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.
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）：
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.
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.
swyx 🇸🇬@swyx · X