2026 Resolutions
Table of Contents
Last year, I struggled to stick to my resolutions. Perhaps this is because I set myself too hard goals, or I didn’t try hard enough. Either way, it was not a successful experience. This year, I will write my resolutions in the prophetic past tense, as a method of improving how many goals I hit.
Heath / Lifestyle
In 2026, I maintained my reduced sugar intake.
In 2024, I greatly reduced the amount of sugar that I eat. I want to continue to maintain this, as well as start tracking it.
In 2026, I went on 52 bike rides.
This one is self-explanatory, 1 ride per week.
In 2026, I meditated on 250 days.
I’ve been meditating on & off for a while, but I think consistently doing it would be so beneficial to my health and well-being. I will aim for 5 - 10 minute sessions.
In 2026, I did 250 stretch/yoga sessions
I really need to build up more mobility to prevent myself from getting stiff when I’m older, these sessions will help with this.
In 2026, I did 5,500 push-ups
I’m also look to build up upper body strength, as well as forcing myself to do some exercise in the mornings.
Personal Development
In 2026, I read 12 books.
| Month | Book |
|---|---|
| January | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest |
| February | |
| March | |
| April | |
| May | |
| June | |
| July | |
| August | |
| September | |
| October | |
| November | |
| December |
In 2026, I read 50 scientific papers.
As part of this, I thought I’d read Ilya’s 30u30. I know a lot about the concepts in some of the papers/blogs, but I think reading them in more detail will be useful.
| Title | Short Review |
|---|---|
| End-to-end multi-modal product matching in fashion e-commerce | Interesting paper, Zalando discuss using CLIP + a custom linear projection head to produce embeddings that allow them to find products that are the same across multiple sellers. One point of note was that they that images are so much more important than text when using these types of models to embed fashion information. |
| The First Law of Complexodynamics | Initially, I was confused on why this is included in the 30u30. But, after thinking about it, it kind of makes sense for ML. We want to ensure that the entropy within the model is at the point at which something complex occurs. This is where we will get the most interesting results. |
| The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks | Lovely blog post from Karpathy where he trains lots of different character based RNNs and shows how good you can get the results. It really inspires me to mess around with smaller models just to do fun things. |
| Prompt Repetition Improves Non-Reasoning LLMs | This paper is kind of a funny one, and I think sums up modern AI research. Essentially, they found that by repeating the input prompt 2x or 3x, the model significantly outperforms just saying the prompt once - without increasing latency (since the prompt can be part of the cached pre-fill step). Super interesting, and one that is worth trying out any time you are working with LLMs. |
In 2026, I solidified my level B Portuguese.
My lessons that I started last year really helped with building up my confidence. Now it’s time to apply that & really reach independence when talking in Portuguese.
In 2026, I revamped gpt-cotts for the modern LLM era.
I think that gpt-cotts FE is in a poor state. It’s hard to work with and requires a new FE to really compete with the FEs that Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini have. It needs to be revamped and really have a USP to make it worth using.
In 2026, I finished mojchine-learning
Mojchine-Learning is my attempt at writing various ML techniques from scratch in both PyTorch (Easy) and Mojo (Much Harder). I think this will be very useful to finish.
Travel
In 2026, I visited 10 places outside of London.
January
Flaine, France
February
Old Trafford, Manchester, England.
Monthly Reflections
January
I have been progressing well towards my goals in January. I’m behind on a lot, but I feel like I’ve been puttingin the effort to at least try to do them, which I think will set good groundwork for future months. Only thing to work on is reading papers, for which I have to come to terms with the fact that I won’t remember everything from the paper, just the important bits. It’s a different style of reading than what I’m used too, and one I’m looking forward to practicing.