Here is my annual review of 2024 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 14 years. To celebrate it, I’ve posted my love letter to her in 2003. Here is the link.

• Ping generally enjoyed her job as an adjunct professor in the marketing department at our school. It’s not a stressful job with the perks of winter and summer breaks. In addition, our offices are in the same building, meaning we can have lunches and take walks outside often.

• Both Michael and Jordan are doing well in school, I am glad that both boys are quite social and they enjoy talking to other people.

Work

• Tenure granted. I had been promoted this year. I am officially a tenured Associate Professor at Iowa State University starting from 2024 August.

• 1 paper was accepted. I had one paper accepted for publication at Decision Support Systems this year.

• 11 submissions. I had 9 submissions to journals and 2 submissions to conferences this year:

  • JMIS: 1
  • DSS: 2
  • JAIS: 1
  • ISR: 1
  • MS: 2
  • MISQ: 2
  • CSWIM: 1
  • WISE: 1

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

• Bootstrap Research Grants. I was awarded $6K from Ivy College of Business for research support in the next year.

Reading

60 books I read this year

• I read 60 books this year. These are the five that I highly recommend (with a short summary I wrote for each book):

  1. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

  When I read about how the apprentice learned to please a man on her journey to becoming a geisha, I was reminded of my own experience learning to ‘please’ a reviewer under my PhD advisors’ guidance. This book explores themes of hope, envy, revenge, and kindness.

  Back in 2008, I was puzzled when Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) spoke about ‘women being like water’ in several interviews promoting her movie Red Cliff. Now, I realize that her inspiration may have come from this book, which was adapted into a movie in 2005.

  2. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

  The book captivated me with the way she intricately blends her memories into the narrative of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. While reading, I found myself reflecting on my own experiences running challenging races (like counting my steps), mirroring her journey. She delves into themes of self-medication (heroin and hook-ups) and meditation (focus on the present moment) throughout the book. When she cried out “Come back, MOM” to a fox, it moved me to tears.

  3. Eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert

  Chapter 16 stands out to me the most. In it, Elizabeth employs personification to portray depression and loneliness as detectives relentlessly pursuing her.

  4. Total recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Arnold stands as an exemplary figure for first-generation immigrants to America, demonstrating what can be achieved with a clear vision and hard work. His struggle to master English is something I can personally relate to. Additionally, his eagerness to learn and his dedication to public service are truly inspiring.

  5. A Therapeutic Journey by Alain de Botton

  There are many quotes that I love about this book. Here are just a few of them:

  “To complain in love is a noble and honorable skill”. It reminds me of the weekly family hour when my wife and I would talk about how we annoyed each other in the previous week.

  “All that we need is the love of a few friends or even just one special person and we can survive.” I can survive if some people hate me.

  “freedom from the pressure to be normal, ambitious, or optimistic” There are more aspects of freedom besides political freedom.

  “rehearsing notions of self-love, self-forgiveness, kindness, and self-acceptance on a daily basis.” That is why we have so much suffering since we don’t rehearse these frequently enough.

  “Before every anxiety-inducing date or speech, we should mutter to ourselves, like a talismanic prayer, that the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across and that the most distant known galaxy is GN-z11, 32 billion light years from the restaurant or conference center.” Don’t worry!

Travel

This year we travelled a lot. Some are for work, some for family reunions, and some for marathons too.

March in Tokyo Japan

March in Kyoto Japan

Summer in Xiamen

Summer in Xiamen with Elementary School Friend

Summer in Beijing with High School Friends

Summer in Beijing with Graduate School Friends

Summer in Hubei with High School Friends

Summer in Hubei

Summer Family Reunion

Berlin Marathon September 29

December, Travel to Bangkok alone with Stuffed Animals of My Kids

December, Hang Out with My High School Buddy Ming in Bangkok

Running

• I ran 2,426 miles this year, which is around 6.6 miles (10 KM) per day. Most (79%) of my runs are easy runs.

2024 Run Summary

• I Finished 4 full Marathons this year:

  • Tokyo Marathon in March (3:20:00)
  • Maritime Marathon in June (3:02:39)
  • Berlin Marathon in September (2:52:20)
  • New York City Marathon in November (Best time of 2024 at 2:50:32)

Health

• Three times of cold I had cold early January, late April, and early December. Given that I know how to control my asthma symptoms, those cold episodes generally last about 2 weeks.

• Dry eye symptoms I had LASIK surgery in both eyes in 2023 July. The dry eye symptoms are hard on me when the heat turns on starting from mid-October. Fortunately, I have done many things to get it under control: 1) I added additional humidifiers in my office, where relative humidity could be improved from 11% to 30%; 2) I used eye drops more frequently; 3) I took more breaks so that my eyes would not hurt; 4) I will also start trying wet chamber goggles.

Piano lessons

It’s been four years since I started taking weekly piano lessons. I’ve started posting some songs on Wechat Channels instead of Youtube or Facebook.

Blog Posts

I wrote 4 blog posts this year (2 in English and 2 in Chinese). All of them are posted in both my Wechat account (爱学习的运动员) and my website (chengnie.com/blog). One Chinese post is about the fight with my sister-in-law and the other is about how my father-in-law built their family restaurant business.

• My Mantra in September
• How do I read in August
• 江南创业史 in June
• 记一次吵架 in January

2. What Didn’t Go So Well This Year?

• I can spend more time in my research Starting from 2024 fall, I feel like I am doinging the minimum of 30-minute research many days. I feel that I can do better in terms of the time I spend on research in the new year and improve the number of submissions to top journals.

• I can write more non-academic articles It helps me clear my mind about the things I think about: career, health, family, etc. I have a list of things that I want to write about and I hope to post once a month in 2025.

3. What Did I Learn?

• One book a week is not a dream

I was amazed that Bill Gates read almost one book a week. I had achieved this goal in 2024. With the help of audiobook and Calibre, I actually finished 60 books this year.