My 2024 Annual Review: On the Shortness of Life

This year, I lost my aunt, which prompted me to think about how I want to spend my precious life. Here's my 2024 review and plans for 2025 and beyond.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in headless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it. — Seneca

This year, I lost my aunt. She was like a mother to me. I spent the last three months in hospitals, in her home, and in grief.

Since 2018, I have put Seneca’s meditation at the top of my annual planning documents to remind myself of the shortness of life. But I never internalized it. As I sat beside my aunt at the hospital in her final days, reflecting on how suddenly she deteriorated, the hard truth finally sunk in. Life is short. And I wasted a lot of it.

When I was grieving, my wife, wanting to shake me out of my despondent state and help me move on in life, said, “For what you know, I could die tomorrow.” As an emergency doctor, she has seen a 6-day-old baby become unresponsive from choking on milk, a 10-year-old die from drowning, a fit 31-year-old with a giant tumor in his liver, and a first-timer mum lose her kid after just seven weeks of pregnancy, among many more tragic cases. When she said that, she wasn’t pointing out to me that life could be unexpectedly short. That, I already knew, painfully. She was reminding me that I still have people I love around me and I should cherish our time together.

Similarly, to think about death is not to fixate on morbidity. It is the opposite, to compel us to live life to its fullest. Stoics have a practice called memento mori, Latin for remembering that one will die, to help them accept death as a necessary aspect of life, be grateful for what they have, and live intentionally. While we couldn’t fully accept the doctor’s prognosis, knowing the end was near nudged us to make the most of our remaining time together.

As I was watching my aunt slowly slip away and regretting not spending more time with her when she was well, I contemplated how I want to spend the rest of my life. Since 2015, I have planned the upcoming year by listing the key milestones to achieve and daily habits to practice for the year to be considered a good year. This has served me adequately for the past few years, but I started to worry I’ve been missing the forest for the trees. Should I be thinking in longer time horizons? 5 years? 10 years? My entire life? What are the things to achieve for my life to be considered a good life? What do I want, not in life, but out of life?

After much reflection, I came up with five principles. These might change as I experience more of life, like when our son came or when my aunt left. But they will guide me until the next life chapter comes around.

1. Be useful: I want to contribute to something beyond my family and me. To give back as I have taken. There are many possible paths here: running a startup with a positive impact, writing a blog, mentoring others, and so on.

2. Take care of my family: I grew up in a huge family with strong ties, and I want such bonds to continue in my family. I also want to support and care for my family, just as I have been supported and cared for by my elders.

3. Raise my child to have integrity, compassion, and agency: My son and I both won the birth lottery, having been born healthy, into a family with enough, in a prosperous Singapore. Not everyone does. We should strive to make the world a better place, not just through big acts, but also with our daily behavior.

4. Develop my mind and stay healthy: I’m inspired by people like Lee Kuan Yew, Charlie Munger, and David Attenborough who remained physically fit and mentally sharp into their 90s. When I'm old, I want to be healthy enough to keep enjoying life and contributing to society, without being a burden to my child.

5. Be rich enough: Charlie Munger sought to be rich, not to acquire material possessions, but to be independent. Morgan Housel said the highest dividend money pays is “the ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want.” Ryan Holiday wrote that the definition of success is autonomy. I want to be rich enough to do what I want, when I want, with who I want, for as long as I want.

With my principles clarified, I feel I’m in a better position to review my 2024 and plan for 2025 and beyond.

Reflecting on 2024

Here are the top three things that went went, didn’t go so well, and what I learned this year. I reviewed my 2024 goals further below.

What went well this year?

1. Family time. I spent more time with my family this year than almost every other year since I started working. Some were unplanned like when my son had hand, foot, and mouth disease or when my aunt was dying; some were intentional like when my cousins and I met up for breakfast or when I accompanied my uncle to his health appointments.

2. Clearer business direction. Swee Kiat and I made the hard decision to switch our priority from Pebblely to more meaningful projects—something we struggled with for months and went back and forth multiple times. That said, while we know we want to work on more meaningful ideas, we are still figuring out the exact idea.

3. Holistic health. Because I wanted to spend more time with my family, I worked out the least in 2024. But thanks to that, I became more intentional about looking after my body, such as adding lifting weights to my workout regime, consuming less sugar and salt, and taking multivitamins and probiotics.

What didn’t go so well this year?

1. I lost my aunt.

2. New business creation. Pebblely has been doing well enough to sustain us but we failed to create new businesses. (More below.)

3. Produced little. I didn’t write or build as much as I would have liked. I consumed more than I created. My main challenge was balancing being present with being productive.

What did I learn this year?

1. Treat people with kindness, because you don’t know what they are going through. “Most assholes are going through something terrible in their life,” wrote Morgan Housel. I went through some rough patches this year, and I’m grateful for the grace and kindness of my family, friends, and neighbors.

2. Prioritization. Before I had my son, I tended to take on a lot and work in the evenings and weekends. Because I choose to devote much of my time to him, I have to ruthlessly prune away inessential commitments, learn to work faster or in pockets of time, and be less distracted. I still falter often, especially when I’m drained.

3. Environment drives defaults, especially when my willpower is running low. And my willpower was often low this year. When I had brownies in the fridge, I ate brownies; when I had blueberries, I ate blueberries. When I had social media apps on my phone, I checked them whenever I had spare moments. Without them, I read with the Kindle app or write with my Notes app. I’m still crafting my environment. I placed books around my house so that I grab them, instead of my phone, in my free time. My TV is never left on in the background, and I even put books on my TV console.

At the end of 2023, I set five main goals for 2024 and created a list of anti-goals. Here’s how I fared:

Build a company

Business was rather uneventful in a way that I’m grateful for. Pebblely continued to generate revenue but we decided not to scale it up, especially not with venture funding. This freed us to explore things that we find more meaningful. From our shortlist, we decided on healthcare. In the second half of 2024, we intentionally set aside time to speak to people in healthcare, write essays, and build prototypes, on top of keeping Pebblely running. Because we were back to the -1 to 0 stage, we kept the team lean (back to the two of us) and expenses low.

The other reason I’m grateful for the uneventful year (and for Swee Kiat’s support) is I could take time out to be with my aunt in her final days. I could accompany her for her blood tests and consultations, help with caregiving at her home, and be with her throughout the day when she was hospitalized. This experience strengthened my resolve to contribute to healthcare, whether through a startup or other avenues. My time with my aunt turned out to be an unintentional field research into healthcare (which I’ll write about someday).

We also worked on a few other ideas that didn’t pan out or didn’t receive the traction we had hoped, including an AI video editor, an LLM app for creating tools, and an LLM app for creating LLM apps.

Frame challenges as opportunities

I felt much better mentally in 2024 than in 2023 when dealing with challenges, criticisms, and changes. Professionally, I designed new features, wrote essays on topics I had never written on before, and shifted most of my time from Pebblely (already had traction and making money) to healthcare (meaningful yet uncertain). Personally, I learned to adapt to my ever-changing son and his illnesses, dealt with grief and loss, and strengthened my marriage as hardships created more friction and conflicts. I cannot say I handled them perfectly but I made progress.

Get better at using AI

Eager to get better at using AI, I sprinted. For a month, I compulsively used Midjourney and Leonardo to generate images and Runway and Pika to create videos. In another month, I played with ComfyUI. In yet another, I built an LLM app that creates LLM apps to learn more about building with LLM. But once the initial momentum was over, I dropped the tools as quickly as I picked them up. I shouldn’t have started with sprints.

The habit of using AI stuck when I switched from “Let’s use the latest AI tools to do cool stuff” to “Let’s use AI to make my life easier”. I focused on using established tools like ChatGPT to get suggestions for alternative words and phrasings for my writing and to extract and normalize data from PDFs, Perplexity to find relevant information from high-quality sources, and Cursor to code more quickly. When I was at the hospital, I even relied on ChatGPT to decipher what the doctors and nurses were saying and to translate medical terms into Chinese for my uncle. (I’m drafting an essay on How I AI, which I hope to share soon. Update: It’s here!)

Write daily, publish monthly

I wrote in my journal every night for the past 396 days. Initially, I was simply recounting my daily activities. I did this, then I did that. For a private journal, which nobody but me would read, that’s fine. But I also wanted to improve my writing. Sometime in June, I chanced upon Celine Nguyen’s essay, mere description, which talked about how describing what we see is harder than it looks. That inspired me to be more descriptive and reflective. And, I discovered, like Celine wrote, it is harder than it looks. I’m not proud of my writing in my journal yet but I believe this daily 15-minute practice will gradually improve my writing.

Between my personal blog and Substack, I published only seven essays (and three more on our healthcare blog). I restarted my Substack in September with the goal of publishing every week. But three essays in, on the night I published the third essay, my aunt was hospitalized. I dropped most of my commitments, including my Substack, because I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her—and I’m glad I did. Life happens. I can always pick up writing again.

Eat healthily, exercise weekly, sleep enough

I grade myself about 70 out of 100 on this goal. Not great but good enough, given my circumstances. My diet became much healthier because my wife cooked several times a week. Our dinner menu was mostly baked salmon with steamed broccoli or slow-cooked soup without seasoning. I managed to exercise at least once a week, except for weeks when my son was ill and for the past three months. Part of the joy was inventing new exercises within my constraints. For example, I created two 30-minute weights workouts, which I could do when my son was still asleep in the morning. As for sleep, I averaged about six to seven hours with some interruptions every night. My son was (and is) still waking up twice or thrice for milk at night. I wish I could sleep through the night but starving my son when he wants to drink milk seems inhuman. Six to seven hours is good enough for now, and good enough is good enough.

Anti-goals

1. Start side projects - I almost started a founder dads community but resisted the temptation.

2. Use Twitter and LinkedIn on my phone - I deleted the apps, re-downloaded LinkedIn during events to connect with others, and deleted it again.

3. Scroll through social media without posting - I failed terribly. I wasted too much time watching YouTube Shorts. I eventually deleted all social media apps from my phone because selfishly I didn’t want to know about other people’s lives when I was grieving. The detox has been refreshing.

4. Watch TV/Netflix/etc. aimlessly (instead pick shows and schedule time) - My son helped me with this. My wife and I were usually too exhausted for anything after he fell asleep and would go to bed soon after.

5. Go for friend gatherings (instead invite them over) - I went out for a handful of gatherings. One was a housewarming; another was a farewell; two were weddings. Well, none would have been appropriate at my place. I didn’t manage to host many friends at my place because I was overwhelmed with other things. But I kept in touch with my few close friends and am grateful to those who reached out.

6. Attend events not related to Pebblely or generative AI - After several underwhelming events, I chose to skip most of the rest. Few seemed worthwhile enough to give up evenings with my son.

My goals for 2025 and beyond

Unlike previous years, I wanted to set goals beyond the next year. I always had some ideas about what I would want to accomplish sometime in life, such as publishing a book and learning the piano. But I have never written them down. I found much clarity in deliberating on my life goals and jotting them down explicitly. My former manager, Kevan Lee, used to create a life list of radical goals, broken down into goals to be achieved within the next one year, five years, or any time in life. I love the format, which balances ambition and practicality. So I stole it.

I picked five key goals that align with my principles, albeit not with a one-to-one mapping. For example, the business goal aligns with being useful and being rich enough while the principle to develop my mind and stay healthy has two goals, growth and health. My remaining one-year goals, five-year goals, and lifetime goals are further below.

Business: Build a meaningful profitable business

We were lucky to have achieved profitability with Pebblely within a year while riding on the AI wave. We are starting from scratch again but focusing on problems more meaningful to us than ecommerce. We will be doing it the way we know it: Talking to people, launching prototypes to validate ideas, writing essays to get more people interested in chatting, and repeating.

So far, our healthcare projects have gotten some attention, mostly locally and not as much as we would like. Our next project, on insurance, will be ready in the coming weeks. To be realistic, we also recognize starting a startup in healthcare is tough, and we might not have the right resources at the moment to pursue it. But given how meaningful healthcare is to us, we want to at least attempt several ideas there. Generally, we are prioritizing consumer ideas (given our experience in building easy-to-use products) over diagnostics ideas (which would require us to go through regulatory approvals) and enterprise ideas (which could take exceptionally longer time in healthcare).

Besides healthcare, we have also been keeping an eye out for the developments in AI that would enable us to build solutions that were not possible before, focusing on making AI useful for the everyday user (as opposed to tech folks only).

Family: Bring my family on a vacation

My wife and I had a great trip to Japan this year. To our surprise, our boy, being only six months old then, seemed to have enjoyed it too. My wife has a stressful job in the emergency department and often works odd hours. An annual trip as a family will be a nice break. We are considering Australia and are happy to receive kid-friendly itinerary suggestions!

Parenting: Read at least 3 books on parenting

I didn’t think parenting would be a walk in the park but it has been tougher than expected. There is the easy stuff like how to change diapers. Then there is the hard stuff like what do I do when my son is throwing tantrums and refusing to sleep, even though he looks obviously tired, and my wife and I are exhausted from two hours of coaxing and a year of insufficient sleep? More importantly, how should I react? The Daily Dad, both the newsletter and book, has helped me a lot in keeping things in perspective and, not just coping, but embracing such moments. (Special shoutout to my wife for getting me the premium leatherbound edition for my birthday!)

Besides The Daily Dad, I plan to read Good Inside, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, and Totto-Chan.

Growth: Write daily, publish monthly

I’m keeping this as a goal for another year. But, in addition, I want to play more while writing. I have written in my usual casual and simple style for many years. While it sometimes worked for personal reflections and 101 guides, it made my essays rather boring, shallow, or even inappropriate at times. I want to write essays that are more engaging, more persuasive, and have more depth.

I would love to publish more often but I think once a month will be more manageable, given my other goals.

Health: Eat healthily, exercise 5x/week, sleep well

I used to be great at these until my son was born, and I threw them out of the window. 2024 was about restarting my health journey; 2025 will be about building on that progress. My diet goal is to eat vegetables and fruits daily, minimize my sugar intake (mostly from coffee), and eat home-cooked meals with little or no seasoning three times a week. Fitness-wise, I’m aiming for more but shorter workouts. Finally, my ideal night routine is to read a little before going to bed at 10 p.m.

My remaining goals

One-year goals (i.e. other 2025 goals)

• Help my son develop a night routine and be in bed by 8 p.m.

• Take three deep breaths whenever I’m angry or frustrated

• Accompany my parents and uncle to their health appointments

• Cycle 10x a year

• Switch from kopi (coffee) to kopi siew dai (coffee less sweet)

• Host five dinners at home

• Get a part-time cleaner for our house

• No coffee after 3 p.m.

Five-year goals

• Bring my family to Europe and New Zealand

• Create a library at home for my son

• Teach my son to cycle and swim

• Learn to play the piano

• Complete a triathlon (any distance)

Lifetime goals

• Publish a book

• Get back into drawing

• Complete an Ironman triathlon

• Bring my son somewhere to see snow (maybe Japan, Seoul, or Switzerland)

• Raise kids with integrity, compassion, and agency

• Build something with my dad

• Visit Ghibli Park in Aichi, Japan, and Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, Japan

• Mentor someone

• Volunteer somewhere (maybe contribute to healthcare or education)

• Contribute somehow to Singapore (maybe through my business)

• Become rich enough to be independent, not to acquire material possessions

• Live until 100 while being physically fit and mentally sharp

• Use social media to help others, not just consume content

• Learn to speak another language (maybe Japanese)

If you made it here, the end of my rather long reflection, thank you. You can also read my past annual reviews here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017.