My Goals for 2026

Feb 2, 2026 · 11 min read

My previous writing from almost two years ago had an influence on my life. I now ask questions: 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 in such a self-reflection is to go through the list of goals that I had set in 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 to define a mission for the university, or deriving a common teaching methodology in the form of an essay would be a futile task. Both areas have their own experts in the schools of humanities who specialize 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 see the university as aiming at at least two targets: (i) helping an average student to become a specialist in some field, (ii) contributing to the scientific research. A 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 these 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. Some hope emerged only when I drowned my doubts and put in 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. The final output after the revision following the reviewer’s feedback makes me happy.

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

I stopped running in March 2025, initially due to the perceived busyness in my schedule. At some point of the year, I was able to 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 o’clock 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 hoped for, 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 (including the Brodsky list). As a consequence, I have developed a certain pickiness and approach when reading books (I will describe it soon and publish a writing about it after seven months). Movies I watch rarely, TV shows – never.2 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 I 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 me to the 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 each month to observe my financial standing. I invest dilettantishly and direct some portion of my monthly income 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 as 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 CSCI 4701: Deep Learning which I taught for the first time in Spring 2025.

In addition to the aforementioned items, I had other goals which were either too generic, abstract, or unnecessary. I had limited my social media usage and almost completely avoided it in the past months. On the other hand, goals like “learn to observe and listen” is not something one can measure; I think I did a poor job on the matter anyway. However, it’s been a while that I enjoy doing Fritz Perls’ exercise while walking, which I think has drastically improved my situational awareness over time.

Part 2

Now that I have discussed my earlier goals, I may as well aim to set my goals for 2026. To not repeat the mistake of setting a 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 food3, but not on sugar, which should be brought down to the minimum.

Conduct high-level research while engaging in industry collaboration.

While doing research, I observed a noticeable gap in my knowledge of fundamentals in deep learning. Hence, I set a learning path for myself consisting of several steps for obtaining: (a) strong mathematical base, (b) deep fundamental knowledge (e.g. Goodfellow et al.), (c) modern (e.g. 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, 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 geographies. This includes a broad contextual understanding of history4, 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 even illiteracy whenever I attempt to state my opinion about simple matters. I sometimes feel uneasy immediately after blurting out hard facts, as it does not seem right to me to (vehemently) persuade someone in the correctness of my assumptions, just because the belief I hold seems plausible and attractive to me.

It baffles me how glib many people are when stating their opinions, for instance on matters like religion. No matter which side they take, their arguments are usually the shallowly explored statements long known in philosophy for at least a thousand years. These arguments have gone through many iterations and seen huge refinement, yet people are neither up to date nor willing to heavily scrutinize their own belief systems.

To avoid ridiculing myself in my own eyes, I have decided to state my opinions on major topics only after careful literature review and contemplation. Hence, the precision of opinion drives my pursuit of self-education. Deep down in my heart, I realize that such an education should mainly furnish me with tools for living, not arguments for persuasion.5

Dedicate more time to family and relationships with other people.

I have become a man of routine. I don’t see anything wrong with 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 their 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 this, I can only suggest a single heuristic: to prioritize communication with people close to me and give them my full attention during our interactions. I suppose 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 aware of the rationality and rigidity of my system. My first three goals establish concrete steps towards achieving the bare minimum. Indeed, for obtaining external success, one could close their eyes and blindly follow a chain of predefined steps. Becoming successful by modern social standards seems to require only time and effort, while the wisdom of life has nothing to do with it. No one seems to call a Hollywood actor with a failed personal life a “loser”; yet a sensitive mind, too honest for doing business and not inclined to push themselves forward socially, is rarely seen as a “winner”, even if they have a strong family and kind character.

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.6 However, to correctly conduct our lives and not die with regret, there seems to exist two more related items: our spontaneity and childhood desires.

There will always be pure souls among us who see in life much more. Aesthetic pleasure that we gain when listening to beautiful music or when observing a mesmerizing sunset may interrupt the constant rush of our everyday lives. 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 which, in case we are negligent, can completely overwhelm our innate inclinations. With this in mind, at some point in the past year, I asked myself a question: which of my current desires are truly mine and not externally imposed? The further back in time I moved my internal pointer of desires, the more I realized that, even if my childhood aspirations were naive, working towards them now would perhaps enrich my life.7

Conclusion

I penned (keyboarded?) this essay for the first time in October and only now managed to finalize it. Some of my ideas have seen modifications, and surely they will see 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 how it used to be.

Unlike my goals essay of two years prior, I kept the reader in mind more closely when composing sentences. I assume that 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 applying these ideas to their own life. Because language is ambiguous and personal experiences differ, humans often misunderstand one another even in simple matters.

It’s time to sum up my goals. 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 to achieve professional success and partially fulfill the demands of my curiosity. The third goal, self-education, is perhaps a childhood desire in itself and is meant to satisfy my curiosity about absorbing humanity’s distilled knowledge across millennia. The final goals concern living: caring for others, allowing room for spontaneity, and pursuing 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. From recent cinematography, I very much enjoyed Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, especially the chase scenes and Sean Penn’s performance. ↩

  3. After a few months’ avoidance, I visited McDonald’s again the other day, and the whole environment irritated me. By fast food, I don’t mean occasional dönər, which I like. ↩

  4. 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 mindset. I realize only now that all three historians are British, whose distinct narrative styles conform to my taste. ↩

  5. I suppose the goal of debating is to approach truth or consensus, not to win, which can be pyrrhic. ↩

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

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