2025 in Review and My Flags for 2026

How My 2025 Flags Turned Out

Starting a Company

My 2025 flags were quietly written in my journal rather than made public — I was a little timid, unsure whether I could hit my goals, and afraid of looking too impatient. On 2 January 2025, I wrote in my journal:

I want to do something of value;

I need to really settle down and ground myself;

I want to ride the waves in the great sea battle of AI,

... maybe it's time I started a company. Amazingly, two weeks later, on 16 January, I had my first discussion with my partners, and things launched quickly from there. A year on, it feels like a lifetime ago. Arcus42 is now registered in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, is preparing to obtain the relevant financial licences, and has a million in profit and a small but tight-knit team.

Looking back now, the "first stirring of intention" may really have an enormous, mysterious influence on the direction a person's life takes.

Yet once you have a direction and a strategy, "getting things done" depends on execution, day after day.

So habits are still the homework I need to work on. Beyond that, in 2026 I'll keep focusing on getting things done, focus, sleep and learning.

Habits

"Habits" are a person's foundation.

Reading, journaling, planning and exercise are the daily habits I've been trying to build for several years. But they're like an "impossible quadrilateral" — I can never keep all four going at once.

"Reading" has always done best, because it has become a "habitual action" I can start without thinking. Of the rest, "journaling" has helped me the most, and writing has slowly become my "signature tool"; "planning" helps most with getting things done; and "rehab training" is the thing I need most, most, most, yet do worst, worst, worst. Here's how I did:

• Reading: goal 300+ days vs 236 days done

• Journaling: goal 300+ days vs 255 days done

• Planning: goal 300+ days vs 127 days done

• Exercise: goal 200+ days vs 178 days done

• Writing: 52 WeChat articles vs 62 done

*Definition of planning: identifying the three most important things for the day;

*Definition of exercise: if I did it, it counts

Habit Trends Over the Past Four Years

YearReadingJournalingPlanningExerciseWriting2022232177122NA2820233111915810027202425318112318149202523625517817862

Routine

When it comes to building habits, routine is extremely important. Without setting aside specific times to do things, it's very hard to form a habit. So stick to the routine you've set for yourself.

Plan: get up between 7:30 and 8:30 AM, read and plan; before bed, 10:30–11:30 PM, read and journal; keep half of Sunday for myself.

How it went: hard to track, and I feel I did only so-so, but having this plan to guide me was of some use. Its effect is that I don't stray too far — the deviation is basically within 1.5 hours.

Sleep

Above every other goal, I'll make sure I get more than 7.5 hours of sleep, aiming for 8–9 hours and waking up naturally.

Getting Things Done

Do the right things, and do things right.

Do what I say I'll do.

On this front, the results were sharply divided.

In the startup, with partners and milestones pushing me, I really did get a lot done. But in my personal life, and in our own single-family-office matters, I fell well short.

Because I didn't arrange my existing work properly before starting something new, I felt stretched thin at work.

The fix here is — add people, and move the things I used to do myself into organisational processes.

The other thing is — don't say yes to so many things!

Focus

Do fewer things, do them better, and truly own myself.

Decluttering: I did little of it with material things, but a lot in relationships. I made fewer new friends and became more of an introvert.

Cutting down my to-do list: hard to sustain in a startup, especially in the strategy-exploration phase. It needs regular sorting out.

Reading

Reading: this year I leaned towards the humanities, but the humanities are a vast ocean, very hard to grasp in outline, so I'm still at the stage of not understanding them very well.

The Dedao app:

Courses

Harvard Business School's OPM and the Yale innovation scholars programme also gave me gains along different dimensions — especially OPM Unit 2; perhaps because I'd already started my company by then, my brain was running at full speed every single day.

Yale's humanistic spirit, the professors' public-mindedness, and the students' gentleness and kindness all benefited me enormously! Gaoshan (GASA): Gaoshan is Gaoshan, and everything else is everything else. All I can say is that Gaoshan is part of my life. Philanthropy

• Education foundation- Teach For China- Elderly people in Yunnan- Children in Hebei- Tsinghua University Science Museum

2025's "Firsts": every year some odd firsts happen, and in 2025... First trip to Vietnam; first trip to Chiang Mai; first time ringing the Nasdaq bell; first time curating an art exhibition; first time performing the melodica in public; first time doing Indian dance; first time opening a blind box; first time pole dancing; first time swimming freestyle

My Flags for 2026

A few new goals

1. Learn to rest well;

2. Put the "people and things" that truly matter in the long run in a truly important place;

3. Learn AI deliberately;

4. Build my company deliberately, not blindly.

The concrete check-ins to complete

1. Reading: more than 300 days;

2. Journaling: more than 300 days, and on top of my gratitude journal, use AI to keep a startup journal;

3. Planning: more than 200 days;

4. Rehab training: more than 300 days, including more than 100 days with a coach;

5. Writing: more than 104 WeChat articles;

6. Every Sunday morning, schedule nothing at all: good rest + calling my family;

7. Every Sunday afternoon, learn new AI tools and new knowledge;

8. In the last week of every quarter, review my work and declutter people/things/stuff.

Routine

The daily schedule I'll stick to wherever I go —

I fail at it every year, and every year I make it again 🤣

Defeated again and again, fighting on again and again!

7:30 Get up + meditate; 7:40 Read; 8:10 Rehab training – activate the core; 8:40 Wash, dress + breakfast; 9:00 Head out, work 6 blocks, each work block 25 minutes with a 5-minute break in between. 12:00–13:30 Avoid business lunches where possible, eat simply and healthily + read + nap; 1:30 Work 4 blocks; 3:30 Rehab training; 4:30 Work 3 blocks; 6:00 Dinner; 7:30 Work 5 blocks. 18 work blocks a day, 9 hours of work — you can get a lot done. 21:00 Home; 21:30 Stretching + rehab training; 22:30 Journal; 23:00 Wash up (ideally a hot shower)

23:30 Meditate + sleep (hopefully)

That's all — please keep me accountable!