Personal Top Priority

dennyzhang

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/personal-top-priority/

🌟 Vision

Live a healthy, confident, and wealthy life — balanced across family, personal growth, and financial freedom.

Focus on high-leverage actions and eliminate noise

🎯 Key Objectives (FCM)

1. Family — Build a Healthy and Happy Family

  • Stay emotionally connected with kids and spouse
  • Maintain physical health and manage stress effectively

Quarterly Focus

  • 1 hour’s high quality time with kids twice a week
  • Exercise 2x per week, sleep 7h/night
  • Monthly date night with spouse

2. Confidence — Strengthen Personal and Professional Growth

  • Increase professional market value
  • Improve appearance and communication skills
  • Build meaningful, positive connections

Quarterly Focus

  • Publish or present 1 idea publicly (talk, post, doc)
  • Update wardrobe / grooming once per quarter
  • Reach out to 1 mentor or peer connection monthly

3. Money — Grow Wealth with Leverage

  • Earn through smart, sustainable investing
  • Focus energy on high-return opportunities

Quarterly Focus

  • Review investment portfolio quarterly
  • Evaluate investment decisions and lessons learned — track what worked, what didn’t
  • Automate saving and investing routines
  • Delegate or outsource low-value chores

⚙️ Guiding Principles

1. Prioritize What Truly Matters

  • Be clear on what to do — and what not to do
  • Bias toward solving problems, not perfection

2. Evolve Mindset Continuously (E6 → E7 Upgrade)

  • Think in systems and first principles — solve root causes, not symptoms
  • Apply growth mindset — treat mistakes as learning opportunities and embrace ambiguity
  • Create leverage — empower others, clarify processes, and automate repeat work
  • Lead through influence — align people and decisions without authority

3. Spend Smartly to Earn More

  • Buy time and energy via good services
  • Avoid over-optimizing trivial details

🧠 Habits

Good Habits

  • Conduct effective design reviews weekly
    • Share meaningful stories and lessons at work
    • Say no to small or low-impact optimizations
  • Write a weekly summary to reflect and refocus

Bad Habits

  • Struggling too long in dead ends
  • Overthinking without action
  • Setting too many small, fragmented goals

🔄 Weekly Reflection Checklist

Focus Area Reflection Question Done?
Family Did I spend 1:1 time with my spouse or kid? [ ]
Confidence Did I act or share something that built self-belief? [ ]
Money Did I review investments and track lessons learned? [ ]
Energy Did I maintain good sleep and movement this week? [ ]
Mindset Did I apply systems thinking, growth mindset, or empower others this week? [ ]

🔍 Clarity Rules

  • Say no to non-essential goals
  • Keep energy > time as the key metric
  • Default to reflection > reaction
  • Build systems and habits that compound over years, not weeks