Risk Mitigation: I will estimate the reading time on each article. If I do not have time to finish reading, save them to read later.
- Schedule Change: A change in work hours may reduce free time in the morning.
- Risk Mitigation: I will go to bed by 10pm on weeknights. If my morning routine is too packed, I will limit the number of RSS feeds to follow, shift my workouts to the evening, or drop my morning chores.
- Sleep Problems: Work stress may affect sleep quality and duration, resulting delays in my morning routine.
- Progress: My performance is measured by the time spent to catch up on my reading backlog every weekend. Ideally, I find time to clear my backlog on the same day.
Will I stick to my investing strategy regardless of how it performs?
- Objective: I will stick to my investing strategy no matter what and maintain a concentrated portfolio consisting of litigation finance assets.
- Risks:
- Binary Risk: I may have consecutive losses in my case portfolio that lead to a loss of confidence in the strategy.
- Risk Mitigation: Investing in litigation funding has been very profitable in recent years. LexShares estimates the win rate of each case to be at least 70%, which translates into the 37% annualized return. It is not easy to lose money.
- Liquidity Risk: If my remaining cases do not settle within the expected time frame, the cash flow from investing activities may not be enough to fund new deals.
- Risk Mitigation: I always prepare realistic forecasts for salaries, expenses, and investment returns to ensure that I will have enough cash to cover any obligations. A balance transfer and a personal loan may be used for unpredictable short-term expenses.
- Market Risk: A stock market crash may lead investors to rush into alternative assets. I may not be able to invest in litigation finance because of the increased competition.
- Risk Mitigation: My software tracks and monitors LexShares platform for changes. I will get notified as soon as a new investment opportunity is posted. I may make a direct investment in hedge funds if there is a great opportunity.
- Binary Risk: I may have consecutive losses in my case portfolio that lead to a loss of confidence in the strategy.
- Progress: It will be measured by the number of new investment to the asset class.
Will I stay active in investing communities?
- Objective: I will actively contribute to personal finance and investing forums, regularly publish blog posts, and manage my private investment group. I will continue tracking new deals and updating investment returns.
- Risks:
- Poor Performance: The poor investment performance may cause a loss of interest and motivation to engage in my communities.
- Risk Mitigation: Writing is a craft. It requires creativity and focus. I will prepare in advance when I have blocks of time for writing. I can also write after my motivation comes back. No pressure.
- Time Constraints: The changes in work-life balance may increase time constraints and limit the time I spend on investing communities.
- Risk Mitigation: I do not need to check everything every day to stay on top of trends. I can catch up over the weekend.
- Legal Issues: I may be asked to remove my blog content that is protected under the NDA.
- Risk Mitigation: I am being extra careful not to reveal fund details or expose confidential information. I will ask a 3rd person to proofread my writing before I rush to publish.
- Poor Performance: The poor investment performance may cause a loss of interest and motivation to engage in my communities.
- Progress: My overall activity level can be measured by the number of forum replies, blog posts and updates, and group chat messages.
Will I receive an average score for my annual performance evaluation?
- Objective: My FY20 performance rating will be “Achieved Expectations” (Base Pay: +3.5%, IPI Target: 100%, Equity $45,000). I will achieve the goal with maximum efficiency and minimum effort.
- Risks:
- Reorganization: Layoffs may occur as part of changes in the organizational structure.
- Risk Mitigation: I maintain a good relationship with people in Intuit outside of CG SRE that can help me find an internal position after a layoff.
- Management Change: A change in reporting may impact my performance rating. My new boss may hate me.
- Risk Mitigation: Follow Alfred if he moves to another team. Look for a career in cyber security in IIS or the same job outside the team.
- Employment Change: I may be forced out. Leaving Intuit means taking a pay cut.
- Risk Mitigation: My options include relocating to Los Angeles or moving into management if not getting an engineering job with Sony, ServiceNow, or Teradata.
- Reorganization: Layoffs may occur as part of changes in the organizational structure.
- Progress: I will leverage bi-weekly 1-1 meetings and monthly check-ins to ensure that my projects align with the business strategy of the organization.
Health
Will I maintain a healthy lifestyle throughout the year?
- Objective: I will maintain a healthy lifestyle throughout the year by following a healthy diet and exercise habits including portion control, intermittent fasting (time-restricted feeding), and daily workouts.
- Risks:
- Injury: It may be difficult to stay fit during time away from training due to injury.
- Risk Mitigation: I constantly rotate exercises to help prevent overuse injuries. I also use a fitness tracker to monitor activity, training, and recovery to ensure my muscles have time to fully recover from a workout.
- Burnout: I tend to lose motivation after achieving a major goal.
- Risk Mitigation:
- I leverage connected wellness devices like Withings smart scales and Polar sport watches to record my weight and workout journal, which help me to stay motivated. My commitment is a lifestyle change. I no longer chase specific goals.
- Missing Machines: If I move to a new place, I may not find my favorite cardio machines in the fitness center.
- Risk Mitigation: A mini stepper can be used for a home cardio workout. I will also consider buying my own equipment.
- Injury: It may be difficult to stay fit during time away from training due to injury.
- Progress: I check my weight and body fat % with a smart scale daily, and track all my activities with a sport watch 24/7. I also track progress by checking how my clothes fit. My employer offers a wellness program that includes a biometric health screening that measures risk factors for certain medical issues.
Interests
Will I keep learning new things this year?
- Objective: I will leverage my intrinsic motivation to learn something new every day using video streaming services and online learning. The area of interest includes communication, psychology, philosophy, economy, art, literature, history, science, and finance.
- Risks:
- Negative Events: We cannot avoid negative life events. It may be hard to get motivated when I am stuck in a negative thinking spiral.
- Risk Mitigation: I watch videos during cardio. That forces me to learn something new every day.
- Productivity Issues: I may be watching videos, but never understanding because my mind is not focused on learning.
- Risk Mitigation: I will take notes while watching videos and share my learning with family and friends. I will post a short summary on Twitter.
- Finish Videos: I may run out of learning materials if I watch videos every day. The YouTube channel may transition free users into a paid service and stop uploading free content.
- Risk Mitigation: My favorite YouTube channels upload new videos daily, and they still have a massive video backlog even though they stop uploading. There’s just no way to run out of learning contents in just 1 year. Other video sites such as edX, TED, or MentorBox can be used for learning too. I will not have problems paying for a monthly subscription.
- Negative Events: We cannot avoid negative life events. It may be hard to get motivated when I am stuck in a negative thinking spiral.
- Progress: My progress is measured by a number of videos that are marked as watched and messages I posted on Twitter.
Will I acquire a new skill this year?
- Objective: I will learn a new programming language to boost my career as a software engineer.
- Risks:
- Failed Once: I have failed to achieve this goal once. History repeats itself.
- Risk Mitigation: I will take a 3-day course to learn Golang in the middle of January. I will set up a checkpoint at the end of January to review my progress.
- Priority Conflict: Mastery may require a time commitment of about 10-20 hours a week (including work time). Multitasking doesn’t exist.
- Risk Mitigation: I will pause other activities and focus on learning when an opportunity is right for me.
- Forget: If I stop coding, chances are I will forget almost all of it. It is pointless to learn a programming language that I am not going to use.
- Risk Mitigation: I will study the programming language that lets me code immediately for the current project. I will find time to code.
- Failed Once: I have failed to achieve this goal once. History repeats itself.
- Progress: The number of lines of code can be used to measure progress.
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