My 2025 Year In Review
Since I was a kid, the deepest guiding influence upon me has been my relationship with time. How much I have left, what I'm doing with it, if I'm living with purpose. Certainly I'm not alone in this. And so many will relate to how pressing, and at times oppressing, the flow of time can feel. Consequently, each year I strive to take a moment, to step back and assess the meaningful things that have occurred. Not all of them have to be monumental—but all must evoke meaning, purpose, or struggle.
Personal
There was no more meaningful event this year than my engagement to my best friend and partner Hannah. Hannah and I have been together for quite some time—we dated in high school, took a break during college, only to get back together after college. We've been together ever since. To be honest, neither of us had any intention of getting engaged this year. When we booked a vacation to Italy, it was simply because it's our favorite place to travel. And yet, as we sat together in Milan, overseeing the Naviglio Grande canal, improved by da Vinci himself, I looked at Hannah, felt a surge of emotion and realized, "yeah, this makes sense."
Now, conveniently Hannah had already organized professional photos for us in Florence the next morning. According to her, waking up at 4 AM Italian time to take a train from Milan to Florence was not only worth it, but in fact necessary as "we don't have any professional photos of us." With that in mind, Florence, my mother's favorite city and the cradle of the Renaissance, would be a perfect place to buy a ring.
As for the question itself, I broke the question like anyone would, "Hey, so I've been thinking about it... and actually I think it might make a lot of sense if we got engaged here. I know there are pros and cons, but we're already getting photos in Florence tomorrow, so I think it might be a good opportunity." With my gambit made, Hannah's response was both measured and reasonable, "Hmmm, I hadn't thought about it but it could be convenient—and it probably would help with taxes." The perfect counter. We talked a bit more about it, both generally amenable to the idea. We returned to our room to search jewelry stores in Florence. We had some ideas, but it was only upon our arrival to Florence, while we waited for our photographer, that we encountered the vaunted Ponte Vecchio; a bridge of jewelers established in 1345 by the Medici family. Once we saw these shops, we knew this is where we'd find our ring. And the rest is history!
Professional
One of my favorite accomplishments this year was having published Extending 'GPTs Are GPTs' to Firms, our paper about the effects of large language models (LLMs) on the workforce in the American Economic Association's (AEA) Papers and Proceedings with my coauthors Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, and of course my friend and colleague Daniel Rock. For more on this, see my earlier post.
Then, of course, there's my publication with O'Reilly on Managing Memory for AI Agents, a subject upon which I hope to write more in the coming year. For more on that process, check out my talks AI Needs Memory: Here's How It Works and Building Stateful AI Agents: Memory Management & Optimization with LangGraph and Redis.
Workhelix was great this year. Our insights platform into the impact of AI in the workplace has been well-received by all our customers, so much so that we raised $15M in a Series A. The work I do on our AI/ML platform continues to be inspiring.
Some additional notable aspects of the year include:
- Having taken a Real Analysis Math course on the side (and having aced it)
- I submitted a paper for review in late 2025, we'll see if it gains traction in 2026
- I also submitted a book proposal for review in late 2025, we'll see if it's picked up, if so I'll be writing it throughout 2026
- I've begun research with the amazing Kristina McElheran, hopefully more comes of this in 2026
- Related to the above, I attended the AI and the Future of Work Conference which has led to ongoing research efforts, hopefully more to come in 2026
- I visited Chicago multiple times to spend time with my wonderful niece
- I overcame a severe health issue that I'd been undergoing for about a year and have been able to slowly integrate back into lifting
- I was more productive than ever, thanks to leveraging LLMs
Goals for 2026
So what are my goals for 2026? Well, the most pressing is, of course, my wedding to Hannah. We've already booked a venue and plan on getting married in the fall. Some additional goals include:
- Completing my ongoing research initiatives, submitting them to journals, and (hopefully) have them well-received enough to be published
- Ship as much as possible this year at work, and learn a ton while doing so
- Hopefully, get my book proposal accepted
- Work on said book!
- Allocate more time for archery
- Open-source more of my personal projects
- Have more adventures in the coming year!
Wishing all (most) a very happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!