Takeaways from 31 years old.
On health
Invest in a good chair
Good chair doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. After a decade of horrible office posture, my body is relearning and it’s not confy. The good thing is, it forces me take a walk every hour and my back is no longer in pain after work.
Exercise is about being functional
I probably spent way too much time in the gym in my 20s, it was fun pushing weights and I learned the valuable lesson of persistence. But it didn’t always made me feel great physically. In the past year, I started to incorporate cardio and yoga. Overall, It gave me consistent energy throughout the day.
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| cardio | 8.7% | 9.52% | 38.30% |
| flexibility | 24.76% | 35.11% | |
| strength | 91.30% | 65.71% | 26.60% |
A good sleep is not easy
Good sleep is a challenge on preparation and self-control. I don’t bring my phone into my bedroom anymore because I realize it’s impossible for me to not touch it and only use it as an alarm. Instead, my Casio F91-W wakes me up now.
On time management
60 minutes is surprising enough for exercise, shower, and lunch.
– 35 minute exercise, 10 minute shower, and 15 minute lunch. The best way to maximize exercise time is to use a meeting room, it literally takes only few seconds to start.
Don’t go to Costco on weekends or holidays
Purchase grocery is not the most important thing at Costco, it’s burning the energy of my one year old. Therefore, it’s best to avoid the weekend traffic. Besides, it’s a less frustration wait at the cashier.
Get things done with an actual pen and paper
This has removed all distractions and the constant edit on a computer. It’s something I do when I work on marketing content or trying to sort out my thoughts. Tip: buy a pen that writes wonders.
Just one cloud storage
I have a problem with decentralization of my cloud storage. My photos are in iCloud, my documents are in Dropbox (the evolution: OneDrive -> iCloud -> Dropbox), and it’s dumb to waste both money and space on multiple cloud services. Yeah, I know I can have everything on iCloud, but I have a Windows laptop at work and iCloud Windows is a terrifying experience. Since a few months ago, I’ve been migrating everything to Dropbox, and photo organization is now dumber than ever. Unlike Google Photo or Apple Photo, Dropbox photo comes with barely any photo organization, but that simplifies the distraction and I’m more aware of the pictures I upload nowadays.
On what I haven’t figured out
Ukulele
I tried to pick up an instrument during the lockdown and I can play a few chords, but it’s a struggle this year to find time for it. I’m hesitant, whether I adjust my schedule for this or drop this? What drives my judgement?
Annual workout time still max at half of what it was when I’m single
Since Millie’s birth on December 2020, the annual workout time has just been axed. It looks like 2022 will be similar to 2021. The math is simple: longer average exercise time or higher exercise frequency. Day-to-day implementation is the challenging part.
– 2020 – 4,629 minutes
– 2021 – 2,349 minutes
– 2022 YTD – 1,582 minutes