Health

My health is the fuel for pursuing my dreams. That revelation ignited a spark, pushing me to embrace exercise as the first step toward a stronger me. Seven, an app brimming with diverse workouts, became my guide. Starting with just 15 minutes daily, I watched my health blossom. Within a month, I dared to double it to 30 minutes, a habit that has now taken root for 230 days and counting, each push-up and lunge building a healthier, happier me.

Mental health is another important factor that I will definitely work on in the upcoming time. I have suffered from burnout, depression, and other life traumas. During such periods, my mind always generated a positive mindset and intrinsic motivation that made me feel better and more resilient. This has also developed my maturity in dealing with different situations over time. To maintain a healthy mental state, I will need to remind myself to take healthy breaks from work, eat healthier, read more philosophy and psychology materials, think deeply, and consistently reflect on what's happening in my daily journal.

Knowledge From Books

Reading is my gateway to endless enrichment, a constant source of value in my life. This year, I explored the worlds within seven remarkable titles:

1. Invention: A Life by James Dyson
2. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
3. The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion
4. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
5. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
6. Reinventing Your Life: the breakthrough program to end negative behaviour and feel great again
7. Principles: Life and Work

Three books have profoundly shaped my thinking: ([1], [4], and [7]). Invention: A Life by James Dyson taught me the transformative power of innovation to shape nations. Then, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant opened my eyes to the diverse mental frameworks people use to navigate the world. One of the book's core concepts, which I'll share an excerpt from below, has proven invaluable in understanding various perspectives.

Driven by my passion for building and scaling sustainable businesses, I delved into Ray Dalio's Principles: Life and Work. I was pleasantly surprised to discover not only insightful principles for fostering radical transparency in workflows but also invaluable human management techniques. These, I realised, were cornerstone concepts in constructing a truly sustainable enterprise. Beyond these practical tools, the book offered a fascinating exploration of the intricate relationship between politics, economy, and science – a high-level framework that proved immensely valuable in understanding the bigger picture. From "Principles," I gleaned numerous valuable insights, like this one:

This particular piece of knowledge has resonated deeply with me, and I believe it holds immense potential for driving positive change in the business world.

In addition to reading books, I've enhanced my daily routine by delving into research articles and staying up-to-date with technology news:

• In the terms of research, my involvement spans various fields, including information retrieval, language understanding, computer vision, networking, communication, internet of things, reinforcement learning, federated learning, and more.
• On the technological front, I've deepened my understanding of fundamental blockchain concepts and explored its applications. Moreover, I've gained insights into the global implementation of artificial intelligence, inspiring me to conceptualise numerous AI solutions across diverse application domains for the benefit of society.

Travel

I returned to Vietnam this June after two years in Australia, and the trip provided several noteworthy highlights:

• I explored various places in Vietnam, including rural areas near Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An, and Da Nang, gaining insights into the daily lives of people in these regions.
• I discovered abundant opportunities for innovation and AI application across various industrial sectors in Vietnam. The trip enhanced my vision for the country's future. However, I encountered challenges in establishing a company due to my first-time involvement in the end-to-end process and language barriers with legal services. This complexity was compounded when dealing with transparent communication of terms involving foreign partners. Despite the option of utilising a third-party company, the associated costs were often unnecessarily high, covering services that may not be immediately required. Moreover, fully relying on such services would limit our learning experience.
• Unlike previous visits, this three-week stay in Vietnam was immensely educational.

My knowledge is too limited to fully comprehend the world around me. One thing I haven't been able to do in the past few years is travel to different cities or countries to understand the people living and working there. The more I travel, the more knowledge and practical experience I gain, which will be extremely useful in connecting the dots that support my long-term goals. Therefore, I need to plan to travel to different countries in the upcoming time:

• I aspire to visit Silicon Valley in the U.S because I'm drawn to the startup spirit there.
• My curiosity about the Japanese discipline driving the rapid growth of the country motivates me to travel to Japan.
• I plan to visit several European countries (e.g., Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland) based on frequent mentions in my network.
• My interest in Taiwan is inspired by its significant growth rate in the electronics industry.
• I intend to travel to India because many of my good friends are from there.
• Exploring more cities in Australia and rural areas in Vietnam is on my agenda to understand the lifestyle of people in these regions.

Productivity

To enhance my productivity, I began building a system and refining scheduling and planning strategies.

Morning routine

Although my regular wake-up time is already early at 6 AM, I wanted to explore other options. I attempted to wake up at 4 AM every day for 30 days. During this trial period, I discovered that I could better manage my mornings and boost productivity. However, sustaining this early schedule became challenging due to conflicts with my business commitments. Subsequently, I shifted to waking up at 5 AM daily. With this adjusted schedule, I could afford to sleep a bit later (around 11 PM) and still achieve 7 hours of sleep per day. Importantly, I realised that 6 hours of sleep per day wasn't sufficient for maintaining focus and long-term productivity. Hence, I've adhered to the 5 AM schedule for several months now.

Building a second brain

This was one of the most interesting concepts I learned this year. To be more productive, we not only need good habits but also a system that automates trivial tasks for us. Thanks to [Tiago Forte - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TiagoForte) and other related channels, I've learned many things about building a knowledge system to enhance productivity. The following highlights summarise what I've learned:

• Checklist: The first thing is a to-do system to keep track of things with due dates. I tried options like Microsoft To Do and Todoist. After spending 3 months building a habit with these tools, I couldn't find one that exactly matched my needs. So, I moved to Obsidian.
• Schedule: Time is my invaluable asset, and I always want to optimise it for achieving more. I switched from Google Calendar to Microsoft Outlook Calendar due to reasons such as having an annual plan for Microsoft 365 and a preference for Microsoft's focus on security and privacy. However, the integration between Microsoft products and other productivity applications is not smooth. Proton could potentially become a good alternative for private data storage in the future.
• Document: Reflection is important for me to control my behaviours and connect pieces of knowledge. To practice this, I need to document important things that can be automatically linked. So, I decided to build a knowledge graph. I was fascinated when using Logseq for three months, but it reached a point where I needed folders to organise my workflow, which Logseq doesn't support. I switched to an alternative, Obsidian. Although I initially didn't enjoy the user interface (UI) of Obsidian, they released significant UI changes when I started looking for an alternative to Logseq. I now like the new UI of Obsidian and its community plugins, and I've been using it for roughly 3 months now.

Daily journaling

I also started the habit of daily journaling. I spend 1 hour every day reflecting on my experiences. This helps me understand more about my thoughts and feelings regarding what I've experienced, reinforcing the generated knowledge to develop the way I make decisions. Another reason to keep this habit is that it improves my mentality and how I deal with challenges in various situations. Through this practice, I've also learned more about different concepts from many philosophers that are applicable to many aspects of my life.

What's next?

As time is my most valuable asset, I aim to be more productive in the upcoming time. This doesn't imply that I need to work or study harder, but rather produce more outcomes and values in a more effective way.

I believe that I spend more time working and studying than the average person. Given such effort within the finite number of hours per day, I'm always working towards the question "How can I produce and achieve more with less?"

Business

I co-founded a company in Vietnam this year. The mission of our company is to empower the next generation in Vietnam to innovate by applying artificial intelligence and technology to solve societal problems. I've been applying many things I learned from books and learning a lot about real-world scenarios by dealing with numerous challenges. Despite ups and downs, it's good to observe that the company is sustainably growing and moving towards its mission. It's just the first step in the big picture; there will be more to come.

Relationships

I'm working towards building meaningful, strong, and healthy relationships with the people I'm associated with. This helps me build a network of "believable" people who are open and honest with each other. It's also one of the most important factors contributing to my personal growth because I believe that there is always a person willing to point out my weaknesses with honest and constructive feedback. Of course, such a network won't be established without meaningful efforts. Therefore, I will need to spend more time with people who matter to me to understand them.

Achievement

Some highlights of my achievements this year are described below:

• In terms of research, I was pleased to see the payoff for my efforts in 2020 and 2021. Specifically, four academic publications that I was involved in finally got published in reputable conferences and journals. Importantly, one of them received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award in MSR 2022. Moving forward to this year, I had one accepted abstract in OPTiMA, allowing me the opportunity to present the research work in the live conference at the University of Melbourne. Furthermore, I had two accepted publications at the eScience conference and one accepted publication at the CCNC conference.
• Beyond technology, I also gained knowledge in various areas such as team management, time management, business development, philosophy, and innovation. While these pieces of knowledge were conceptualised in books I read, I've been practicing and applying them in real-world scenarios.

Future of Technology

Energy

The world is moving towards energy freedom, meaning that the energy supply chain in an individual country needs to be powerful and sustainable enough to fulfil the country's demand. To achieve this, many factories will be built to store the generated energy and ensure the efficiency of the energy supply. To ensure such efficiency, there is a need to optimise the entire procedure, from storing energy to supplying it. If the factories cannot meet the country's demand, it will create another opportunity for trading energy within the network of merchants.

Artificial Intelligence

The term "Prompt" has become one of the most popular in AI research and development this year. We've witnessed various applications, from "Text to Art" to "Text to Code". This trend signifies a positive step forward, marking the machine's ability to learn with less human intervention. We can now give the machine instructions (i.e., prompts) to generate knowledge. The next challenging question to explore is, "Can the machine self-prompt?"

Privacy-first

An increasing number of people are expressing concerns about the security and privacy of their digital information. Consequently, many technology companies are shifting towards privacy-first campaigns. Despite the economic crisis in cryptocurrency, decentralised technology remains a popular topic garnering attention from large companies. This is because such technology facilitates the achievement of privacy-first goals. To align with the trends in information security and privacy, AI technology and applications need to surpass the limitations of centralisation. This presents a significant opportunity for decentralised federated learning, allowing machines to learn directly on users' devices. If this technology is leveraged effectively, AI won't heavily depend on centralised systems in the near future, and many innovative AI applications in industries like healthcare and defence will be developed.

Digital Twin

Alongside the growth of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology, the digital twin, which is a virtual model reflecting the physical object in the real world, becomes another trending topic. More and more manufacturers, rockets, satellites, and complex objects will be simulated using digital twins. Not only that, but people will also be able to interact with such objects in the virtual world, making them look like the real ones.

Note-taking and Productivity

On the other note, as people are adopting the mindset of "achieving more with less", productivity apps will become one of the phenomenal trends in the upcoming time. A preview of this is the fast growth of note-taking apps that project notes in the graph to show the connection between pieces of generated knowledge.

Quotes of the year