8 ms·
Ask HN: Plans for 2010
For the year 2010, I plan to:
1. Learn Clojure and CLisp.
2. Learn Erlang
3. Learn to play the violin
4. Start exercising seriously again.
5. Take up photography
6. Become a better friend, brother, uncle, son and cousin.(despite the AS diagnosis)
7. try to find inner peace and purpose.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- cperciva 17y agoI plan to end 2010 with 10x as many customers as I start it with.
- frisco 17y agoThe prototype of the perfect goal: simple, clear, measurable, achievable.
- woid 17y ago... unless you start with zero customers :)
- idlewords 17y agoSeems eminently more achievable in that case.
- allantyoung 17y agoOr infinitely more achievable.
- tokenadult 17y agoLESS achievable. Multiplication by zero still gives a product of zero in the real number system.
- frisco 17y ago>> Multiplication by zero still gives a product of zero in the real number system. Yeah which is why its more achievable: factor = final / initial = 3 customers / 0 customers = ZOMGx more customers
- tokenadult 17y agoAh, the usual division by zero error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.divideby0.html http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.divideby0.html http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/0by0.html http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/0by0.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DivisionbyZero.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DivisionbyZero.html Perhaps more to my original point is that cperciva replied to the thread-opening post I plan to end 2010 with 10x as many customers as I start it with. so the the comment by woid (grandchild comment to cperciva's comment) is CORRECT that such a goal is not achievable if you start with zero customers because there isn't any defined number of customers that is exactly ten times as many customers as zero customers. It's funny that this isn't taught in all mathematics classes.
- frisco 17y agoI understand the math; sure, 10*0=0. Looking lim a->0: x/a, though, which goes to infinity, I was implying it was easier to achieve because mathematically he'd be way past his target of 10x. But you're right that it's impossible to hit exactly 10x.
- asb 17y agoI've opened an account and deposited $5 on a whim but haven't made any use of it. Would you count me as a customer?
- cperciva 17y agoI have a few different metrics I look at; the big ones (in terms of the number of customers) are # of customers with positive balances, # of customers with data stored, # of customers with bandwidth usage in the past month. Generally for each 100 accounts created, there are ~80 accounts with positive balances, ~75 with data stored, and ~50 with bandwidth usage in any given month.
- iuguy 17y agoSpend more time with my wife.
- idlewords 17y agoThat's my goal too! Your wife is awesome.
- brlewis 17y agoGo full-time.
- dejv 17y agoStop slacking.
- akl 17y agoDevelop a non-work life, if only for balance. I'd like to expand my ruby skills, too.
- kwamenum86 17y agoEat healthier and become more active. I spend way too much time sitting on my ass.
- asnyder 17y agoFor the year 2010 I plan to finally release a constant stream of documentation, both text and videos, along with numerous screencasts. There's no point in having cool technology if it's not easily accessible, easy to learn, and demonstrable. There's only so many times you can have one on one conversations to get the wow across. I just wish writing documentation didn't take so long, and video shoots didn't eat up whole days. It's so much nicer to work on a new feature than to re-shoot a section of a code demonstration what often seems like 100 times.
- jacoblyles 17y agoMy "plan" for 2010 is to make a lot of ambitious goals, fail on most of them, but accomplish some good regardless. Also, I am pretty sure that I will have my first amateur Muay Thai fight. I'm excited about that.
- naherr 17y agohttp://designmylaptop.ro/inscrieri/022e4fbffba40d302f1b0225f1c9d611/ http://designmylaptop.ro/inscrieri/022e4fbffba40d302f1b0225f...
- alexgartrell 17y ago1. Write an academic paper (getting one published would be cool, but let's start with things within my control). 2. Get my research project up to where I want it. 3. Sweet Internship in a sweet city * * sweet city matters because I'm going to be 21. Work hard, play hard :)
- jason_tko 17y agoMy most important goal for 2010 is to create a partnership with a co-founder who is fun to work with, and who has the skills I lack, and begin working together.
- vishaldpatel 17y agoExisting things: MobileFolk - my current project / startup. Swim, run, workout. Keep learning Spanish and practicing guitar. Read books. New things: Learn basic Romanian. Meet more iPhone (and Android) developers in the Bay Area and in / around Toronto / GTAA - always looking to grab a beer or lunch :). Learn more about market research (you can never learn enough).
- gabriel-coarna 17y agoWhy in God's name would you want to learn Romanian? 1. It's a silly, silly language -- I've been speaking it all of my life, and, most of the time, I still find I express myself better in English. 2. It's only spoken in a small, god-forsaken country that'll probably never amount to much of anything. If you insist on learning another language -- it is my opinion that one should try to say something smart in one language, rather than something mediocre in a couple -- you should at least learn something that might actually prove useful -- like Chinese (if you're young and you foresee you'll still be around when they rule the world), or Russian (for more-or-less the same reason)
- gcheong 17y agoMy reason for wanting to learn more Romanian is that it is a natural side effect of having Romanian friends. It always gets a good laugh anyway.
- gabriel-coarna 17y agoYeah, that pretty much makes sense. However, if they're already your friends, you probably communicate just fine in (most likely) English. My (unsolicited) advice: keep it that way, and spend the time you were going to spend learning Romanian by doing something way cooler. Anyway, ... Merry Christmas. And a very happy New Year.
- jacquesm 17y agoI'd replace Russian with Spanish in that list. Romanian is very useful though, because of its reasonably strong ties to latin. If you know Romanian then Italian, Spanish and French are more accessible.
- sree_nair 17y ago7. try to find inner peace and purpose. - SHOULDN'T THAT BE NO:1, and probably the only one ?. Just joking :)
- jpv 17y ago1. Improve my piano, harmonica, and musical ear. 2. Release my social networking app that I've been slacking on for a year. 3. Quit smoking. 4. Finish college (not graduate, finish).
- btilly 17y agoGo to work for Google. Learn at least one new computer language. (These plans are pretty concrete at this point.)
- JustJ 17y agoGraduate from College, Make money and Achieve.
- gommm 17y agogrow my company from 1 to 6 employees and have 10 times more profit.
- mantas 17y agoTry again and again to launch something that would be useful and popular. Failed twice this year...
- Freebytes 17y agoWell, if you can learn from your mistakes, it will not have been a waste of time. You can use the experience of failure... or so I have heard. I have been failing as well.
- bbb 17y ago"Complete" my key research goals and write a draft of my dissertation.
- zppx 17y agoBeing very close to graduate in the end of the year, run a half-marathon, try to not be a complete slacker and play with my recently purchased VPS.
- jacquesm 17y agoYou can begin to learn to play the violin in a year, but it is a dedication of a lifetime to really learn to play the violin. Noble causes though, I wish you much good luck!
- alaithea 17y agoDepending on the OP's expectations and attitude, saying that it will take a lifetime could be a bit discouraging. Some say that seven years of dedication is all that is really needed to reach "mastery" in most subjects ("mastery" is of course subjective), and I tend to agree. Hardly a lifetime! Seven years was roughly how long I took lessons on the piano, and later on the violin, and that, along with a knack for music, was enough to reach an advanced level and be able to play most of the standard classical repertoire. Hooray for learning the violin! It is one of the most difficult instruments, but also one of the most rewarding.
- Quarrelsome 17y agoHell yes, I finish my contract this year so I am going to regain my mind, catch up with .NET, sleep a lot, finish reading my LISP booky and I must code one thing this year that I would naturally be uncomfortable with, be it LISP, C or Ruby/Python. Maybe start a business (if certain conditions evaluate to true)! :)
- klaut 17y agoi have just one, the same i set for 2009 but failed to do so: to live here and now, in the moment. without past or future worries. i hope i make it this time.
- buddyboy2006 17y agoYou've probably seen this video, but I found watching it has helped me become better at living in the here and now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNVPalNZD_I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNVPalNZD_I
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ErrantX 17y ago1. Try and actually write my fiction book (finally) 2. Sell a company 3. Work less and spend more time doing "fun" :)
- jarsj 17y agoLaunch my startup no matter what.
- cubicle67 17y agoWell, they say confession is good for the soul... I've got four great kids. They're bright, curious, fun and I love 'em to bits. Thing is, I absolutely suck at being a Dad. I'm lazy, vague, inconsistent, moody and I find it all to easy to go hide in the study and respond to interruptions with "Go and play. Can't you see I'm busy". I don't want to be like this, not one little bit, so my one goal for this year is - no excuses, work at becoming a better Dad.
- tptacek 17y agoWasn't your dad like this sometimes? Mine was. I'm the same way sometimes too. Not that I'm arguing with you. Spend more time with your kids. But don't beat yourself up. Are your kids happy? Good on you. 2010 is my year of teaching my kids to play Go.
- cubicle67 17y agoYeah, he was. There's lots more I'd like to add, but it's well after midnight here. Just done stuffing stockings and finishing wrapping presents, then there's only about an hours work remaining till we can hit the sack for a few hours until the kids invade. Better run before my wife finds me in here again :) Happy Christmas to you all
- frisco 17y agoTeaching your kids to play Go or teaching them to code in Go?
- tptacek 17y agoThe game.
- phugoid 17y agoHey, I suck at it too. And it's hard to make yourself spend a lot of time and effort on something that you're not really good at, when there are other things you really excel at. So my theory is that I suck because I suck.
- yan 17y ago- move back to NY or bay area - climb regular northwest face of half dome (currently planned for august) - finish my data visualization project/start a new one depending on feed back - implement an idea i've been carrying for over two years - decide what makes me happy.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- SandB0x 17y agoStart eating a proper breakfast.
- ra 17y agoClose some of the prospects we have; lock-in our angel round (we've been talking to them for months) and get well down the path towards series a. Now that would be a good year.
- andrewcooke 17y agoi doubt anyone's that interested in my personal plans, but this is perhaps a useful exercise anyway :o) - improve lepl: simplify configuration; better logging showing how values are bound; possibly automate tokenisation; possibly improve speed. - return to an idea i worked on years ago to generate synthetic rhythms. at the time i didn't have enough cpu power; now i think i can use a gpu. - long shot: develop a small language that targets the llvm and opencl (gpus) in a simple way. - improve my web site (already 90% done). motivated by people laughing at it on reddit a couple of days ago :o( looks like i will be spending 4 months in the usa, on a tourist visa (partner has a sabbatical), so i should have time for some of this. i also plan to visit icfp for the first time.
- jyothi 17y agoGet married. (the most ignored part while hacking away with work & startup alone)
- rphlx 17y agoGetting married is the easy part. The challenge is in staying.
- aitoehigie 17y ago8. I plan on being happy as much as I can and maintain a positive demeanor.
- Tawheed 17y agoStop "waiting" and start "living." Help people have meaningful online conversations with Ask My BrainTrust (http://AskMyBrainTrust.com http://AskMyBrainTrust.com)
- SingAlong 17y agoMy new year begins with one month of semester holidays. Plan: Release one app every 15 days and spend 1hr a day iterating the app I created in the previous 15-day session. That'll make 2 apps in one month of holidays. while the rest of the year I release one app every month to manage college and freelance work (to support the side projects). At the end of the year I should have close to 10 apps (or maybe only 5 if i take regular breaks). And atleast one of them I hope succeeds. I took this lesson from the 2D BOY studio guys who developed World of Goo. They prototyped a new idea every week until they found a nice prototyped idea.
- robfitz 17y agoMay I ask if these are going to be game projects? I'm very interested in people's experiences doing rapid game development.
- SingAlong 17y agoNo. All web apps. But sometime one of them might be a game. Coz I've always wanted to get into game dev. SInce I dont have a Mac or iphone and I'm not a pro, I won't try the PC game market. I'll start off with the Android market. Small Android games seems like my piece of cake :)
- tptacek 17y agoLet's see. 356 days ago here, I said "The math behind signal processing; curing and drying ham and salami.". This year, let's call it "The math behind signal processing; write a book."
- sjs382 17y agoI plan to launch a project related to URL shorteners early in the year and continue work on my startup into the first quarter. My resolution though is to ship/launch more code. "Real artists ship" :)
- omnipath 17y agoMy goals so far for the year 2010: 1) Relearn how to eat. Do not eat just to eat, but eat for a reason. 2) Actually write a useful application. 3) Perhaps most importantly, be a creator and not just be a consumer.
- maximilian 17y ago>1) Relearn how to eat. Do not eat just to eat, but eat for a reason. Is this, "God I'm starving after that trek through the woods, this pasta is delicious!" Or, "Boy this braised rabbit with wine reduction turned out well."
- omnipath 17y agoIt's more of an, 'I'm feeling full. Why must I still eat the delicious cookie right in front of me!?'
- tokenadult 17y agoBuild a spin-off line of business from my existing business that is SCALABLE, so that I move from the sole-proprietorship personal service business world into the true start-up world.
- aitoehigie 17y ago9. Finally launch 2 projects that I have been working on. 10. Chronicle each day of the year 2010 on my blog.
- jodrellblank 17y agoAnyone want to read through these replies and place some bets on how many goals will have markedly progressed by this time next year? http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/08/how-to-set-goals-you-will-actually-achieve/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/08/how-to-set-goals-yo... "work at becoming a better Dad" - Unspecific. Should being a better dad have the same negative connotations as work? "Release one app every 15 days and spend 1hr a day..." - Specific, determined. I'd bet on this. "Stop slacking" - Vague, phrased in the negative, no chance. "Launch my startup no matter what" - Also vague, low chance. "I plan to end 2010 with 10x as many customers as I start it with." - Great. I bet he will progress this. "Go full-time", "Eat healthier and become more active", no and no, bet against these. "Start eating a proper breakfast" - What, when will you prepare it, how will you stick to it?
- spencerfry 17y agoPlans: (1) Add a few more members to the team. (2) Lease our own office instead of sublease. (3) Release the new version of our app. (4) Expand two more verticals. (5) Get more mainstream press. (6) Finish moving our core team to New York City. We're currently 2 of 4 in NYC. (7) Start our newsletter. (8) Do more charity work. (9) Start a meetup. (10) Get involved in local NYC art/design scene more than I already am.
- huangm 17y agoGraduate school and start working on startup fulltime.
- GeneralMaximus 17y agoLast year, my goals were: (1) learn to program Mac OS X (2) get better at maths, basic data structures and algorithms (3) write more stuff on my blog. I accomplished: (1) learned to program the Haiku OS (2) got better at C++ and OO design (3) met a bunch of awesome people in the FOSS community (4) learned version control (5) gained enough confidence to start a small FOSS project with some friends. I still suck at programming Mac OS X (even though I've made some progress), still suck at maths and my blog is updated about once a month. I learned a little something about data structures and algorithms, but only because I took that class at college. Moral of the story: you usually end up accomplishing something completely different from what you initially plan. The trick is to just go with it and let good stuff happen. That said, I still have some plans for 2010: (1) learn Haskell and x86_64 assembly (2) release the FOSS project I've been working on (3) contribute more code to Haiku (4) get better at socializing (5) write a lot of stuff on my blog (for real this time). I know I'll end up accomplishing a completely different set of goals, but it's still nice to have a roadmap :)
- zavulon 17y agoNot to self-promote, since I pretty much abandoned that site more than a year ago, but back in a day I wrote an article on this topic that was somewhat popular, and I think will be useful to a lot of HN'ers. http://www.alexanderkharlamov.com/2006/12/24/how-to-make-and-keep-new-years-resolutions/ http://www.alexanderkharlamov.com/2006/12/24/how-to-make-and...
- patio11 17y agoQuit the day job. Use the 70 hours freed up and 15 hours of negacommute (weekly) to launch a new product, find a nice young lass, and do some travelling.
- nixme 17y agoI'm handing in my one month notice on the fourth, and I'm both excited and apprehensive about the future. But yeah, 2010 will be an exciting year no matter what happens. Good luck to you too!
- jasonkester 17y agoLaunch this and get it paying the bills: http://www.fairtutor.com/ http://www.fairtutor.com/
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ptn 17y ago1. Become better at programming. 2. Write a killer webapp with Django. 3. Learn very well one of these: JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby. (Current level for all: 0) 4. Graduate. 5. Start contributing to an open-source project, probably only casually. 6. Be insanely curious. 7. Read at least 5 SF books.
- davis 17y agoAre you me? =]
- jorkos 17y ago- continue to get customer feedback - launch trial service - start charging early customer base
- spudlyo 17y agoFinally crack the 100k a year barrier. This means either get that raise that I totally deserve or move on.
- vishaldpatel 17y agoDon't wait until next year.
- martythemaniak 17y agoI wish they had derivatives with your plans as the underlying asset. I'd leverage myself, go short and make a killing. In other words OP, you'll fail and it'll happen because of your ridiculously ambitious goals. Let me break it down: 1 and 2: If by "learn a language" you mean gain some proficiency in it and not just run through the introductory tutorial, then you're gonna have to spend a fair amount of time writing a reasonably big project. I would say, spread out, about 1hr a day every single day for each language, so that makes it about 2-3hrs/day. 3. Unless you're already proficient in some instrument (preferably stringed), you're gonna need several hundred hours of solid practice to learn, so plan for about 2hrs a day,every single day. 4. That would mean a serious workout, 3-4 times a week, so average that out to 0.5hrs a day, every single day. 5. That's pretty vague, but I'll put you down for 0.5hrs a day averaged as well. 6. that's too vague 7. If you're speaking in the sense that Mathieu Ricard talks about, again you're looking at at least 1hr day. So in order to achieve your goals, you're looking at a commitment of about 8hrs/day. And that's 8hrs of hard work where you are pushing yourself, so unless you have nothing going on in your life and have amazing power of will, you will fail. You should instead pick 1 or 2 of those goals and follow up. Start working out and learn Clojure. You can manage that and a year from now you'll have 2 solid achievements behind your back, rather than 7 failures.
- ardit33 17y agoget laid a bit more often. Two girls a year is not enough. Seriously, all work and no play make no fun life. While I probably want something good for the long term, I have given up on finding it. Unfortunately SV/SF area is horrible place to find quality girls.
- roundsquare 17y ago1. Get into and go to law school. 2. Get into shape (again). 3. Eat better. 4. Learn economics. 5. Learn more about algorithms.