My Goals for 2026

Feb 2, 2026 · 10 min read

My previous writing from almost two years ago had influence on my life. I now ask the question: how drastic was that influence? What could I have done better? How could I reap all the benefits of publicizing my goals? Similarly, how can this writing not only aid me, but also be useful to a reader? An obvious first step of such a self-reflection is to go through the list of goals that I had set in the early 2024.

Part 1

Write a draft of an essay about either the mission of the university or an effective teaching methodology.

During the year, I realized that my attempt of defining a mission for the university, or deriving a common teaching methodology in the form of an essay would be a futile task. Both directions have their own experts in the schools of humanities who are specialized in education. Not only that: we have a clearly written mission of our university since its establishment. I have come to also believe that there can never be a single true methodology, which is directly dependent on the worldview of a teacher. The differences in characters of many faculty members are there to positively influence the students of different backgrounds.

Yet I did my homework. As a consequence, I perceive university aiming at at least two targets: (i) helping an average student to become a specialist in some field, (ii) contributing to the scientific research. The third, perhaps, the most defining target would be instilling in students a sense of culture, the definition of which is difficult to tie down; neither Ortega nor Whitehead1 provide a satisfactory interpretation for it (albeit, they both use the same word under different settings), and Jaspers seems to avoid using the term altogether. Observing obstacles and my lack of expertise, I abandon the project.

Author a research paper on computer vision.

The research I was conducting was going nowhere, and, at some point, I even lost my confidence in getting out of the dead-end I found myself in. A glimpse of hope emerged only when I drowned my doubts and put a heavy effort for several days in a row to achieve a small outcome. This micro-achievement removed my uncertainty and built my confidence. Four months later, I was drafting the final results of the experiments in the paper. Upon submission, the reviewer’s harsh feedback helped me to critically analyze my approach and realize how weak my research actually was. The final output, therefore, makes me happy. It has been five months now that I am waiting for the final decision. That makes me unhappy.

Run a half-marathon in under 90 minutes and other related items.

I stopped running in March 2025, initially due to the business in my schedule. At some point of the year, I could run six kilometers, which is not a major achievement by an amateur runner. I missed the registration of the Baku half-marathon in April, which I attribute to my negligence. The impossible threshold of “under 90 minutes” I attribute to my ignorance. I kept doing occasional calisthenics, reaching twelve good-form pull-ups at some point, yet having a healthy breakfast at seven AM for 250 days was naturally a ridiculous goal.

Back up and organize my digital and physical items in April.

Although not in April, and still in progress, I made certain attempts to sort out my digital and physical space. I threw away unused clutter, limited my wardrobe, and bought an external SSD to back up my data. Cleaning up old computers, downloading items from old drives and organizing them required time and effort. I am still far from achieving the order I was hoping to achieve, simply because I did not prioritize digital hygiene (including digital privacy) over other major tasks.

Define the updated Brodsky and Ebert lists and complete about 20% of them.

Exactly one year ago, I wrote an essay which undermined the value of books. As a consequence, I have developed a certain pickiness and approach when reading books (which I will describe later on). Movies I watch rarely, TV shows – never2. Still, I recall a few great movies which had a deep impact on me and still touch aesthetic parts of my soul: Spirit of the Beehive. La Dolce Vita, Lawrence of Arabia, Ikiru, Apocalypse Now, Vertigo, Amadeus. I am sure of mixing timeline to some degree, and I certainly did not always follow my rule of watching movies in order. Yet when did, I discovered something new about myself; Spirit of the Beehive was the result of such an order.

Track my financial spending and invest.

I took deliberate steps to learn about finance and economics. I watched and enjoyed Neil Fergusson’s The Ascent of Money which introduced to me necessary terminology and historical perspective. I read the paper and studied the internals of Bitcoin from the perspective of computer science and cryptography. Right now, Ha-Joon Chang’s introduction to economics lies on my shelf. I have an excel file which I update at the end of each month to observe my financial standing. I invest dilettantishly and direct some portion of my monthly salary to charity. I do not have big goals, and my deliberate efforts to gain financial education in the past year satisfies me.

Become a PhD candidate if an opportunity arises.

Since September, I am officially a PhD candidate at ADA University. I have defined my initial research direction to be an application of diffusion-based models in deep learning. My teaching is now aligned with my research, which I am very happy about, and I posted some of my course lectures for the course CSCI 4701: Deep Learning which I taught first time in the Spring 2025 semester.

In addition to aforementioned items, I had other goals which were either too generic, abstract, or unnecessary. I had limited my social media usage and completely avoided it in the past months. On the other hand, goals like “learn to observe and listen” is not something one can measure, yet I think I did a poor job on the matter.

Part 2

Now that I have discussed my earlier goals, I may as well aim at setting my goals for 2026. To not repeat the mistake of setting diverse set of unaligned goals, I note down below only five main directions:

With so many distractions, the sacrifice of certain wants becomes necessary. For example, in the framework of the mentioned targets, my financial or literary ambitions lose in value. I have prioritized research over teaching, which has never been the case before in my academic life. I have also painfully blocked my desire to write a book.

For writing, I have a consistent itch, which should be apparent, at least, from this essay. In writing, too, I aim at precision, which uses up a good deal of energy from me. Is it a good idea to refrain from writing fully so that I can concentrate on my main goals? Adding notes in this website interests me, consistently publishing about my research, updating my lectures, or sharing what I learn are always on my mind. Yet I cannot sustain serious writing for more than two weeks with my research goals.

Maintain a peak physical condition through structured training and nutrition.

I have previously mentioned my rules for health, which depends on sleep, exercise, and diet. I must keep the plan light and simple to follow. That leads to a 15-minute morning exercise after seven hours of sleep, swimming three times a week, going for pull-ups on non-swimming days, and doing basic stretching and eye exercises after every two hours of sedentary work. Dedicating another fifteen minutes for breakfast and not eating beyond the scheduled time frame is the requirement for nutrition. In the past year, I have completely cut my indulgence on fast food, and, to some degree, on sugar, which should be brought down to the minimum.

Conduct high-level research while closely working with industry and building professional connections.

In the past year, I observed a noticeable gap in my knowledge of fundamentals in deep learning. Hence, I set for myself a learning path consisting of several steps for obtaining: (a) strong mathematical base, (b) deep fundamental (Goodfellow et al) and (c) modern (e.g. transformer architecture, diffusion) understanding, as well as (d) practical skills for following contemporary trends and tools. Filling out the major portions of my shortcomings and publishing one high-quality paper would perhaps be the main deliverable for a productive year.

Sustain a systematic self-education program and build general literacy.

I now approach my self-education in a lighter manner, devoid of idolatry. Under “self-education” I mainly understand systematically scrutinizing the major works of both Western and Eastern philosophy, also including theology and religious texts which have always grabbed a big chunk of my attention. Under “general literacy”, I am interested in seeing the evolution of humanity and human knowledge across centuries and regions. It includes the full contextual knowledge of history3, and introductory knowledge of economics, law, geopolitics, physics, biology, psychology, literature, art, and music.

I recall Stanhope’s remark that reading books for hours and days on end is a sign of stupidity – capable people usually grasp the truth very quickly. Still, as years go by, I notice my ignorance and illiteracy whenever I attempt to state my opinion about simple matters. I sometimes feel shame in blurting out hard facts with shallow analysis in order to persuade someone in the correctness of my opinion, just because the belief I hold seems plausible and attractive to me. Yet, precision of opinion is secondary; self-education exists to supply us with tools for living, not arguments for persuasion.

Dedicate more time to family and relationships with other people.

I have become a man of routine. I don’t see anything wrong about it, and I even enjoy the monotony and narrowness of my interests; I have finally tamed my infinite curiosity on a few important tasks. Still, one needs to dedicate more time to his family members and relationships with other people. It seems to me that I am not taking enough responsibility or showing proactivity in the matters of others, especially close ones.

It is difficult to define an actionable step towards this goal. I also want my choice to be generalizable to many different circumstances. For such, I can only suggest a single heuristic: to prioritize communication with people close to me and give them my full attention during our interactions. It seems to me that, by enough attention and a set of correct and timely asked questions, one could acquire a good deal of satisfaction in their personal and social lives.

Allow space for spontaneity and long-standing childhood desires.

I am fully aware of the rationality and rigidity of my system. My first three goals establish concrete steps towards achieving the bare minimum – they are merely building blocks for life. Indeed, for obtaining external success, one can close their eyes and blindly follow a chain of predefined steps.

I see human interaction and mutual understanding as one major portion of what is meant by “living”. The other portion I am reluctant to define; possible answers to the purpose of life have made me disappointed.4 However, to correctly conduct our lives and not die with regret, there seems to be more items to consider in addition to human connection. Two of them are related and would be our spontaneity and childhood desires.

There will always be pure souls among us who see in life much more, often driven by human passions. Aesthetic pleasure that we gain when listening to a beautiful music or when observing mesmerizing sunset may intervene with the constant rush of our everyday life. If it does so, and if we are capable of occasionally stopping and paying attention, then we have one more habit set right about living. Making a spontaneous decision to discard a predefined plan, not out of indecisiveness but for the sake of appreciation, makes life more fulfilling.

Take a look around at people’s desires. You will soon notice that, beyond some age, their motivations and goals converge into a few common banalities. Social responsibilities impose on us demands that, in case we are negligent, can completely overwhelm our interests. With this assumption, at some point in the past year, I asked myself a question: which desires I currently have are truly mine and not externally imposed? The further back in time I moved my internal pointer of desires, the more I understood that, even if my childhood aspirations were naive, working towards them now would enrich my life.5

Conclusion

I penned this essay for the first time in the October of the past year and only now managed to finalize it. Some of my ideas have seen modifications, and surely they will be under certain changes in the future as well. I kept my goals general, leaving truly personal and concrete details to myself. The style of my writing is less refined and more restrained than what it was before.

Unlike my goals essay of two years’ prior, I kept the reader in my mind more closely when composing sentences. I assume following these five goals (except for the second goal, which is career-specific) should be useful to everyone. Nevertheless, the reader should be careful when interpreting the written text for themselves before applying any ideas to their lives.

I sum up my goals in the following manner. First, I need to pay attention to my health to the best of my capacity. That is the keystone holding all other goals intact. My second goal is for achieving professional success and partially fulfilling the demands of my curiosity. The third goal on self-education is perhaps a childhood desire in itself, and is meant to satisfy my main curiosity of grasping distilled human knowledge across millennia. The final goals are for living: being attentive to and caring about humans, allowing occasional spontaneity in actions, and working towards fulfilling my childhood desires.

Footnotes

  1. For more details, see Mission of the University (1930) by José Ortega y Gasset and The Aims of Education (1929) by Alfred North Whitehead. ↩

  2. Except for Dexter: Resurrection, which was great, and if I am to give a try to another show in the future, I will consider most probably The Sopranos. ↩

  3. For both philosophy and history, I feel a need to see the whole context. I have already explored Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy in four volumes, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After some research, I have decided on reading JM Robert’s The Penguin History of the World, as well as Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China for my introduction to the Eastern thought. I realize only now that all three historians are British, whose distinct narrative styles conform to my taste. ↩

  4. I have already written about this matter in Books and Idols. ↩

  5. I have probably come up with this idea after remembering Paul Graham’s essay titled Life is Short. ↩