The 2024 headlines were predominantly gloomy. War raged on three continents, storms brought human tragedy, whilst the rivalry between countries siding with China and the American-Western alliance deepened. We lost Jimmy Carter, Peter Higgs, Daneil Kahnemann, JPR Williams, Johan Neeskens and Rob Burrow. Personally, the euphoria of my daughter’s wedding and the pride in seeing my son launch his own business venture cheered me greatly.
But the past twelve months amplified a sense of global tension and conflict, creating a less stable and collaborative world at a time when global warming needs unity of purpose. The year offered hopeful messages of resilience of democracy, laying bare the malevolence of autocrats. With 76 countries containing over half the world’s population at the ballot box, can new leaders deliver on expectations for the year ahead?
Xi Jinping’s shadowy cyberespionage network and the failings of Putin’s dictatorship are clear, whilst. Trump’s belligerence on mass deportations and waging a trade war with China worries me. His ‘America First’ policy of protectionism and tariffs will undermine the solidity of America’s alliances. Let’s hope its electioneering rhetoric more than policy.
The publication of The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien, over seventy seen publicly for the first time was a highlight, whilst at the other end of the spectrum of human endeavour, Space X showed the potential of reusable rockets, the most unbelievable sight of 2024.
2025 is designated the year of quantum science by the UN. Tech will continue to create remarkable opportunities for human progress. The year could be intriguing - is it crunch time for AI? We saw the biggest financial gamble in business history in 2024 with more than $1trn spent on data centres and AI projects, even though companies are still unsure how to apply AI. Will investors lose their nerve, or will AI prove its worth, as ‘agentic’ systems become effective?
Fifteen years after his death, David Blackwell’s name will become known in 2025 - Nvidia has named its latest superchip after the mathematician. The Blackwell chip will form the backbone of the first ’AI factories’, data centres purpose-built to meet demand for Gen-AI computational power.
Over the break I’ve read Biotechs will surge, inspired by GLP-1, and video generation will become specialised for specific uses, and decentralised autonomous chatbots will emerge as independent entities. Al-native storytelling could see a next-generation Pixar emerge for interactive experiences. Edge Al growth, with small, on-device Al models, offers huge potential. I also read that Voice will become a dominant interface as speech models are pushed to produce text, image, and video. It’s the start of a generation of people who will never use a keyboard.
What other implausible-sounding things could happen in 2025? To navigate the future, we need to anticipate the unlikely and we are about to find out what 2025 holds. Journalists and commentators often make predictions about the future, but let’s not just absorb the thoughts of futurists: if you don't stop and look around yourself once in a while, you could miss out.
While astrophysicists may have the perspective to eulogise the uncontrollable and incomprehensible predictions that barely make sense to us, what are we to make of, and do with, the absurdity of life that swarms us daily? Somewhere along the way, you realise that no one will teach you how to live your own life - not your parents, your idols, the philosophers or the poets, not your education, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable their guidance or wisdom, in the end you discover the path of life only by walking it with your own two feet in your own consciousness.
These days I have one rule when it comes to new year resolutions: do not, under any circumstances, write them down on a Post-it note stuck to your bathroom mirror, or in the notes section of your mobile. Chances are you won’t keep them, but as long as you don’t write them down chances are equally high you’ll have no memory of making them by next December. I’ve learned there is simply no point in negotiating with your future self, this person who no longer shares your goal to read fifty books in a year. Don’t let their failure be your failure. Besides, if you manage to read ten books in 2025, you’ll still be ten books less stupid than you were in 2024.
Since I began reflecting on what I have learned about living with each passing year, on 1 January I simply write ‘ten notes to self’ which set a purpose of intent not an activity or task, recognising the near-term is just a fractal of my total lifetime, but also the opportunity cost of time. A ninety-year life is 4,680 weeks, so here are my notes to self for 2025, anticipating it will be the most challenging of my life to date.
1. Outgrow yourself. Push the boundaries. Choose like a child chooses the crayon to colour, at first consciously, but keep pressing until it becomes instinctive. Yes, to life, in spite of everything. Growth is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but an inner elevation by choice. Colour your own life.
2. Focus on relationships. The richest relationships are lifeboats, but they are also submarines that descend to the darkest and most disquieting places, to the unfathomed trenches of the mind where our anxieties and vulnerabilities live. Relationships are an alchemy of hope, the engine of buoyancy that keeps the submarine rising toward the light, so that it may become a lifeboat once more.
3. Be an idealist. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. This Jack London quote tell me to be creator and consumer of high expectations. Supply creates its own demand. Only by consistently supplying it can we hope to increase the demand for the substantive over the superficial in our individual lives.
4. Seek out what magnifies your spirit. Patti Smith talks about people who magnify her spirit. It’s a beautiful phrase and notion. Who are the people that magnify your spirit? Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often. Use them not only as a remedy once spiritual malaise has infected your vitality but as a vaccine administered while you are healthy to protect your radiance.
5. Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time. I’ve borrowed these words from Debbie Millman, it’s hard to capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy. The myth of the overnight success is a reminder that our present definition of success needs retuning. The rose doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one burst.
6. Be present. Presence is far more rewarding than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity robs us daily of the very capacity for being present in the moment that makes life worth living. As Annie Dillard memorably said, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.
7. Build pockets of stillness. I live on the coast, so I walk, sit and enjoy the beach sights and sounds, going nowhere in particular to let the fragments of experience float around me, I also aim to sleep ten hours a night. Sleep is a physical aphrodisiac, affecting our every waking moment, our rhythm, our moods. What could possibly be more important than your health and sanity, from which all else springs?
8. Fight stagnation. There are moments in life when we are reminded that we are unfinished, the story about where we are heading remains unwritten. In such moments, I start something new and push against stagnation and the status quo. In 2024 I took a course on bread making, deep dived into my family ancestry whilst updating my knowledge of econometrics. Reconfigure yourself afresh more brightly. To refuse is an act of self-neglect. Bowie urged young artists to go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in, a great sentiment,
9. Set a high bar. Holding a high bar is my permanent perspective. Is it hard? You bet it is. Without setting a bar, you will be strapped with frustration, staying smaller than you are capable of. The agitation of being unable to do something motivates me, Because of this, hard decisions, hard conversations, and high expectations need to be had with yourself, which is a good thing.
10. Keep your life from becoming a parody of itself. Simone de Beavoir captured this in The Art of Growing Older. I dread the inevitability of growing older, it’s a silent, progressive disease. Growing, ripening, aging, the passing of time is inevitable. There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our life, and that is to go on pursuing our existence with meaning and prevent us turning in on ourselves.
Summary
As the years go by, we view our familiar surroundings with less and less freshness. We no longer look with a wakeful, perceiving eye at the faces of people we see every day, nor at any other features of our everyday world. What can we do to avert the hardening of the mental arteries? Adopt a Growth versus Fixed mindset outlined by Carol Dweck is a start, which provides my ‘notes to self’ framework.
Inequality of time is real. A ninety-year life is 4,680 weeks. I’m up to 3,241, that’s 69%. But not all weeks are created equal. We don't remember the first 250 or so, we don't get the first real taste of freedom until week 832, and don't graduate until week 1.144. That's 24% of your life before you're ‘free’, and similarly, you aren't ‘free’ at the tail end of your life either, declining health and cognitive function impair your ability to do what you wish as you get older.
While we're not always conscious of it, every single day our life is driven by opportunity costs of past, present, and future. Decisions and choices are the inflection points where we choose one path over another. Practice self-renewal. infuse yourself with ongoing vitality to fight the dry rot produced by apathy which often comes with attaining a certain level of comfort or success.
The person who dies with the highest net worth should have found cooler stuff to spend their time and money on. There is never a convenient time to press pause and redirect to do anything worthwhile. You can either do it, or always wish you had. Don’t fizzle out and lose the exuberance of youth. Never act your age. Check your habits. There may be a point at which young vitality and mature sensibility reach a stable equilibrium, but make this a conscious choice. The only stability possible is stability in motion.
The individual who has become a stranger to themselves has lost the capacity for self-renewal. On days like this, which we all have, when we cannot be bothered with the world, I think to myself What would John Lennon do? Then I stay in bed like he did. No, I don’t! You are your own biggest opportunity cost. Do something about it. Make sure you wander above the sea of fog in 2025. Whoever has the most fun wins.
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