1
This year has truly been an incredibly wonderful year. Wonderful means ups and downs. It means countless setbacks, regrets, unwillingness, pain, and struggle. “Ample doses of pain.” Then comes growth. Summarize first, then tell slowly.
Goals for 2026:
- Work hard, publish models, keep learning
- Keep exercising at least 3 times/week
- Finish recording Ilya’s 30 papers, publish tech blog
- Maybe continue writing AI sci-fi novels
- If have time, hobbies can still breakthrough, Rubik’s cube, chess
Looking back at 2025 goals:
- ✅ Work hard, strive for 50-60h+ per week (obviously wrote less)
- ✅ Really can’t catch a cold anymore 😷 Fitness well
- ✅ Reading blogger transforming to workplace blogger?
- ❌ Continue to improve hobbies, Rubik’s cube, chess
- Still need to continue reading books, publishing book reviews ✅ Blog / Video
2
This year, changed two jobs, worked for 3 companies
This year, moved from South Bay to San Francisco, took n flights, went to the East Coast 3 times
This year, embraced AI more, fell in love with vibe coding
This year, understood “love” what you do - build things
- Participated in countless hackathons, did many interesting personal projects
This year, invested unprecedented time to work, and study
- Calculated my time more carefully, first Saturday evening
- Then Sunday morning, afternoon, finally Friday night
This year, finally realized system design, and ran all the way on the road of learning AI
- Also ran all the way on the road of learning from AI (Understand AI, become AI?)
This year, feel IQ increased by another 10 points
- Met many, many smartest people in the world
This year, English level has significantly improved again
However, also
In this year, received an unprecedented number of rejection letters
In this year, broke up, started enjoying solitude again
3
In the darkest week
When work and life both fuck up
When receiving a rejection letter every day of the week
somehow I still firmly believe
God wants me to get rich
Actually wrote a very long article about interview stories
Reading it now is still quite wonderful, have a chance to organize the full text to share
Probably failed many, many, many interviews
The ones I wanted to go to most were very close
But the coin toss was on the other side of fate
From pounding the thigh to becoming numb
Experience is resume needs to be bold, learn hello Interview, find partner to mock
And the best way to relieve receiving rejection letters is to submit new resumes
somehow finally passed Reflection AI
Found too many like-minded nerds, can be considered guidance of fate
4
Thinking back carefully, close to 9 months of the 12 months this year were spent on startups
Although finally didn’t cash out, and gave up Google’s opportunity cost
But harvested huge savage growth, exploring in the wilderness
Specifically, from January to September were all startups
Used my own strength to go from engineer to founder
Pulled my good brothers to join, finally ruined the company
Indeed not blaming myself - mainly because someone else was unreliable
Paid to brush up questions to prepare for interviews, learn AI, do projects, apply for YC together
Inflated with confidence together, finally failed interviews together, received rejection letters together
Fortunately, finally got the best offer I could get
Always had an idea, just want to find a place to roll meaningfully
Want to devote myself wholeheartedly, want to concentrate, focus on getting things done
So through my own efforts, successfully lived a 996 life?
Fortunately, the brothers also had good places to go, skipped levels back to big factories to work
5
“If you look at yourself 1 month ago and feel naive, it means you have grown again”
These last 12 months have indeed been growing all the time
Almost every week there are new learnings to share
So started writing my own blog this year, jinspire.dev
Wrote a lot about my understanding of AI and growth in startups
Will also often share content on LinkedIn and Xiaohongshu
Also wrote a lot of sci-fi novels about AI
fiction.jinspire.dev
This year wrote many, many projects, participated in countless hackathons
Interesting ones include:
studies.win
what-can-ai-do.com
bountyhub.ai
Indeed a regret is not having too much time to continue development
Hope 2026 can make up for it, high probability will drag to 2027
6
This year is not only a year of rapid AI development
It is also the year with the fastest speed of human-machine integration
Actually you have a very good friend
It is Xiaohongshu, knows what posts you like to browse
It is YouTube, knows what videos you like to watch
It is instagram, it is tiktok, it is recommendation is advertisement
Actually, AI has long been your best friend
Just this year, it learned to speak
It is ChatGPT, is deepseek, claude, grok, is Gemini
Talking to large models is talking to great sages
So indeed agree, the most important skill in the future is learning to use AI
My views on AI also began to be more certain
For example, AI is definitely conscious
For example, the apocalyptic worry about AI is also gradually reduced
7 Sharing a few speeches and articles that touched me
Zhang Yiming Weibo: “Regarding diligence, as far as I know, rare successful people do not work extremely long hours: GE’s CEO worked one hundred hours a week and persisted for at least ten years.”
Jensen Huang’s speech at Stanford, “I wish you suffering”
Mark Zuckerberg comments on “The Social Network” “They [the filmmakers] just couldn’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”
Philosophy/Life/Religion “This is Water”
Demis/Deepmind “The Thinking Game”
Richard Liu’s speech at Oxford University
Yang Chen-ning/Shing-Tung Yau’s speeches on physics/science frontiers
Yu Minhong’s interviews with practitioners in various fields (also published books)
Of course, this year is a year of continuing to like “The Evolution of Things”
Gemini’s interpretation is very profound
wuyantonglun.jinspire.dev
Also re-read a lot of intellectual history, including Liu Qing, Sapiens
Philosophically, realized that existentialism is nonsense and lies, is a painkiller
The real classics are still the Axial Age, Kant, Nietzsche
8 Sharing 10 more sentences that touched me:
Break fantasies with action
just fucking do it
Rolling and reading are the admission tickets to the world
Find a place with a high ceiling
Let me think step by step
Discussing without deciding is not a hero
live in 4k
Rich spiritual world
Large model is collective unconsciousness
The best time to start a business was 10 years ago, and now
9 Finally still want to talk about life
In stark contrast to the plain 2024
2025 is really too wonderful
Increasingly agree with what Jensen Huang said in his speech
“Ample doses of pain and suffering”
Pain will inspire infinite motivation
Life is constantly discovering yourself
Re-fall in love with things you liked before
Including Rubik’s cube, chess, reading, writing, and sharing
Just this year, realized that build things is also a hobby
Just this year, realized and confirmed my love
Just this year, found like-minded partners
Continue to maintain curiosity about the world, desire for knowledge
2026, destined to be a more rolled, and also more wonderful year!
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