Just like that, 2015 is gone, and today is the first day of 2016. The most fulfilling thing I did today was donating a big bag of clothes I had accumulated over my college years to the school. I’m a strange person – I often don’t throw away old things, which makes moving extremely troublesome. I once heard about a concept called organizing through “cut, let go, and separate.” So I tried discarding my old junk and clutter to reorganize my life.

It’s been about half a year since I started working and entered the workforce. I thought I was well-prepared, but I still struggled. It’s like estimating project scope – there’s a law that says no matter how you estimate the workload, you’ll always underestimate by one-third of the time, even if you account for this very law.

In my 2014 year-end review, I mentioned:

I hope to accomplish the following items in 2015:

1. Travel

   1.1 Go to Harbin [Done]
   1.2 Go to Tibet
   1.3 Go to Yunnan [Done]

2. Continue learning and sharing technical knowledge on my personal blog, and write high-quality posts [Done, should be able to keep it up, though quality will improve gradually].

   Fortunately, the blog’s daily UV has grown from 1-2 visitors to over ten. A couple of posts have pretty high traffic, and one of them currently appears on the first page of Baidu search results for the keyword “Yii Redis,” which makes me very happy – even though it’s the last result on the first page.

3. Continue writing higher quality code and contribute on GitHub, hoping one of my projects can reach 100 Stars.

   This one failed. My highest cumulative Stars on GitHub is only around 20. I hope to work harder.

4. Open-source a portal system based on ThinkPHP [Done, but not open-sourced].

5. Think about my future and focus deeply on a specific technology.

   The road ahead is long; I shall search high and low.

6. Read some quality books:

   6.1 Wu Jun’s “Civilization and Enlightenment”

    Purchased but didn't read much.
   

   6.2 Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath”

    Not completed.
   

   6.3 Finish “High Output Management” by Andrew Grove

    Not completed.
   

   6.4 Finish “Effective C++”

    Not completed.
   

   6.5 “Predictably Irrational” [Done]

7. Study English properly and aim for independent travel abroad.

   Not completed.

8. Redo all LeetCode problems from scratch.

   Partially completed, solved some problems using PHP.

Beyond that, the things that made me happiest:

1. Read some books: “Zero to One,” “Don’t Make Me Think,” “The First Line of Code: Android”
2. CoinIdea got a nice redesign [designed independently, using AI for graphics] – feeling better and better about it.
3. While my patience, temper, and temperament still have room for improvement, there has been some progress.
4. I’m on the path to learning Android.
5. Gained new insights into PHP and MySQL.
6. I typed so many words:

OK, now let me look ahead to 2016. This is bound to be a critical year. It seems like something big happens in my life every 4-5 years. Just Face It.

1. Practice English and pass the TOEIC exam.
2. Get started with iOS, deepen Android learning and application; advance in PHP and MySQL, and develop an OA system using Yii.
3. I hope the people around me pass their English exams smoothly.
4. May my parents stay healthy.
5. Read “Civilization and Enlightenment.”
6. Finish reading “PHP, MySQL, and Web Development” and “PHP Advanced and Object-Oriented Programming.”
7. Hope to pick up C# and WorldWind again.
8. Make some breakthroughs in data visualization.
9. Hope that CoinIdea, which I maintain in my spare time, keeps getting better.
10. I hope to achieve the unfulfilled wishes from last year.

Not being greedy – just these. Number four is a blessing.