Peeking into 2024

Intro

This year has truly been a year of the unexpected, but in a good way. I've planned a roughly different route than the one I took, but I'm glad that I've ended up where I am. Took some important decisions, and asked a lot of whys - that ultimately shaped my long-time vision. Grateful for everything that happened, and looking forward to the next year.

Summary

In the genesis of this year, I tried experimenting with SwiftUI, again and built few prototypes. Really liking the flow and experience, and I will definitely continue working on it, starting next year.

Brushed off my competitive-programming side and proposed two problems for a local CP contest, here and here.

Something that I'm proud about, and that also took a lot of time, was working on a maths book. Specifically a book for the Romanian high-school students, that want to get into the Babes-Bolyai University. We worked on this book for close to 7 months, and it's finally out. You can find it here. From proposing problems, to writing them in LaTeX, the solutions, verifying problems, to designing the cover, publishing it, and more - it was a long journey, but I'm glad that it's finally out.

Here's the cover design, made in Figma:

The biggest side-project that I worked on this year, was a (unreleased) Chrome extension, that I built for my own use -- it's an extension that filters specific elements from a page, selected by the user, (like a CSS selector), and then uses a local LLM to decide what to do with them.

Starting from April, we started prototyping something new, at Deta, lots of Figma concepts, and tldraws later, this became Deta Surf. Spent the summer in Berlin, which was a really wonderful experience. Moving out of my comfort zone, known-zone was very beneficial and it has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. We've released a bunch of updates and new features, and in early December we've reached v0.1.0.

The mindset shift that I've made this year, was to focus on the long-term vision, and not the short-term. The key components of life in general are (stolen from @naval):

• Fit body
• Calm mind
• House full of love
• Wealth

Doing this separation not only makes sense, but also helps you focus on the right things. You can categorize almost anything into those 4 things.

Media consumption

Click on the flashcards to discover more about my year. Now we have even more stats!

Advice

Here are some of my key learnings and takeaways from this year:

• NEVER speak negatively about yourself, not even as a joke.
• Who you are today is a set of programs: what your parents taught you, institutions you were in, relationships you had, religions you were exposed to, etc.
  • If you don't like your current self, change the programs.
• Every great idea is first just imagined. Visualize it, and then make it happen.
  • Kobe believed that every shot he took was going in.
• Before you start anything, read the map, or create your own.
  • The map you create is often better than the one you follow.
• The best growth comes from explaining complex things simply.
• Make things that solve your own problems first.
• Knowledge compounds faster than money.
• Learn to go into a default state of calmness - know what you can control, and what you cannot.
• Create more than you consume.
• Change your inputs to change your outputs.
• Diverge into more topics, thus becoming interdisciplinary.
• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

For the past years, I've been doing an interesting experiment - reviewing the next year instead of the past one. Each December, I write a review of the upcoming year (2025 in 2024), then revisit it 12 months later. What's fascinating is that around 80% of these "predictions" manifest into reality.

The key is to write these future reviews in a calm, honest state of mind. It's not about wishful thinking, but rather a deep visualization exercise where you project your genuine trajectory. This approach combines mindful visualization with realistic self-assessment, turning abstract goals into likely outcomes. The high accuracy rate suggests that our subconscious often knows our path before we consciously realize it - we just need to listen carefully.

Thanks for sticking with me this year, 2025 is going to be the best year of our lives. Trust me on this one.