十年尺度下的人生重塑，是真洞察也是赢家叙事

再看看如今这个显然把生活过得很满的我：

10 年前，也就是 2016 年：

我的对冲基金职业生涯突然结束了。而这条路，我从高中起就花了差不多十年去铺垫，结果老板忽然离职，一切戛然而止。
除了在 Jupyter Notebooks 里写点 pandas，再加上那两年用 Haskell 做期权定价这种没什么用的经验，我几乎不会写代码。后来只能靠 @freecodecamp 和 @fullstack 重新学。
我没有博客。没过多久我才开始在 Medium 上写东西。那时我也没有活跃的 Twitter 账号，主要只是潜水在 Facebook、Tickld，后来是 Reddit。
我刚结束一段很短暂、说不上关系的关系，接下来差不多 8 年里，基本也没有什么机会和谁谈恋爱。
我在旧金山几乎没有朋友。搬去纽约后，也只是有些同事朋友，短暂有过一些阿卡贝拉圈子的朋友，除此之外大多时间都一个人待在 Chelsea 和 Flatiron。那一年我最大的社交活动，是和一位老同学去斐济潜了一次无笼虎鲨。

而现在，2026 年：

我有了自己深信不疑的一句座右铭，从最早的 Learn in Public，演变成现在的 achieve ambition with intentionality, intensity, integrity & insanity。

我在 AI Engineering 里做出了自己的事业，也推动了很多别人的职业发展。现在除非出于自我驱动，或者为了值得投入的事情，否则其实并不需要工作太多。反正我花钱也不多。
我甚至给旧金山的一个片区起了自己的名字，笑死。
我写 JS 和 Python 还是偏慢，但已经懂得足够多，很多事都能靠提示完成。
说到媒体资产，我有 @latentspacepod、@dxtipshq、swyx.io，还有 Twitter。
我有 @mada299，有两只狗，生活里有很多很好的朋友，甚至还在 18 年后第一次唱了百老汇歌曲。网上也有几十万人多少知道我是谁。

这十年当然也不完美。我在 2022 和 2023 年明明有很好的机会，却没能早点加入一家 AI 实验室；我从 2019 年就开始接触深度学习，却没有继续更深入地走下去；随着代谢变化，身体状态一路下滑；一些朋友和导师离世了；我也和一些原本非常非常不想失去的朋友与伴侣走散了；Smol 最后并没有走到一个我真正有信念的方向，而是被并入了 Cognition；还有，不管这件事算不算重要，我依然没有孩子，陪伴家人的时间也比理想中少。

但总体来看，我觉得自己的 30 多岁过得比 20 多岁好多了。顺带一提，很多到了 40 多岁的人，回头看时似乎也都会这么说。我想，每隔 2 到 5 年就不得不重塑自己一次，大概让我的大脑可塑性一直保持得不错。毕竟这些年里，我先后做过中央银行从业者、期权交易员、股票分析师、金融科技从业者、前端、数据工程、开发者关系、平台工程师，以及现在这个说不上到底算干嘛的工作。但代价也是明显的：我越来越难为别人工作，也越来越难接受那些和自己不同、而且在我看来并不明显更高明的愿景。当然，这希望只是某种微妙的坚持，不是傲慢地否定所有别人的视角。

也许这在亚洲传统里尤其明显。年轻的时候，我更愿意接受社会和上位者替我安排的路径，接受他们告诉我该做什么，什么才算好表现。后来才意识到，这个世界其实是由一群并不比你更聪明的人在运转。甚至那些真心为你好的人，最后给你开的，也常常只是一些你根本不想赢的游戏。真正持久的满足感、幸福感、切身投入感，以及最大化学习的路径，只有一条：认真研究每个人在玩什么游戏，定义你自己的游戏，然后尽你所能把它玩到最好。

这件事最简单的名字，叫自我信念。也就是，你真的、真正地相信自己，可以去押注那些你真心认为正确、必要的人、机会、公司和一切事物；哪怕别人冷嘲热讽、态度暧昧，你依然愿意长时间持续而不屈地投入有意识的努力，把你知道这个世界必须存在的东西，一点点变成现实。

毕竟，世界上一切美好的东西，也都是别人走过同样混乱的旅程之后做出来的。

一年之后，你大概率还是会在想、也会在做今天就觉得自己一年后会想和会做的那些事。

可如果把时间拉到十年，一切都可能改变。尤其是在即将到来的这个十年里，它大概会是人类最关键的十年。

很期待在 2036 年见到你。撑住，也请善待别人，善待自己。

I turned 40 today. For my 35th I did principles, but for my 40th, I wanted to offer perhaps more useful decade-long reflections.

Bill Gates is credited with saying that ‘Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.’ I have just completed what many consider to be a good ten years. If you are me 10 years ago, you might like the perspective my ten years brings.

Compare the relative isolation and family-only-ness of me 10 years ago:

to the very full life I obviously live now:

10 years ago (2016):

My hedge fund career (which I had spent ~a decade working towards since high school) had abruptly ended with my boss suddenly leaving
I couldn't code much other than writing pandas in Jupyter Notebooks, and my (useless) 2 years of Haskell for options pricing. Had to do @freecodecamp AND @fullstack to learn.
I had no blog (i would start a Medium shortly after). I did not have an active Twitter account, primarily lurking in Facebook/Tickld and then Reddit
I had just ended a short situationship and basically had no chance of dating anyone for the next 8 years
I had ~no friends in San Francisco; when I moved to New York I just had work friends, and briefly, acapella friends, but otherwise mostly kept to myself in Chelsea/Flatiron. My biggest social event of the year was a cageless tiger shark dive trip to Fiji with an old school friend.

Now, 2026:

I have my own motto I strongly believe in — evolving from "Learn in Public" to now "achieve ambition with intentionality, intensity, integrity & insanity".
I've made my own career and the careers of many others in AI Engineering, don't really have to work except for self-motivation and worthwhile causes (i dont spend much)
I've named my own district of San Francisco lol

I can code JS/Python slowly but know enough to prompt most things
As for media properties, I have @latentspacepod and @dxtipshq and swyx.io and Twitter
I have @mada299 and 2 dogs and many good friends in my life (even doing a Broadway song for the first time in 18 years!) and hundreds of thousands vaguely know me online.

It's not been a perfect ten years: I failed to join an AI lab early despite strong opportunities in 2022 and 2023, I did not proceed further in deep learning despite starting in 2019, my fitness has steadily declined with my metabolism, friends/mentors have passed on, I've parted ways with friends and partners I would very very much rather not have lost, Smol ended up getting folded into Cognition rather than finding a direction I had conviction in, and (for whatever it is worth) I still do not have kids and spent less time with family than I ideally would want.

But overall I think my 30's went much better than my 20's. For what it's worth, most people in their 40's seem to report feeling that way looking back. I think having to reinvent myself every 2-5 years (variously, I've been a central banker, an options trader, an equities analyst, a fintech guy, a frontend guy, a data engineering guy, a devrel guy, a platform engineering guy, and now whatever the fuck it is i do) has kept neuroplasticity strong, but also come at the cost of being able to work for anyone or, increasingly, accept visions different than my own that does not make sense to me as evidently superior (this is hopefully and subtly different than arrogance in rejecting everyone else's POV).

Maybe this is stronger in Asian traditions, but when I was younger, I was much more willing to accept what society/superiors told me was my path, what I should do, what "good performance" meant. But then I realized the world is run by people no smarter than you — and even people that genuinely mean well, end up only prescribing games that you don't want to win. The only lasting path to satisfaction, happiness, skin in the game, maximizing learning, is to really study everybody's game, define your own, and then play it to the best of your ability.

The simple name for this is self-belief - that you can ACTUALLY, truly, bet on things and opportunities and people and companies and whatever you genuinely believe to be true and necessary, despite the cynicism and ambivalence of others, and to exert persistent and unyielding intentional effort over time to make real what you know needs to exist in the world.

After all, everything else Good in the world was made by someone else who went through the exact same messy journey.

In one year you'll probably mostly be thinking and doing what you think you'll be doing in a year today.

In a decade, EVERYTHING can change. Especially in this coming, probably most critical decade of humanity.

I'm excited to see you in 2036. Hang in there and be good to others and to yourself.

我今天 40 岁了。35 岁生日时我写过一篇关于原则的文章，但到了 40 岁，我想分享一些也许更有用的、以十年为尺度的感想。

比尔·盖茨常被认为说过这样一句话：

大多数人高估了自己一年内能做到的事，却低估了自己十年内能做到的事。

我刚刚走完一个在很多人看来相当不错的十年。如果你是 10 年前的我，也许会想看看，这十年能带来怎样的视角。

先看看 10 年前那个相对孤立、生活几乎只有家人的我：

再看看如今这个显然把生活过得很满的我：

10 年前，也就是 2016 年：

我的对冲基金职业生涯突然结束了。而这条路，我从高中起就花了差不多十年去铺垫，结果老板忽然离职，一切戛然而止。
除了在 Jupyter Notebooks 里写点 pandas，再加上那两年用 Haskell 做期权定价这种没什么用的经验，我几乎不会写代码。后来只能靠 @freecodecamp 和 @fullstack 重新学。
我没有博客。没过多久我才开始在 Medium 上写东西。那时我也没有活跃的 Twitter 账号，主要只是潜水在 Facebook、Tickld，后来是 Reddit。
我刚结束一段很短暂、说不上关系的关系，接下来差不多 8 年里，基本也没有什么机会和谁谈恋爱。
我在旧金山几乎没有朋友。搬去纽约后，也只是有些同事朋友，短暂有过一些阿卡贝拉圈子的朋友，除此之外大多时间都一个人待在 Chelsea 和 Flatiron。那一年我最大的社交活动，是和一位老同学去斐济潜了一次无笼虎鲨。

而现在，2026 年：

我有了自己深信不疑的一句座右铭，从最早的 Learn in Public，演变成现在的 achieve ambition with intentionality, intensity, integrity & insanity。

我在 AI Engineering 里做出了自己的事业，也推动了很多别人的职业发展。现在除非出于自我驱动，或者为了值得投入的事情，否则其实并不需要工作太多。反正我花钱也不多。
我甚至给旧金山的一个片区起了自己的名字，笑死。
我写 JS 和 Python 还是偏慢，但已经懂得足够多，很多事都能靠提示完成。
说到媒体资产，我有 @latentspacepod、@dxtipshq、swyx.io，还有 Twitter。
我有 @mada299，有两只狗，生活里有很多很好的朋友，甚至还在 18 年后第一次唱了百老汇歌曲。网上也有几十万人多少知道我是谁。

毕竟，世界上一切美好的东西，也都是别人走过同样混乱的旅程之后做出来的。

一年之后，你大概率还是会在想、也会在做今天就觉得自己一年后会想和会做的那些事。

可如果把时间拉到十年，一切都可能改变。尤其是在即将到来的这个十年里，它大概会是人类最关键的十年。

很期待在 2036 年见到你。撑住，也请善待别人，善待自己。

I turned 40 today. For my 35th I did principles, but for my 40th, I wanted to offer perhaps more useful decade-long reflections.

Compare the relative isolation and family-only-ness of me 10 years ago:

to the very full life I obviously live now:

10 years ago (2016):

My hedge fund career (which I had spent ~a decade working towards since high school) had abruptly ended with my boss suddenly leaving
I couldn't code much other than writing pandas in Jupyter Notebooks, and my (useless) 2 years of Haskell for options pricing. Had to do @freecodecamp AND @fullstack to learn.
I had no blog (i would start a Medium shortly after). I did not have an active Twitter account, primarily lurking in Facebook/Tickld and then Reddit
I had just ended a short situationship and basically had no chance of dating anyone for the next 8 years
I had ~no friends in San Francisco; when I moved to New York I just had work friends, and briefly, acapella friends, but otherwise mostly kept to myself in Chelsea/Flatiron. My biggest social event of the year was a cageless tiger shark dive trip to Fiji with an old school friend.

Now, 2026:

I have my own motto I strongly believe in — evolving from "Learn in Public" to now "achieve ambition with intentionality, intensity, integrity & insanity".
I've made my own career and the careers of many others in AI Engineering, don't really have to work except for self-motivation and worthwhile causes (i dont spend much)
I've named my own district of San Francisco lol

I can code JS/Python slowly but know enough to prompt most things
As for media properties, I have @latentspacepod and @dxtipshq and swyx.io and Twitter
I have @mada299 and 2 dogs and many good friends in my life (even doing a Broadway song for the first time in 18 years!) and hundreds of thousands vaguely know me online.