2025: Year in review

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I’ve always wanted to write a “year in review” blog post, and it’s finally happening here!

Books

I read 10 books this year.

  • How to Take Smart Notes - The first book I read this year. It helped me form a note-taking habit. It not only teaches how to take notes but also how to consume knowledge. Highly recommended to anyone.
  • The Bullet Journal Method - I picked this up to learn a journaling system. It led me to develop a journaling habit this year. I read it once and re-read parts of it throughout the year to clarify and reinforce certain aspects of the process.
  • The War of Art - I discovered this via this podcast episode — I paused it midway to get the book. The book introduced me to the idea of resistance (which I discussed here) that every artist or creative individual faces.
  • Turning Pro - This is a sequel to “The War of Art.” I kept both of these books on my table for a while. Whenever I felt distracted from work, I made myself pick up and read these books instead of doing something else. That usually helped me return to work energized.
  • Self-Led - This book is about Internal Family Systems. After reading it, I’ve been observing my “self” and noticing a phenomenon called “Parts Party” (the idea of how one thing leads to another emotionally). Overall, this has made me more self-aware and conscious of how I make others feel. I’m glad I picked up this book earlier this year.
  • Dare to Win - My daughter randomly chose this book in the bookstore and gave it to me. I took it as a sign from the universe and bought the book. I like reading these kinds of books when I feel low.
  • Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier - Assorted advice on a variety of things. Loved it!
  • A Little Book of Life - Similar to the previous book, but this one is by Ruskin Bond (the author of many stories I’m reading these days to my daughter).
  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Soulful. Complete. Clear. This book calmed me down a lot. It had such a positive impact on me that I chose to gift a copy to my sister.
  • Coding Interview Patterns - I chose to read this at the start of the year to overcome my anxiety about the job market and job security. A friend recommended it to me. It’s well written and did the job of reducing my anxiety.

I also started a few more books that I couldn’t complete:

  • Four Thousand Weeks - I didn’t complete it, but it still had a great influence on me. I might re-read it from the start if I get the chance.
  • Dopamine Nation - I have been hearing to some podcasts about dopamine that has made me more mindful about how I spend my energy. I guess I ran out of dopamine to complete this book 😅 I will revisit this book only when I feel like I am misusing my dopamine.
  • The Idea Factory - This books is about the engineers who worked at Bell Labs (The birthplace of various breakthrough technologies like Transistors, UNIX, C, etc.)
  • API Security in Action - Left halfway because O’Reilly free trial ended ended - lol. But also I found what I was looking for. The thing that completed my journey here was reading through the docs of Ory Hydra.
  • PostgreSQL 14 Internals - My strategy for getting strong with Postgres is to read this book and look at what happened in the future releases of Postgres. It is kind of an intense book and demands certain level of energy.

Gadgets

I love trying out and using new gadgets. Here are some gadgets I got this year:

  • ThinkPad P16s Gen 2 – I received a laptop refresh at work. Previously, I used a Dell XPS 15 and several older ThinkPads, so it was finally time for something new. My personal (and controversial) preference is still the XPS 15 over any ThinkPad. The good thing about ThinkPads is that Ubuntu runs smoothly on them out of the box.
  • OnePlus Nord Buds 2r – I got these as a gift. I’ve always preferred wired audio devices—Apple EarPods (wired) have been my primary choice for the past five years. For some reason, I gave these wireless buds a try, and they’ve become my main audio device. I’ve overcome my “wired” obsession because wireless clearly wins in certain situations (for example, wireless is so much better than wired headphones while washing dishes).
  • Moto razr 60 – I’ve been using the Moto g82 for the past three years and have wanted to try a foldable phone. I wished for a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7, but it’s way out of my league price-wise. Hopefully, foldables will become more affordable in the future. I got my hands on the razr 60 in December, so it’s too soon to say much about it.
  • Saregama Carvaan – This is my most loved gadget of the year (picture below). It comes loaded with playlists of retro songs. You can often find me carrying this box around the house and playing tunes whenever I feel like it. My favorite playlist is “Top 300.” Overall, I think I listened to more songs on this box than on Spotify this year.

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Work

  • New title: “Staff Software Engineer” 🎉
  • This year marks half a decade with my current employer: Hasura / PromptQL and a full decade working at various startups.
  • What I have realized over these years is that, there are going to be ups and downs in every org. It is best to focus on learning and getting better and making the most out of our time.
  • The essence of my journey had been “show up, ship things, and help others ship” - I like it this way!

Finance

  • 🚗 Fixed my car loan.
  • 💲 Fixed personal loans from the past.
  • 🏦 Did decent in savings :)
  • Doing bad in investments, but it is okay for a guy who had been floating in loans from the past.

Events

I showed up at only one in-person tech event this whole year. It was at BLR Go Meetup (Jan) - I helped with getting my employer to be the venue sponsor for this meetup. One thing I loved about this meetup was that they gave the mic to everyone in the room. They have to introduce themselves to the crowd and tell what they are looking to learn out of that meetup. I shared how I discovered Go programming in BMTC (public bus transport of Bangalore) and made a whole bunch of people to laugh/smile. Reflecting back, I feel like that is one of the proudest things I have done in 2025 - putting smiles on faces :)

I did get a chance to watch the recordings of a few conferences.

Habits

Some habits that I formed this year:

  • Taking notes while reading books
  • Bullet journal
  • Drinking coffee in the morning (successfully quit this too — lol :D)
  • Drinking tea in the evening (actively in the process of quitting this)
  • Switching to warm lighting at night
  • Maintaining less than an hour of screen time per day on mobile
  • Opening my journal instead of my phone as the first thing in the morning

Note Taking

I’m proud of my note-taking journey. I blogged about my note-taking setup here earlier this year. I’ve tweaked it a bit to fit into my bullet journal, but the core principles remain the same.

All my notes end up in my Obsidian vault. To celebrate my progress, I’m going to share my knowledge graph from Obsidian. This is how it looked around the start of the year:

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And this is how it looks now:

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Journals

This was the biggest productivity experiment I ran throughout the year. I chose bullet journals as my system for journaling. I remixed and adapted a few things, but overall I’m happy with the outcomes.

One thing I missed in my process was not reflecting enough. I want to improve in that aspect.

I think the bullet journal book clearly advocates using paper notebooks for journaling (analog). I ran a micro-experiment to go all digital with the help of Obsidian. The outcome: paper wins! I still use Obsidian, but mostly for notes and sometimes as a digital scratchpad. Paper notebooks are a clear winner—they can slow down time for you!

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Mantras

Some things I needed to consciously repeat to myself — hopefully to ingrain them in my behavior:

  • Order matters: Brush, Bath, Pray, Eat.
  • Do not talk about work with my wife.
  • Overcome Resistance.
  • Attention residue is real.
  • Acquire “Specific Knowledge” every day.
  • Calm down and observe the situation. You’ll find a way forward.
  • Watch your mood, rest up, and rejuvenate.
  • Meditate multiple times a day. Life has tangled so much that one won’t cut it.
  • Drop judgments. See what could be good in any situation.

50% have become second nature to me. I am still working on the rest.

Side Projects

I tried working on two side projects this year. Both of them flopped, and I had to stop working on them.

  • gokakashi – Open source. Built with friends from work (mostly to deploy at work). Stack: Go + Postgres + Vite + React. We had to replace it with something like this. This is a story in itself with a good deal of learning (saving it for another time).
  • A small app I built for my cousin with Next.js + Postgres + Tailwind + shadcn/ui. We had to throw it away because I struggled to find time to make it useful, and my cousin went back to doing things his old way. But this was a valuable learning experience for me. I probably tried out most of the AI-assisted coding tools in the market while working on this project and formed my opinions about them.

If I have to set a goal for side projects, it would be to build something that stands the test of time.

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Overall, I feel good about all the progress I’ve made this year. I want to keep up the good work and focus on improving!