A Good Life

A practical picture of the life I want to build: healthy, loving, interesting, useful, secure, adventurous, peaceful, and enjoyable.

The purpose of these goals is not to optimize every part of life or to create a perfect future version of myself. The goal is to build a life that feels good from the inside while also being one I can respect and feel proud of.

Specific targets may change over time. The deeper directions should remain more stable. Numbers and milestones are useful when they support the life I want, but they are not the life itself.

Core principle: Build a life that is healthy, loving, interesting, useful, free, meaningful, and enjoyable — without maximizing one part of life by bankrupting the others.

Body

I want to feel healthy, energetic, strong, rested, and physically capable. I want my body to expand what I can do rather than increasingly limit me.

Direction

• Maintain a healthy and sustainable body weight
• Sleep enough to feel rested and function well
• Maintain strength, endurance, mobility, and balance
• Eat in a way that supports health without making food miserable
• Take preventive medical and dental care seriously
• Recover properly from training and injury
• Maintain good hygiene, grooming, and appearance
• Stay physically capable well into older age

Current aspirations

• Maintain a weight around 190 pounds, assuming that remains healthy and sustainable
• Average roughly 8 hours of sleep
• Run 3 miles comfortably at about 8 mph
• Complete a 30-minute HIIT workout every 6 days: 10 rounds alternating 1 minute at 12 mph with 2 minutes at 3 mph, totaling 3 miles
• Eventually run a 5K in under 20:23 (9.14 mph)
• Compete in a 5K occasionally, perhaps quarterly
• Build toward a 1,000-pound combined squat, bench press, and deadlift total
• Compete in a amateur powerlifting meet occasionally, perhaps quarterly
• Maintain regular stretching, mobility, and outdoor activity

Love

I want a romantic life characterized by warmth, affection, mutual attraction, companionship, respect, intimacy, honesty, and genuine enjoyment of one another.

Direction

• Have a relationship in which both people actively choose one another
• Experience affection, touch, warmth, and emotional closeness
• Have a mutually satisfying sexual relationship
• Communicate openly about intimacy, needs, boundaries, and concerns
• Feel respected rather than tolerated
• Give respect rather than contempt, ridicule, control, or hostility
• Preserve individuality within partnership
• Be able to enjoy ordinary daily life together
• Build a life that is already good enough that a relationship enhances it rather than rescues it

Current aspirations

• Build or maintain a romantic relationship that is sustainable over the long term
• Prioritize mutual affection, respect, warmth, playfulness, and sexual compatibility
• Address relationship problems honestly rather than allowing resentment to accumulate indefinitely
• Remain capable of standing on my own emotionally, socially, and financially

Friendship

I want meaningful relationships with people I enjoy, trust, admire, and care about. I do not want my social life to depend entirely on work or a romantic partner.

Direction

• Maintain several close friendships
• Initiate contact instead of always waiting for others
• Schedule time together deliberately
• Be someone friends can rely on
• Celebrate other people's success
• Ask for help when needed and provide help when I can
• Maintain friendships across different stages and parts of life
• Participate in groups, activities, and communities beyond work

Current aspirations

• Maintain about 5 close relationships I can genuinely rely on, within a broader circle of roughly 10–15 meaningful relationships
• Regularly reach out to people instead of allowing relationships to drift
• Have recurring social rituals such as dinners, walks, trips, activities, or shared hobbies
• Make new friends while continuing to invest in old ones

Mastery

I want to remain intellectually alive, professionally capable, curious, and creative. Learning should continue throughout my life rather than ending when formal schooling does.

Direction

• Develop genuine competence rather than merely collecting credentials
• Continue learning difficult and interesting things
• Remain curious about science, technology, history, philosophy, culture, and people
• Become increasingly capable in work that matters to me
• Create things rather than only consuming information
• Teach or share what I know
• Remain willing to be a beginner
• Keep work important without allowing it to become my entire identity

Current aspirations

• Complete the M.S. in Artificial Intelligence
• Continue growing from infrastructure and cloud engineering into deeper AI capability
• Build practical AI projects rather than learning only in theory
• Continue increasing professional competence, autonomy, and compensation
• Maintain strong long-term employability
• Always have something I am learning simply because it interests me
• Maintain some form of creative or technical output: writing, coding, teaching, building, or another project

Service

I want some of my time, knowledge, money, and ability to improve lives other than my own. A good life should include contribution, not only personal achievement.

Direction

• Volunteer
• Help people without always needing recognition
• Mentor people when my experience could be useful
• Teach and share knowledge
• Be generous within reasonable limits
• Support worthwhile people and causes
• Leave people, places, and organizations somewhat better than I found them

Current aspirations

• Volunteer at least quarterly
• Preferably develop a monthly volunteering habit
• Look for opportunities to mentor or help people earlier in their careers or education
• Use technical knowledge and life experience in ways that are useful to others

Adventure

I want life to contain novelty, travel, exploration, stories, laughter, awe, and experiences that exist for reasons other than productivity.

Direction

• Travel regularly
• Visit unfamiliar places
• Spend time outdoors
• Experience nature and awe
• Try activities I have never done before
• Keep hobbies and interests that are simply fun
• Laugh often
• Allow room for spontaneity
• Occasionally choose the interesting option rather than the most efficient one
• Always have something on the horizon to look forward to

Current aspirations

• Take at least one meaningful trip or adventure each year
• Continue traveling internationally, including returning to Japan
• Spend time outdoors every week when practical
• Keep entertainment, humor, books, movies, music, and hobbies in life without needing to justify them
• Try occasional new experiences that are outside my normal routine
• Maintain upcoming events, trips, races, dinners, or activities I can genuinely look forward to

Peace

I want ordinary life to feel stable, calm, secure, organized, and spacious enough to enjoy. I want enough money, time, autonomy, and emotional steadiness that life does not constantly feel like an emergency.

Direction

• Maintain a clean, comfortable, functional home
• Keep finances organized and increasingly secure
• Build enough financial independence to have real choices
• Maintain routines without becoming rigid
• Protect sleep and downtime
• Leave some time unscheduled
• Develop greater emotional calm and confidence
• Reduce unnecessary chaos
• Avoid allowing work, school, relationships, or goals to consume every available hour
• Learn when I already have enough
• Enjoy ordinary days rather than living only for future milestones

Current aspirations

• Keep my home consistently clean and reasonably organized
• Maintain good personal hygiene and appearance
• Eliminate unnecessary debt
• Continue saving and investing consistently
• Maintain a strong emergency fund
• Increase financial independence and career optionality over time
• Develop calmer reactions to uncertainty, conflict, and setbacks
• Protect enough free time that life does not become a sequence of obligations
• Have ordinary weeks that are pleasant, not merely productive

What Balance Means

The goal is not to maximize every category. A good life is more likely to come from having enough of several important things at the same time.

• Protect long-term health while pursuing career success
• Make adequate sleep part of every ambitious plan
• Preserve important friendships while pursuing work and education
• Maintain personal independence within close relationships
• Build financial security while enjoying money responsibly
• Make room for enjoyment alongside growth and self-improvement
• Let fitness goals support long-term health and physical capability
• Build for the future while fully participating in the present

Develop each area of life in a way that supports the others.

A Picture of the Life

I want to be healthy, strong, energetic, and well-rested; calm and comfortable in my own skin; financially secure enough to have meaningful choices; engaged in challenging work and lifelong learning; surrounded by people I genuinely care about; part of a warm, affectionate, and sexually fulfilling partnership; useful to other people; regularly exploring, traveling, laughing, creating, and spending time outdoors; and free enough to enjoy ordinary days instead of constantly racing toward the next achievement.

I want to reach older age feeling that I used my abilities well, loved people well, learned continuously, helped where I could, experienced a lot, and actually enjoyed the life I spent so much time building.

The Seven Areas

• Body — health, sleep, strength, endurance, capability
• Love — intimacy, affection, partnership, sexuality
• Friendship — belonging, connection, community
• Mastery — career, learning, creation, competence
• Service — contribution, volunteering, mentoring, generosity
• Adventure — novelty, travel, play, nature, awe
• Peace — calm, autonomy, security, time, enough

Specific goals should serve these areas rather than becoming ends in themselves. If a goal stops improving the life described here, it can be changed or discarded.