2020 is over, and brighter days are coming. On the last day of 2020, I want to reflect on the past year and set up something new for 2021. The COVID-19 changed our lives and caused many losses, but I was, lucky enough, able to get on some new habits, challenges, and achievements in 2020.

bye-2020 Picture comes from (https://unsplash.com/@macroman)

Reflections on 2020

  • Enjoyed staying more with family: I have been working from home since late March. At the very beginning, I worried my two screaming little girls would ruin my work at home. It turned out that I was completely wrong. They know when they can’t disturb me and when they can ask me to play games with them. I have got used to working from home and am really enjoying the time staying with them.

  • Learned more cloud skills: Cloud computing is key to future industries. I feel lucky to have chances of learning about both Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. They are two of the top public cloud platforms in the world. I have successfully obtained three GCP certificates at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. three_certs

  • Started a manager role: I started a new role as Manager of Operations Research on Sep. 16th. The quote from Steve Jobs below might be the best reason I would move from a technical person to a manager. It is challenging, but I’m learning to be a good manager.

“They are the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager… But decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.” – Steve Jobs

  • Started two new good habits: Since working from home, I have been getting up at 5 am and running every day. My running distance started from 0.7 miles and increased to 3.0 miles now. I reached a total of 150 miles two days ago!

  • Read books: I have finished 10 English and 10 Chinses books, in areas of history, business, management, computer, big data, productivity and time management, etc. I will take time to review some of the great ones.

  • Wrote blogs: I’m not a blogger, but I like to write down what I have learned in a logging way. I have finished seven tech blogs on GCP, Azure, and Power BI. Please feel free to check them out:

Connect Power BI Desktop to Oracle Database through LDAP JDBC Connection String

Create a Virtual Machine with Private IP from a Virtual Network that’s in a Different Subscription in Azure

Create and Connect to Azure VMs through WinSCP/PuTTY

Create AI Platform Notebooks Instance in Shared VPC without Service Availability

Install, Setup and Manage Google Cloud SDK to Use Python From Anaconda

Setup Kubeflow Cluster in a Shared VPC on Google Cloud Platform

Run Dataflow Jobs in a Shared VPC without Regional Endpoints on GCP

Resolutions for 2021

  • To be a better manager: keep learning and improving to be a great manager.
  • Get three certificates of Azure: Data Scientist, Administrator, and Solution Architect.
  • Read more books: at least one book every month and review some of the good ones.
  • Write more blogs: at least one blog every month. Not only focus on techniques, but also management.
  • Run more miles: total 1,000 miles by the end of 2021.
  • Spend less time on political media and news: political media and news are not suitable for health, neither physical nor mental.
  • Take an extended vacation for a long trip with family: This is what I owed the girls in 2020.