Another year has come to an end, and a new one is about to get started. And with the start of a new year, it is a time-honored tradition all around the world to put pen to paper and write down our resolutions for the next 365 days ahead.
However, likely, we won’t manage to execute on those. According to research on the topic, about 60 percent of us admit that we make New Year’s resolutions, but only about 8 percent of us are successful in achieving them. Aware of the high probability of falling into that cohort, this year, I decided to bring this task a couple of weeks forward.
This year represents a change of decade; it’s a special one. I would like to have written everything that happened in the last ten years. I usually take my notebook everywhere, a black hardcover Moleskine. I love writing about my ideas, my thoughts, about my goals. Sometimes, I skim through what I wrote and reflect on the objectives I managed to accomplish. Also, it’s fun to remember others I don’t understand why I thought of in the first place. But this is a relatively recent habit. With the start of the new year, the new decade, I decided to start writing (again). Write about what I see, what I experience, about the intersection of my biggest passions: business, technology, and bringing products to the market. But most importantly, write from a personal (and positive) standpoint.
The decade behind
A lot can change in ten years. When the sun rose on December 22, 2009, I was coming home after a long night of well-deserved celebrations with my classmates from the university. Today I’m flying back to Spain from San Francisco to celebrate Christmas with my wife and the rest of my family. But it’s not just our lives that have changed.
In 2010, Facebook was still an upstart, having just made its way to profitability, Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple and Tinder, Twitch, and TikTok simply didn’t exist.
At a broader level, the individual stories of the last ten years can be boiled down to a few macro trends:
- The consolidation of social media and its global expansion.
- The advancements on autonomous driving (Waymo began as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009)
- The next wave of breakthroughs on Augmented and Virtual reality. (Here five expected to come up soon)
- Or the rise of artificial intelligence.
On a personal level, these last ten years have been (how can I say it?) just frenetic. Live in three (and a half — this deserves a separate essay) countries, finish my masters, start working for Google, meet my wife, travel the world, understand what losing a loved one means. Work hard, work harder, meet incredible people, and don’t lose track of those I met a long time ago.
The year ahead
For more than ten years, we have been waiting for this moment. I’ve seen hundreds of annual business plans referring to 2020 as the ‘Looking Ahead’, ‘Long term’, ‘Forward-looking’, ‘The Long-run’. It’s here, just twelve days away. Now it’s time to roll up the sleeves and execute on everything we have been promising in the last decade. 2020 doesn’t feel as futuristic as five years ago. Besides the Cybertruck, of course. I guess that doesn’t get more futuristic than that.
On a personal note, I am looking forward to the new year, the new decade. A lot of exciting projects in the pipeline, countries to explore and The Highlights, the new ‘black Moleskine’ I plan to fill with my notes, thoughts, and ideas.
Here’s to the decade behind and the year ahead.
This is a personal blog. Any views or opinions represented in this blog are personal and belong solely to the blog author and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the author may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated.
