Here is my annual review of 2023 to answer the following three questions:

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What did I learn?

1. What Went Well This Year?

Families

• Ping and I had our wedding ceremony Dec 31st, 2010. It’s hard to imagine that we now have been married for 13 years. We now have two lovely boys Michael and Jordan to live with us.

• Ping graduated with a PhD degree in Marketing, and she started her lecturer job in the marketing department at our school. Her office and mine are 20-step walk away, which means we can have lunch together whenever we can.

• Michael has been doing well in school. My wife and I were worried that he might not adapt well due to skipping a grade. But he seems to be pretty accustomed to be around kids that are one year older than him.

• Jordan is turning five in about a month. He impressed us all with his terrific memory. He can sing with mostly correct lyrics after listening to a song a few times. His favorite artists include PJ Masks, Taylor Swift, Jay Chou.

Work

• Tenure package submitted I have submitted my tenure package this year. Hopefully, I will get the tenure promotion in 2024 spring semester.

• 2 papers were accepted I have two papers accepted for publication this year.

• 8 submissions. I had 8 submissions to journals this year, including some initial submissions and some revise-and-resubmit:

  • JAIS: 3
  • ISR: 2
  • POM: 2
  • DSS: 1

• 30 minutes daily challenge. I spend at least 30 minutes per day on my research projects for 365 days. This is my second year of achieving this laughably small research goal.

• Bootstrap Research Grants. I was awarded $5K from Ivy College of Business for research support in the next year.

Reading

• I read 46 books this year. Out of these, these are the five that I highly recommend:

  1. The Las Vegas Madam by Jami Rodman
  2. Red Roulette by Desmond Shum
  3. On Writing by Stephen King
  4. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
  5. Getting Things Done by David Allen

Travel

China for a month in July-August.

• We enjoyed the trip to China where we met our families and friends from China. It was the first trip for our younger son Jordan.

Running

• I ran 1,783 miles this year, which is around 5 miles per day.

• I Finished 1 Marathon: Boston Marathon in April.

• I Finished the Rim2Rim2Rim in October, covering 48 miles in 17 hours. The resulting injury is why I missed the New York City Marathon in November.

Health

• Eye surgery I had SMILE, small incision lenticule extraction, surgery in Wuhan in July to correct my -4 vision in both eyes. So far, I have enjoyed the benefit of no glasses although there are some dry eye episodes.

Piano lessons

It’s been three years since I started taking weekly piano lessons. I’ve started posting some songs on YouTube and Facebook now. Here is a video I recorded playing River Flows in You (by Yiruma).

2. What Didn’t Go So Well This Year?

• A big fight with my elder sister-in-law. I will write about it and link to that post once it is ready. Here is the post in Chinese

3. What Did I Learn?

• I enjoy reading.

The more I read, the more I enjoy it. I would not imagine achieving the goal of reading one book a week, but now I am very close to it. I will try to achieve this one-book-a-week goal in 2024.

• Talking to others helps.

Chatting with friends involves both listening attentively and sharing my thoughts, a process I find quite therapeutic and enjoyable. Additionally, I’ve noticed that I sleep better after having more conversations with my friends.