2025 in Review

Here we go, following the tradition once again. Here I am again, writing my yearly review. As I said in the 2024 in Review:

The next year, for me, will be a year of consistency, reconstruction, maintenance and improvement.

I’d say that if I were writing this today, I’d need to rewrite it as: “The next year, for me, will be a year of discovering, understanding, and frustration.”

This year had some unexpected turns, and it was very different from previous years. I didn’t do well in some parts of my life that I consider important, but on the other hand, I had new opportunities and lived more this year, with more travel and more experiences.

And also, as a tradition once again, this year I definitely do have things that I need to improve.

On health

On the health side, it was a year of ups and downs. On the one hand, I started taking a bit more control of my health: starting my ADHD treatment, fixing some issues with my body, and going to the doctor to solve them (something I had procrastinated on a lot).

In 2025, I was a bit more consistent with some aspects of my health: going to the gym turned out to be a fun thing to do. I started loving working out. It was the time of the day when I could just drop any thought and start focusing only on pushing (or pulling) weights. Something I noticed is that working out really helped keep my anxiety levels more stable. I still have some issues with anxiety, but it’s more moderate now.

Another thing I would like to be more consistent with during the year, and which will be one of my health focuses for next year, is climbing. It was an insanely good hobby I discovered. Although bouldering is a bit frustrating sometimes, the feeling of accomplishment when you finish a project is really good. I want to have at least one climbing session per week, lasting 2–3 hours, mostly bouldering.

But there are some things that didn’t go as well as I expected. Specifically, my sleep: I believe I could be more consistent. Based on my Oura Ring data, I had some discoveries and insights around my sleep that will help me better optimize the way I sleep.

One of the core insights I had about sleep was:

• Having 210 mcg of melatonin 2 hours before bed helps me a lot with having better, more consistent sleep (especially REM and deep sleep).
• Loud noises have a big impact on my sleep quality. I bought earplugs, and they were one of the best purchases I made to improve my sleep.
• Bedroom temperature. Living in Brazil is really hard, especially during the summer, since it gets very hot. Having ways to better control room temperature is a great investment for sleep quality.

Something I noticed from my sleep-quality rollercoaster is that on days when I don’t sleep well, my mind becomes completely numb, I’m angrier, and more anxious. How do I know this? Because this year I had a lot of days with poor sleep.

That will be one of my main focuses for next year: being more consistent with my sleep. From my point of view, sleep is the fundamental thing that creates momentum for everything else. If I’m not doing well with sleep, as a side effect, everything else also suffers. As a note for next year’s review, the first thing I need to fix is solving my sleep anxiety. I don’t struggle with sleep itself, but I struggle to go to bed.

The last thing I want to mention here is that I started meditating. It isn’t a habit yet, but it’s something I’m working on. I believe that making meditation one of my core improvements in 2026 will bring a lot of fulfillment.

On reading

This year was kind of disappointing for my reading habits. I set a goal of reading at least 12 books by the end of the year, and I finished a total of ZERO books.

I started a lot of new books or continued some older ones, but my reading consistency dropped to its lowest level in the last five years. For most of the year, I was reading Gödel, Escher, Bach, but it was harder than expected, since I had to read and reread many pages to clearly understand what the author was trying to say.

I’m not good at managing multiple books in parallel; it’s really hard for me to be consistent when reading several books at the same time. I also read parts of other books, like:

• The Origins of Efficiency
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Nicomachean Ethics
• Database Design and Implementation
• The Elements of Computing Systems
• The Mind Illuminated
• Crafting Interpreters

Those are the other books currently in my reading queue for next year.

Blog posts and bookmarks

On the other hand, I read a lot of blog posts this year. You can check all of them in my bookmarks.

I wrote a small script to extract metrics from my bookmarks for this year, and I’ll share some insights below.

All bookmarks from 2025, grouped by month:

My most active month was December, with 193 bookmarks. To be honest, I think this is mostly related to a habit I developed of tagging everything as #for-later before actually reading it. This is also reflected in the next metrics.

Here’s a heatmap of my bookmarks in a GitHub-like view, which gives a clearer picture of how my bookmarking behavior is distributed:

And the last useful metric shows the number of bookmarks per tag:

As mentioned above, there’s some deviation due to the #for-later habit. Ignoring that tag, the most used ones are #cs and its subtags, with a total of 343 bookmarks this year.

On career and work

This year was more like a year of consistent focus on my work itself. I had the opportunity to work on many different projects at my job, which gave me valuable insights into handling systems used by more than a million users.

Projects like building a durable workflow engine to manage long-running tasks for LLM agents, or setting up simulations and benchmarks to maintain output quality, are good examples of what I worked on.

For next year, there are a lot of exciting things coming, and I’ll be involved in many of them.

Regarding my broader career, I’m still struggling to manage my side projects. I have some plans to better structure how I approach their development, so I can work on them alongside everything else.

On life

One area where I achieved a lot this year was life in general. I reached milestones that my younger self wouldn’t believe were possible.

Europe trip

This year, I had the opportunity to go on a trip to Europe with my girlfriend and her family. It was my first international trip, which made it especially meaningful to me.

I procrastinated a lot on writing a blog post about this trip, but it’s on my list for next year (I promise).

Between late June and early August 2025, I traveled between Rome and Madrid, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had. I’m not someone who enjoys traveling that much in general — I’m more of a homebody — but experiencing two different cultures and so much history was incredible.

Rome is beautiful. Everything there tells a story, and as a history nerd, I was amazed by what the city had to offer. Every alley and street revealed something new. Visiting the Vatican, the Colosseum, and the Roman Forum opens your mind in ways you can’t fully appreciate without being there. I hope I can visit Rome again someday.

We also stayed in Madrid for seven days. What a great city — bright and full of life. We visited the Museo Nacional del Prado, where I saw incredible works by amazing artists. I also ate some of the best sushi of my life (until now — I suspect Japan will change that someday).

Toledo is a city close to Madrid with its own magic. It’s a medieval city that preserves much of its original structure. Sadly, I wasn’t able to visit the Toledo Cathedral because the line was too long, and we only had the morning and afternoon there.

In the end, I can say that I truly loved this trip. Being there with my girlfriend gave the whole adventure a special meaning. I really hope to return someday, ideally with her.

Next steps for 2026

That was my year in review. Overall, it was a year of ups and downs. I discovered and learned many things, and I started understanding myself better — especially how my mind works. Looking back at what I wrote last year:

I have a strong feeling that, given my 2024, it will be a better year in all aspects. I have a lot of plans for the next year and I’ll commit to all of them.

I’d say that 2025 had many good moments, but also areas where I completely failed and need to improve next year. In the end, what matters most is identifying those gaps and setting clear goals for the year ahead.

One thing I want to change is how much I read blog posts. I don’t want to consume them at the same volume as this year. Why? Because much of it was driven by FOMO, not by genuine interest. I can clearly identify which articles actually changed my mental models. Going forward, I want better criteria for choosing what I read.

Along the same lines, I want to revisit old articles and start creating flashcards. Building a stronger flashcard habit could be very useful, especially since my memory isn’t always great.

On the health side, the three things I want to maintain are: improving my sleep habits and routines, controlling light exposure better, starting a meditation habit, and continuing with workouts (gym and climbing).

As I mentioned last year but didn’t accomplish, I want to start tracking specific life metrics. Measuring what matters gives clarity, and I strongly believe in the idea that “what gets measured gets improved.” If I want to commit to habits, I need to measure them.

Overall, this was a year of gaining maturity. Even though I didn’t accomplish all my goals, and life felt chaotic at times, things turned out well. That’s part of the process of dealing with the chaos we call life.

If this were me last year, I would have said it was a bad year. But looking back at the past months, I see real progress. I feel more mature, happier, and more excited about what’s coming. That’s the mindset I want to carry into next year.

I also have many plans and ideas for this blog. Writing is one of the things I want to keep improving.

Happy New Year, reader! I hope the winds of 2026 bring you success and everything you seek to achieve your goals!