Category: Personal reviews

When it comes to limiting my phone use, I tried them all.

• Turn screen into greyscale to reduce stimulation.
• Shuffling app folder to break the swipe habit.
• Block URL.
• Setup a screen time passcode to remind myself.

But I always find ways to revoke it.

The frustration came from a 2 hour Saturday night doom scroll YouTube on Safari (It’s always Safari).

I decided to make the cost of revoke much higher and add enforce a replacing pattern. I asked my daughter to change the screen time passcode. And forget about it.

In a situation that I need to use the browser, I need to go through the process of passcode recovery. It’s a lot of work.

For replacement, I made podcast and Kindle obvious on the home screen.

Result

I completed 11K Standard Chartered Charity Taipei Marathon, the result was 3 minutes short of my goal.

• KM 1 – 6 was crowded, most people are energetic.
• KM 7 – 8 had bridges and narrow roads, it became crowded again.
• Both easily slowed everyone.

The problem wasn’t the lack of ability. The problem was the easily fall into the crowd. The excuse levitates the pain to fight through the crowd. Excuse sounds much easier.

Our brain defaults to avoid pain. I could iterate by:

1. Adapt to the environment: calculate the congestion into the plan.
2. Change the environment: move up to the faster crowd.

Words I constantly saw on YouTube title during the New Year: goals, habits, system, and theme.

This post is to interpret their differences.

Goals

The milestone we look to achieve, such as loosing 5kg, running sub-60 10K, summer vacation to Thailand.

The key to execution is to be as clear as possible. Instead of “Summer vacation to Thailand”, write “One week of vacation in Bangkok, Thailand”.

System or habit

The execution, the steps to move toward the goals.

• Loosing 5kg: calculating the calorie, sign up for the gym.
• One week of vacation in Bangkok: ask LLM to estimate the budget and plan, save $3,000 each month, buy plane ticket once it reaches $10,000.

The key to execution is to automate and remove the distraction.

• If it has to do with money, put it on the to-do list on every paycheck day or setup transfer automatically.
• Create check points
  • If it has to do with money, then give the milestone a clear amount.
  • If it is an ongoing timeline, then setup reminder every 30 or 90-days.

Theme

The focus, to make sure the goal or goals create synergy and not do too much.

Try to get promoted at work and taking 3 family trips probably won’t work well together.

Every time I press the Post button on LinkedIn, my stomach cramps.

• This is stupid.
• I’m a joke
• It’s embarrassing

It takes days for the stress to fade. Maybe I have not trained enough bias muscle resistance.

At any kind of work, from business to exercise, there are good days and bad days. Then there are good weeks and bad weeks.

The trap I set for myself is to modifying the intensity without a plan. Original plan was one post every 2 week. I had a few good writing days during the first 2 posts so I changed it to weekly without a good intention.

The problem is trying to match the intensity in bad days and weeks. It stretches the time too thin.

Adjustment: go back to the system

The system I created is to write from 1pm to 1:30pm daily, on a to-do app.

If I’m on a good day, then I can work one more pomodoro count.

But the baseline is to follow system, don’t let emotion deviate the execution.

The more research time I invest, the harder it became to let go of the idea. Letting go would erase the time and effort I have spent. Therefore,

• I would argue with LLM.
• I would add more factors, product comparison, criteria to LLM.
• I would ignore it’s result.

Gear often matter very little in the making of a story, at least at the very start. This is often a sign that I’m stalling, while I should be working.

The story: I bought an Insta360 Ace Pro 2 and I fell for the marketing. It’s laughable because I work in the video industry as product marketing.

It was a decision between DJI Action 5 Pro and Insta360 Ace Pro 2. The facts I over researched and end up persuaded myself:

1. It has a better editing software.
   Fact: iMovie is easier.
2. Windguard provides better sound clarity.
   Fact: still captures the surrounding sound.
3. Better nighttime image quality.
   Fact: there’s just so much you can do with slow shutter speed in low light.
4. Has a Leica co-branding, I could replace my Ricoh GR II.
   Fact: just a little bit.

The quick thought on the other hand:

1. DJI just released Action 6 Pro and Action 5 Pro is on discount.
2. Claude recommended DJI Action 5 Pro.
3. Perplexity recommended DJI Action 5 Pro.

Over the years, I transitioned from New Year resolutions to birthday personal reviews. (links to turning 32, 34, and 35)

This Ali-abdaal short reveals the fragmented feeling I had this year’s review, that is something to needle the topics together. The idea of a theme.

That said, my theme for 34 is brave because:

• It took me 6 months to find a new job and finally took the action to leave a job I did for 6 years.

• It gave me the opportunity to live in the states for 1 month, both exciting and scary.
• We had our first oversea family trip to Malaysia, just ourselves. It was 9 days in total, it’s our first time trying backpacking as a family.

The theme of 35 is Try Again, reasons being:

• I bought a property from dad and it depleted the 100k investment that took 4 years to build. Time to try again.

• I first started a blog at 31, it took 4 years to actually write. Time to try again.
• The new job is about building a team of product marketing. It might be luck when I did it the first time, now try again.

Almost fifty days into writing, one thing became apparent: the lack of things to write about.

There are things I’m already doing to find ideas:

• Listening to podcast
• Reading books

The reality of having a family and in my 30s: the social connection and new experience became stagnant. I circle around the same agenda of wake up, work, family, phone, repeat. I stopped expanding.

It was Friday lunch, I had lunch with Vincent, a rep who almost built the website for my previous company. And it clicked: meeting people, new people or old acquaintances from the past, and exchange experiences and ideas.

It was stupid simple and it reminds me that I created the boundary I trapped myself.

Throughout this 4 year experiment of trying to write and document, there are 2 elements that determined the action (or no action): purpose and fear.

When the intensity of purpose is higher than fear, I can take action. When the reverse happens, I stay in my comfort zone.

I have experienced 5 phases.

Phase 1. Fear > purpose.

This was before I started the website, I knew I had ideas, but I was scared of sharing.

Phase 2. Purpose > fear, but inconsistent

The case between 2021 to 2025, I would sometimes write, but I cared too much about what my coworkers think if they ever find out the stupid thoughts I have. Plus, I had a good trajectory and career path.

Phase 3. Purpose > fear, consistent

The journey that happened after I changed job in July. I lost the burden that trapped me; fear reduced to a point lower than purpose. This is enough to drive the smallest action.

Phase 4 & 5. Bigger fear, bigger purpose

Posted the first YouTube video 4 days ago. This is a smaller fear now that I started writing constantly.

This is about taking the action to create, not something for work, but for myself. Blog is a form of byproduct, so is YouTube. The gift is that I have built a routine to automate myself.

Leaving my previous job was, both, the most scary and blessing career decision I made. I was comparatively young when I was promoted, I was youngest in many manager meetings. There was definitely a lot of work put in, but it became a restriction I gave myself. It was difficult for me to share, to sound stupid or ignorant.

• How could I show my vulnerability?
• My members will laugh at me.
• People will think I’m stupid.
• The thing I know isn’t worth sharing.

Going into a new job, solo, was librating because it removed the fear I set on myself. My purpose of showing my work became stronger than the fear I have. I begin to understand that:

1. That feeling of being scared is self imagined because people only care about themselves, no one has the time to care what I do here.
2. Small action, even the smallest action possible, builds momentum, and momentum compounds.