Happy (belated) New Year! 🎉[2nd-Feb-25]

Welcome to another year of all things interesting and random!

Howdy there!

Welcome back to the Sunday Surprise for another year! 🎉🎉🎉

How has 2025 been treating you so far? Every year, I set big goals at the start of January, only to find that by the end of the year, things have taken a completely different direction. But this time, it feels... different.

Essentially how my cats are everyday: relaxing in the sun

I’d love to know how things are for you? Hit reply and let me know!

General housekeeping: 90% of the newsletter is completely free. Any links with * are affiliate links. If you’ve enjoyed any of my random creative endeavours/like giving to charity/want to support Substack as an awesome platform, consider subscribing. They take a cut(I can’t actually pay for this awesome service) and I tend to donate most of this to charity, but I do use it as a yard stick to know that people find the content valuable. It should work out to <$2/wk!

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Creative update

Youtube - What I Love (and Hate) About the Surface Pro 11

This is probably the first year that I took a significant break from work AND all creative projects over the New Year period so there’s only 1 real video that I have done so far even though we’re in February!

For the next few months, you’ll see Youtube be a bit of a priority, but more on all this a bit later…

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Things I’m watching

🎙️Jensen Huang’s Vision for the future

AI seems to come up every. single. day. Most people either see it as just ChatGPT or some dystopian sci-fi scenario straight out of The Terminator.

But what if you were someone who actually saw this coming? What if you were actively shaping the technology that led us here? What do those people see in the not-so-distant future?

This conversation dives into exactly that. The host does an incredible job of keeping it both detailed and accessible—whether you’re an AI beginner or deep in the weeds, there’s something for you here. Definitely worth a listen.

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Cool finds

Samsung S25Ultra*

As sure as the sun rises, Samsung has dropped its latest flagship phone—and, as expected, I’ve pre-ordered it.

Smartphone innovation has slowed down, with most upgrades being iterative. So why did I upgrade?

• Ultra-wide camera upgrade (finally!)

• Pro video mode with advanced color grading

• Better battery life

• Some AI tricks that might actually be useful

Basically, this phone now doubles as a legitimate second camera for video production, which is a game-changer for me.

🚨 One notable downgrade: The S Pen no longer works as a camera trigger—a feature I actually used, though apparently, most people didn’t.

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Actionable insight

🎯 Split your yearly goals into quarterly quests

I mentioned this last year as a strategy that I have heard via Ali Abdaal and thought I’d give it a try in 2025. So far, it’s been working great!

I’ve always broken by goals up into the groups of healthy, wealthy and wise, so I’ve picked 1 in each category and decided to focus on only that for a quarter instead of many different goals.

Here’s mine til April:

• 🏃‍♂️Healthy - focus on diet, not so much the food but eating timetables. It turns out, I’m not hungry a lot of the time, so I’m doing a day of 24 hr near fasts (water and coffee only - can’t seem to do black on an empty stomach!) alternating with normal diet. This is working remarkably well for me!

• 💸Wealthy - Actually the goal this year is to focus on this less since I realised, I really don’t have super expensive tastes. So instead, it’s about optimising for time. As of the end next week, I’ll be taking a few months of long service leave so I will be fiddling with the schedule to work out what’s the best timetable I can come up with that makes me excited about work. Part of that is focussing on creative things that make me excited, so for the next few months, that focus is Youtube.

• 🦉Wise - This ties into the previous point: as I change my schedule around, I’m also using the spare time to go through a list of books that I keep hearing about near these topics. So no formal course, but lots of reading. If I happen to get to my ideal schedule really quickly, I’ll bring forward things from the next quarter, which are learn Arabic and resume flying lessons.

Now, this a random idea, but would doing a monthly call as a check-in/goal accountability group be something that would be useful for you? If so, let me know in the poll below and I may put something together.

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Weekly Update

It’s definitely been more than a week since the last update!

Here’s the bullet point breakdown of everything that’s been happening:

• Ended up doing clinical work (not too much) over the new year break and taking all the major days off for the first time in decades!

• was invite to attend Samsung Unpacked again but due to being away on sabbatical and having to repay favours to my friends, I didn’t have the flexibility to attend in San Francisco.

• went to the Australian Open for the first time ever

• friend who is a qualified pilot took me on a flight around the bay - has made me want to get back to flying

• decided to visit Sydney as my consolation prize for not going to SF.

• went back to public practice and realised just how unbalanced my time is normally

• decided to take long service leave and give myself the time and space to work out a better timetable.

Some photos and things below over on the blog. Would love to know what you’ve been up to!

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Quote of the week

One from a source you wouldn’t expect to start the year…