Kelly Huang

  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

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    The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.

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    Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.

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    Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.

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    The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.

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    Negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something.

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    “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

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    If you think at any point you’re allowed to stop climbing, I’m afraid you’re missing the point. Because the joy is in the climb itself.

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    Entitlement plays out in one of two ways:

    1. I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserver special treatment.
    2. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment.

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    We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond…if you get run over by a clown car and pissed on by a busload of schoolchildren, it’s still your responsibility to interpret the meaning of the event and choose a response.

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    Making a million dollars could threaten your identity just as much as losing all your money; becoming a famous rock star could threaten your identity just as much as losing your job. This is why people are often so afraid of success…it threatens who they believe themselves to be.

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    If it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.

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    If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.

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    Because it felt like people didn’t want to talk to me, I came to believe that people didn’t want to talk to me…Because I failed to separate what I felt from what was, I was incapable of stepping outside myself and seeing the world for what it was: a simple place where two people can walk up to each other at any time and speak.

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    Action isn’t just the effet of motivation; it’s also the cause of it……Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation

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    The desire to avoid rejection at all costs…is a form of entitlement. Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad.

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    Healthy love is based on two people acknoledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support…”If I refused, how would the relationship change?”

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    People with strong boundaries are not afraid of a temper tantrum, and argument, or getting hurt.

  • End Year Review 2021

    (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.

  • First encounter with dumb phone in a decade

    (originally written on December 25, 2021)

    The first day of owning a dumb phone was not full of anxiety from digital detox.

    On the morning of December 24, I picked up the secondhand Nokia 3310 that I purchased online. Being late for work, I didn’t swap my SIM to the phone (it requires an adapter anyways), so I shove it into my pocket.

    Size is a great advantage of dumb phone, I didn’t have to pull out the phone every time I sit. Even during walking, the size of the phone doesn’t break the posture. Smartphone inside the front or back pocket never felt right, it’s always awkward to walk with that.

    I realize my first day reaction is not anxiety. I had, in my mind, to show my colleague the photo quality of the 2 megapixel camera, but I didn’t. I kept it inside my pocket the whole time. Something stopped me from doing that, and I think it was embarrassment. After all, it takes an effort to go against the norm.

    What I couldn’t figure out at this point is the source of this feeling. Nevertheless, here are two hypothesis I have. First is the trust of this decision, I don’t have full confidence in this adjustment, which brings me back to my college days. It made sense, it’s only the first day and I haven’t dive into yet. The second guess has to do with how I perceive myself. As someone who works in the IT industry and as a marketing role, I should be on the edge of technologies, but this dumb phone is exactly the opposite to that. What part of myself will change, now or later, if the tech savvy part of me is taken away?

    Fortunately or unfortunately, this experiment didn’t last long. That night I found out the phone only support 2G network, which service is terminated in Taiwan. I will need to purchase another phone to continue this experiment.

  • Why a blog

    originally written on November 25, 2021

    Starting a blog has been one of the New Year Resolution since 2019. Since a kid, I’ve always been that student who’s shy to raise his opinion in class. I think a lot of that has to do with self recognition and thinking everyone else knew the answer, but me. Although I’m much better compare to that teenager, I still wonder if this inadequacy is share by other people.

    So what changed?

    The first event that shine a light on the dusted to do item (I still have it on my 2020 and 2021 New Year Resolution) is the fact that I became a dad on the Christmas Eve of 2020. I became the father of a 2,650 gram girl. As the year goes by and as I watch my daughter tripple her weight, it gave me a bigger responsibility in life.

    The second thing that struck me was taking the COVID-19 vaccine on September 15, 2021. COVID-19 induces a low, but unignorable, rate of death. A week before vaccination, I started randomly writting last words on scattered notes.

    I am now 3 days in after my second vaccine. This process has got me thinking, what if I was gone tomorrow? What trace would I have left for my family? How will my daughter turn out without a slight memory of me?

    It was at that moment that I have full clarity of my audience. I’m writing for my daughter to know about me.