Reflecting on 2010 to 2019

What transpired in the past decade made me change my attitude and perceptions in life.

In a nutshell, I have been thinking like an engineer and spending resources like a business person. By the way, I am actually a Business Administration graduate.

While I could remain to be vague about it today, I have more than a plan. Much the work has been done in this decade. The year 2020 looks more like a year of completion for me. Luck has been on my side too, but there was nothing which science could not explain about this luck I am talking about. Any form of engineering should be exact science. I recall a civil engineer and geodetic engineer kin who’s a councilor in the Summer Capital of the Philippines telling me this: “Everything should be precise. This is engineering. The conflicts will exist, but it will be too difficult to lose if you take logical steps.” And he was right.

But what is precise in some engineering fields can be vague. The tools are not perfect, the engineers are not perfect, and most certainly money tends to flip things.

Beyond bureaucracy and corruption, it seems that we are still changing the definition of precise in different fields of engineering.

I am quite certain that even the kilogram definition has changed in this decade with Planck’s Constant.

You can read the National Geographic and their articles on breakthrough discoveries in this decade. I write this to reflect on why I aim to live a very different life in the future.

Before I lose myself to work, I want to write down some of the most important lessons I learned in this decade because I most definitely could not write them all down here as I need to spend some time celebrating New Year’s Eve:

1. Benevolence and willingness to learn matter more than experience.
2. The cost-benefit principle matters. Try your best to predict and measure long-term benefits.
3. Think like my great great great grandfather. Fight. Mine is a centennial hero.
4. Formal education does not matter much, but you must finish what you started.
5. Tech can be bureaucratic. Be technically correct anyway.
6. Family and health above everything else.
7. Teach people what you know for free.

In the year 2020, I will write more. Likely, I will be working towards building and engineering things that really last for decades. Definitely, not on my own.