Category: Personal reviews

Sometimes things get tough at work or in life, sometimes it creates a domino effect into other aspects. A badly done project at work leads to a bad mood, unintentionally brought it home and it leads to an argument with our partner; then it kept us from sleeping at night and the lack of sleep leads to a bad performance at work. It turns into a loop.

Keep something small everyday, a 5-line journal, read for 15 minutes during lunch; something that reminds us of “accomplishment”. It helps when things get muddy.

Results for 33

1. Exercise is progressing after the dip

Ever since my daughter born in December 2020, the exercise volume axes in half in 2021; then I transit to product marketing in November 2021, the number hit rock bottom in 2022 and 2023 as I tried to balance between raising a toddler, rebuilding a team, and personal habit. There were multiple breakdowns these two years.

Life becomes more controllable after she turned 3 and work become more stable after year 1. Here’s the temporary schedule that worked: read bed time story at 9pm, leave for the gym at 10-ish, and begin workout at 10:30, end around 11:30pm.

At 33, the metabolism slowed greatly compare to the 20s, 2 years of missing exercise made the it difficult to recover. The body is keen toward bloated after sugary or greasy meal. On average, I gained 1.5kg to 2kg of fat in the past 2 years; removing it is the next short term goal.

2. Family first

The transition to product marketing introduced bureaucracy in a new height. After endless leveraging, setting up barriers, picking sides, the one thing that remains is myself and my family. At the end of the day, family is purpose for financial income and a good sleep is related to keeping my core belief.

3. The world is BIG

I visited Thailand, Japan, and United States this year in personal travel and business trip. The opportunity to take a step out is a great reminder on the size and possibility in this world. If this boat flips, it probably won’t drown me.

The adrenaline of experiencing the unexpected felt great. We tried two day micro trips for the weekend and saving 5% of month income for the big one.

4. Financial number gaining traction

A choice between NT$35,600 Apple refurbished M3 Macbook Air and NT$31,900 new M2 Macbook Air. Which one to keep and which one to return?

The price difference is NT$3700. There are few ways to justify the difference:
– 2 display output vs 1
– SoC performance
– Dynamic caching

ChatGPT says a MacBook typically gets 7-8 years of OS update. The question that ultimate strikes “Will I pay NT$3,700 for 2 years of major OS update?”.

Yes, an easy yes.

The airplane stuck on the tree while we’re at the park today. I tried knocking it down with branches. I tried climbing and shaking it. I have told people to shut up, but I did not call for help. My wife did, and we got our plane back.

Some problems aren’t solvable with personal ability. There’s no wrong in admitting defeat and call for help if it reaches the objective.

Recently at work, I found members sitting idle on a task longer than planned. This pattern happens when they’re in a project for more than 2 to 3 weeks.

During the first few weeks, information pile up quickly. Over flooded with information on the project, judgement becomes more difficult because the considerations increased.

The idea of OK is not compromise to a lower standard, but to create frequent micro failures that slightly brings up the quality of work each time.

A 10 minute review is held when a member reached a quality they believe is OK. Not good, not great, just OK. The checkpoint creates an incremental improvement in quality of work.

Three OK turns it to good, three good turns it to great.

For certain there’s debate on the reliability of MBTI, for which I cannot argue. However, I believe the overall trend could be an interesting indicator. My rest from 2016 was ENFx; in 2024 it’s ENFJ. The way I react to events and how I perceive myself probably stayed.

2023 was challenging. Having significant increase in work time from my first time manager journey and taking care of my daughter, it was really really tough to keep up with exercise. All major indexes reached all time low.

This is a major focus of 2024, I’m happier when I feel physically strong. Building up a morning exercise routine is crucial, since it’s the only time I have.

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

Mistakes often makes us feel wronged and deeply hurt, but the next worse thing that could happen is trapping us in an inmoble, unactionable mental state. The idea of fault and responsibility mentioned in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck could be an antidote (at least it did for me).

Remove fault from responsibility gives a better look at the event. It might not be our fault that things went wrong and very often it’s not, but we are responsible for whatever happened on us. With an acceptance of who’s fault it is, we have a better chance to detach emotion from the truth. Yeah, so if I’m the one who fucked up, then also just admit it and move on.

Let’s move on to responsibility. We’re responsible for the interpretation of the event and the action we will take. The example given is step on a pile of dog shit on the street. Fault? Nope. Responsibility: fuck, this could be a sign to take the day in a slower pace (interpretation) and a chance to get a new pair of shoes (action).

Same idea applies to work, my job at marketing constantly requires teamwork. Sometimes, the product development delays and it’s not in our control or fault. But we’re still responsible for it, we must make decision and take action, either we wait or move on to the next project.

At the end of the day, it’s about moving on with our live, not trapped in the past. This idea of fault and responsibility disengage what we have no control of (fault) from what we have (responsibility).

(originally written on December 31, 2021)

Reflecting on the year is just as meaningful as looking ahead to the next. I like to think of it as baggage. Every year, I take on some baggages, it is inevitable if I want to move forward. These baggages arrive in the form of habits, purchases, or responsibilities. A year end review helps me cleanup and clear the path. After all, we can’t keep the agility with more baggages on our shoulder, we can only move forward if we offload some of them. So the questions to think about: am I heading in the right direction? What should I keep? More importantly, what should I let go?

Baggage to (try to) let go

All social media notifications
After multiple adjustments over the year, I have a good feeling the changes I made this time could work.

Paper Zettlekasten system
The deciding question that I asked, “will I take this with me if the house catches fire?”. No.

Doing everything by myself
Later this year I’m giving the responsibility of an entry leadership role. In a healthy organization, people usually get promoted base on performance. The challenge of transition from a bottom staff to a leadership role is to trust the people whom you’re leading, no matter how big the team. For me, that is to delegate the work to them although I know I can do it on my own.

Baggage to keep

Ukulele
Back in high school, I spent a year learning electric guitar, but it never got anywhere. Fortunately, the image of myself playing some sort of instrument never really died. During the pandemic lockdown in May, I pulled the trigger and purchased a ukulele. I suck now, but it feels really nice to have a side project.

A writing notebook
If I took anything from the paper Zettlekasten experiment, that’s the ability to focus with a pen and paper. When everything is taken away, I’m forced to create the most important content, the title, the logic, and the story.

Home exercise
I logged 2,349 minute this year, approximately half of 2020 (4,629 minute) with similar exercise sessions. With a toddler in my life, going to the gym is still risky, so I’m keeping the home exercise in 2022.