2025 Wrapped

Reflecting on 2025, there's steady progress in the places that mattered: career transition, community, and staying physically active. Here's what I did, what I'm proud of, and what I'm taking into next year.

Things I Did & Proud This Year

Recovering to Full Speed

After leaving OKX at the end of last year, I took a month-long break. I attended World Cafe on Career Break, which gave me a lot of insight into what a break could really mean. During that period, I traveled, read, went on random adventures with my camera, and did quite a lot of journaling, the overall process had make me more energized and ready for the next gig.

Journaling

I kept up journaling this year—my Muji notebook is nearly full now. Even though I believe my blog has a small audience, I met a reader at a random event this year. Those moments remind me why I keep writing.

Golf, Pickleball, Running, Tennis

One of my resolutions was to be more physically active in 2025. I'd say that goal was fulfilled. I joined a government golf class at Tuen Mun in March, joined a running class, and started personal training in November with my wife. I also kept playing tennis, which has become something I want to get good at.

Community

Another year with Friends of Figma Hong Kong — and a very productive one. We launched our inaugural mentorship program, and I hosted FoF World Tour (Watch on YouTube), a 24-hour virtual event connecting FoF chapters around the world. And also Into Design System Meet-up in Hong Kong

Personal Website Revamp

After years of procrastination, I finally upgraded my site from the Next.js Pages Router to the App Router (introduced back in 2023). Most of the design looks the same, but underneath it was a major refactor and rewrite of the entire codebase. Thanks to Cursor, the migration was relatively painless—it understood Next.js docs and best practices well. I also moved off Chakra to Tailwind CSS (with native OKLCH support) for more flexibility.

My writing was also recognized this year. My site was featured as Portfolio of the Day on Designer Daily Report, and my post "OKLCH, Explained for Designers" was featured in Sidebar—imagine the surprise of reading my own blog in a newsletter I subscribe to.

Best of 2025

Samsung Galaxy Fold 7

This year I switched back to Android (again—my last Android was the Pixel 2) after the release of the iPhone 17 Pro. I really struggled with the direction of iPhone this year and was drawn to multitasking, Google Gemini on a phone, and the foldable form factor. I made the call. On the plus side, Android also have better VPN bypass function support compare to iOS. A few months later, I haven't regretted it.

LocalSend

LocalSend has been a seamless, near-native experience for cross-platform users like me—sending files between iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows with no hassle.

Chess.com

I started learning chess on Duolingo (one of the AI projects the company kicked off), but after a 160-day streak I found the puzzles sometimes flawed and not doing their best moves. Then I found out about Chess.com. Not only I can play with a real person, I can also perform review from past matches and play with a coach. That's exactly how I want to learn a new skill, revie what I did wrong and how can I avoid the same mistake. Duolingo's gamification is strong, but a lot of the exercises felt repetitive after a period of time.

Obsidian

After years away, I'm back on Obsidian—revisiting it for daily logging and note-taking. Release of Bases really put Obsidian back in the radar with other database-like comeptitors. But, it has also stood out among competitors in AI productivity race as Claude Code or Cursor could just read the entire vault, which just open Obsidian up to any AI tool that can consume local folder. Unlocking infinite possibilities by rather than relying Obsidian itself or community plugin. #FileOverApp was a right call early in years contributing to this sucess.

Films

My top 10 films I watched for the first time in 2025:

1. Sinners by Ryan Coogler
2. Battle Royale by Kinji Fukasaku
3. Anora
4. Fast & Feel Love
5. Bad Genius
6. Four Trails
7. Mickey 17
8. A Real Pain
9. Pride & Prejudice
10. I’m Still Here

How I Use AI

2025 — the year of AI — felt like a tools explosion is real. I hopped on and off new tools last year and FOMO the next tool that can transform work and life (if there are any work left for human). On the other end, the cost of building software has dropped dramatically a lot, I started building quite a lot of side-projects. If you are interested, read Things I built in 2025 where share more of my learning from building tools from scratch as a designer.

One of my learning while trying Cursor, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity: context matters. The more information you feed to AI result in better response. For that, your rationale behind decisions, your thoughts and your notes really matters. With interoperability, these will be valuable asset. If you have been chatting with one via chat, try reverse a summarization of your own style and tone. Another learning is interoperability, use format that is universal avoid you locking yourself in to certain system. With recent enthusism on Openclaw, turns out you don’t need any complicated system or file format, the best and free system is just a folder with a bunch of markdown files.

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Ending this year with Welcome Change—a reminder to stay open to what's next.

Before that happens, I'd love to hear what resonated with you. Reach out on Twitter if you want to swap year-in-review thoughts or tips.