Challenges

Since around 2003 I've informally had at least one personal challenge running each year; this became more deliberate in 2008. Here's the list.

  1. Learn Russian using my own vibe-coded iOS AI-first language app.

  2. Dedicate the year to deeply exploring longevity biotech and figuring out how to help solve aging.

  3. Rebuild my personal operating system and physical health for longevity in work and life.

  4. Make meditation a habit, 10 minutes a day.

  5. Become a generative artist. I learned p5.js, designed an algorithm around slime mould, made generative art, and sold it online.

  6. Read a book a week for a year.

  7. Teach myself a new song on guitar each week. I’d tried this when younger with books/tabs, but YouTube made it possible this time.

  8. Quit alcohol.

  9. Learn Spanish through immersion in Colombia and Spain, daily lessons with a tutor.

  10. Get a startup off the ground in London.

  11. Get good at kitesurfing, learn a backroll kiteloop transition.

  12. Teach myself machine learning from first principles: Stanford courses, LSE reinforcement learning, Karpathy, backprop from scratch, MNIST etc.

  13. I hadn’t coded outside Excel/VBA for a few years, so I learned Python for data science/ML.

  14. Complete the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exams straight through: three levels, first attempt, ~95% failure-rate path.

  15. Get under 2:30 in an Olympic triathlon. Finished London in 2:30:02, officially missing by two seconds.

  16. Survive an IRONMAN triathlon.

  17. Make money algo-trading sports prediction markets.

  18. Learn to play Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu with modern piano training techniques.

  19. Become a ski instructor, ski every day of the season.

  20. Solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute.

  21. Freedive to 30m depth and a sub-6-minute static breath hold.

  22. Complete the Feynman Lectures on Physics.