2025 Annual Review

Hello from Ubud, Bali!

Sporadically, I write annual reviews and reflect on my highlights, lowlights and lessons. You can check what happened last year.

TL;DR

2025 was my year of taking a bet on myself.

I kept traveling with my wife, tried to keep my life in balance, quit my job, thought of going on sabbatical but gave in to my curiosity and started a project.

It was a strange year, mostly because both halves felt like two completely different seasons of life. The first half was about working a job and moving around. The second was about doubling down on my own definition of good work while dealing with doubts and uncertainty.

2025 goals

Area	Score	Goals	Notes
Work	4/5	🟢 Make one risky bet 🟡 Ship a paid product	Started Keepsake but didn’t release yet to the public
Money	1/5	🔴 Invest 50% of income	No disposable income, no investments
Health	4/5	🟡 >20% body fat 🟢 +3kg muscle 🟡 Play tennis at least 50x 🟢 Supplements	Went over 20% Gained some weight after a bulk Played tennis consistently only in Q4 Magnesium, creatine, fish oil intake stable
Relationships	4/5	🟢 >1 meaningful connection 🟢 Keep in touch with friends 🟢 Call my mum once a month	Met new friends online by reaching out Made an effort with core group Tried to chat with mum weekly/bi-weekly
Growth	5/5	🔴 Write 12 articles 🟢 Soft skills 🟢 Technical skills	Only finished 2 posts Attended ultraspeaking cohort Learned a tonne with Claude Code
Play	4/5	🟢 Attend 1 music event 🟢 Severance S2 🔴 Read 12 books	Saw Ben Böhmer at Cafe Del Mar Fun goal, but disappointing content Managed to read 4 books only
Spirituality	3/5	🟡 Meditate for 150 days 🟢 Attend a retreat	Meditated for 84 days Attended Hariharalaya in Cambodia

Timeline

We continued traveling, meeting family and friends in different countries, exploring nature and cities, and creating new core memories. Here are a few that stood out.

Thailand

Four months in Thailand. We visited Koh Surin, Khao Lak, Phuket and lived near Bang Tao beach.

Cambodia

Visiting Siem Reap for the first time and attending a 7-day retreat with yoga, silence, 5am sunrise meditation, and Angkor Wat.

Turkey

Seeing my dad after 7 years and introducing him to my wife in Istanbul. Eating Turkish breakfast every day, drinking pomegranate juice, and playing with all the cats. Unpleasant bonus: experiencing my first earthquake.

Spain

Slowing down and living on the outskirts of Spain. Visiting Barcelona and Valencia for the first time.

Czech Republic

Getting lost in Prague, the city I grew up in, and celebrating my friend’s 40th birthday.

Bali, Indonesia

Settling in Ubud, Bali for 6 months and establishing a routine that I’ve missed so much.

Finishing 12 days of Christmas as crossfit exercise on the tennis court

Highlights

The biggest decision this year was to quit my job. It wasn’t easy. I felt valued, had wonderful colleagues, and overall there were more benefits than downsides. But I was closing in on burnout again.
My hands started itching a week into sabbatical. I wanted to see how far I could push LLMs to build something meaningful, something close to my heart. So I got my Claude Code Max subscription from Anthropic, fired up Sonnet 3.7, and got going. What started as an experiment to learn how to work with language models became Keepsake.
I tried to keep in touch with people mindfully this year. It’s hard to maintain relationships as adults, but I’m grateful to have a core group of people from various corners of the world who help me keep my sanity.
My marriage hit 2 years and 1 year since our wedding ceremony. Looking back at all the pictures and videos brought a lot of memories and tears, seeing everyone we love in one place. We’ve also developed as individuals and kept each other in check with honesty and hard work on our triggers.
I hit the gym 180 times this year. Meditated at least 80 days and restarted playing tennis in Bali, a sport I played as a kid and regret not taking seriously. Eating clean was easy and I maintained a high protein diet with supplements (omega, creatine, magnesium). I also improved my sleep with earplugs, honestly such a worthy hack. Overall my stress level decreased significantly, but I still struggle with anxiety (more on that in lowlights).

Lowlights

Auto-pilot mode. My second half of the year turned into a blur, which I was so adamant about avoiding. I hit 16-hour days with breaks only for food and gym, and sustained that pace for around 4 months. Then I started having minor anxiety attacks and bursts of complete apathy. Despite being in the flow and building, it feels like I’m both present and completely oblivious to everything outside of it. There’s something addictive about assisted coding.
Money. I didn’t plan to replace my income and was going to live off savings. It never felt scary since my taste isn’t exactly expensive and I’ve done sabbaticals a few times already. I knew I wanted to take a break to focus on myself: journaling, writing, exploring hobbies I had long forgotten. The trade-off is that it obviously stings financially. Having the time and space to do things I really want to do is an incredible privilege. Years of hard work (and luck) actually paid off.
Uncertainty. With extended time off comes this weird feeling that the world is moving and I’m falling behind. Especially in tech, where I spent the last decade as a product manager and which is currently undergoing a seismic shift due to LLMs. I’ve quit my job twice without any plan and went on months of exploration, yet this feeling is still pervasive. I’ve done a lot of internal work to be okay with it, but the tension still holds. Overworking and not seeing the fruits of labor right away sparks moments of weakness where I ponder “WTF am I doing?”. The root cause is probably years of societal programming, relying on a paycheck, and as an immigrant, being in constant survival mode. The issue is that knowledge is not understanding. Rationalization doesn’t really bring calm. The only antidotes I’ve found helpful are weightlifting, movement, meditation, and catch-ups with people going through the same thing.

Consumption

Various work, storytelling, art and creativity that I enjoyed this year.

Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. I didn’t read much this year, but over the past few years I’ve developed an appreciation for books about living life well. Not Fade Away is a story of Peter Barton, a man who had it all and lived to the fullest, whilst fighting with an illness that severely shortened his time on this planet.
Ultraspeaking was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I heard raving reviews online and had high expectations. I only participated in the fundamentals course and felt like a lot of learning was outsourced to async games with breakout rooms. I’d still recommend it though.
Andor was my favourite piece of fiction this year by a large margin. The manifesto is brilliant, one of the best monologues I’ve seen. It’s one of those rare masterpieces that don’t come out often these days.
I’m not much of a gamer these days, but with all the rumours about Half-Life 3 coming out together with the Steam Machine, I replayed Half-Life 2 and it still holds up really well. This got me on a streak of trying Bioshock for the first time, which depicts an objectivist dystopia going wrong: how absolute self-interest, power concentration, and ethics-free science breed exploitation.
This is also the year I got into anime. I never found it compelling, but a few years back I finished Attack on Titan which got me deep into the genre and its weird yet creative storytelling. I’ve since finished a few classics: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Steins;Gate, Vinland Saga, Solo Leveling, and Jujutsu Kaisen. All fantastic places to start.
My most listened to music was mostly focus and work-related stuff from artists like Tycho, Croquete Club, Koresma, Catching Flies, and the Anjunadeep catalogue.

2026

This year I’m not setting goals. Regardless of what I commit to, things change, and there’s an internal force that drives my wants and needs more than wishful thinking does.

My only intention is to launch Keepsake for beta users, keep working on the product and myself, and welcome life with open arms regardless of what it brings.

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