5 Life Lessons I Learned in 2020

A Letter to My Future Self

Dear Zake,

I’m the 27-year-old of you from 2020, how have you been? Since 2015, I decided to take a day every month to reflect on work, life, relationship, and mental clarity. This is the 58th mail that I send to you.

As we are approaching another end of the year, I think December, should be the best time for us to go through everything that happened in 2020. What went well, what went wrong and unexpected, if given another chance, what would you do differently and why?

In this monthly review, I will walk you through mine, and hopefully the framework and thinking process can benefit you as well. Let’s (at least) make the best use of our 2020 in this very last month. 😎

5 Life Lessons I Learned in 2020

1. Plan Before The Action (Like A Pro)

Before every decision or action we are going to take, plan thoroughly. Different people have different understanding about this word “plan”, so let me clarify on this.

In Merriam Webster, plan means a method for achieving an end, a detailed program, which means the best way to plan, is having a hand of detailed plans for every possibility you can think of.

In April 2020, I quit my job at OnePlus. Before submitting the resignation, I on and off take almost a year to really create a plan for my life without a job. I read a lot of articles, videos, and apply all the frameworks they used to help them make the decision.

1. Trust your gut // Perception

If you are not feeling happy or content with the current situation, something must be wrong, and you should take actions to change, rather than sit and wait, wishing everything could turn out to be alright automatically.

In history, we see this happen to many countries, industries and individuals. The last dynasty of China, Qing is a great example, when you close the door of learning and communication with others, you also close the door of constant improvement, which could be deadly. The same thing happened to IBM, and now all the traditional fuel car companies.

When facing the new change and revolution, our human instinct is to stay the same and avoid unnecessary efforts. But this could be fatal.

2. Diagnosis // Rational

When we believe and acknowledge that there’s a problem, then we can diagnose it, just like what we will do with our body. Because we cannot sometimes make decisions only based on our gut feelings, those solutions that come up with our feelings usually are misleading, and cannot help us solve the root cause.

For example, when I was feeling wrong in my last job, the first solution that came to my mind is quitting. To run away from it, so you won’t have to deal with that unpleasant stuff. However, my point is even if sometimes the solution seems so obvious, we still need to make sure we understand the “WHY” behind the problem.

During a year of diagnosis, I tried a bunch of things. Becoming a content creator and making things I’m personally proud of, talking to many therapists looking for their advice (as reference), talking to friends and family, creating a “Plan B” for life after quitting the job, I even made a spreadsheet, with different factors and their weight points, trying to score a best solution out of it…

All these methods help, because when you are taking action and facing these obstacles, the optimal choice will come to you.

Another thing is “The Worst-Case Scenario”, this is one of the biggest lessons I learned from Tim Ferriss. I find it always helpful to make a list of your fears and potential challenges. It makes you fearless when making decisions and set your mind and body ready for every trouble that might come up.

2. Practice With Intentions

When you find yourself practice or extremely interested in something, it’s more effective if you are aware of setting up a quantifiable goal. This will keep you on par with your original idea and achieve improvements at a much faster pace.

Take swimming as an example, I started a 30-day challenge of swimming every day from 7 AM-9 AM back in May 2019, with the intention just to show up every morning in the pool, no matter where I am, what I will do later in the day and how I feel. You can also watch the video here, this is also my first 30-day challenge video.

After this challenge, I am back to a much normal swimming schedule and principle: DO NOT SKIP MORE THAN 2 CONSECUTIVE DAYS.

This simple idea guarantee at least I show up in the pool quite frequently, even recognized by many “old man” swimming club members, and even invited me to their events, like swimming across the river, swimming in the winter Lhasa.

Showing up, I believe it’s the very first step if you want to dig into any subjects. Besides, I also modified some secret weapons for my own use, which as you might guess, it’s OKR.

3. “OKR” everything

Most of the tech companies as I know, are using this method for goal & team management. It keeps everybody on the same page on the bigger picture, and also aware of the importance of their work and efforts, which makes more people dedicated to their job and have the ownership.

We love making New Year Resolutions. Please take a moment to think about your resolutions for 2020, how many of them have you achieved? Have you ever tried and taken the first step? For most people, including me, we don’t.

Later this year, I realized it is applicable to use OKR managing every part of your life. I will continue explaining by using the swimming example.

O: Improve my freestyle posture, pull efficiency, easy 100m in 1 min

KR1: Have an efficient streamlined posture (Core exercises)

KR2: Improve my pull efficiency (on per pull)

KR3: Improve rhythm and breath (makes freestyle looks easy)

As we have acknowledged the objective and key results, I have these following as todos:

1. Swimming at least 3 times a week;
2. Watch at least 1 swimming tutorial video during lunch break every day;
3. Always apply some new skills and training methods learned from the videos, and find the ones that work best for me;
4. Review yourself with videos;
5. Repeat;

I have trained more intentionally in the past 500 days, and the improvements are quite obvious. Freestyle used to be my weakest stroke, but now people recognize me by my freestyle more than any other stroke.

I’m currently making a video about my change in this 500-day duration.

4. Time/Energy Cost vs. Money

When I’m reviewing my 2020, the most frustrated and powerless moments are 1. Waiting for my driving license exams; 2. Buying outdoor gears online;

Getting a driver license is like a one-time set and done thing, so I’m totally fine with the time I have spent for that due to unorganized procedures. But buying something online is a frequent act in our life, and too much information usually blinds us with our initial intention. So we need to optimize it with our standards and principle.

First, time and energy cost are 2 things we will never get back in our life, so the priority should always place first. Money is something we make and are able to create again and again, this should be a lower priority when we make purchasing decisions, however usually we put this way too high in the mind.

There’s a balance that we need to set up for ourselves, based on your living standard, how much you earn, what things you value the most and which stage are you currently at in life.

I will share mine: I’m obsessed with cameras and lenses, FPS shooting games, but I never own more than 2 cameras and never have owned a game console, most of the time, it’s one camera with one lens, and rent if I really need something. As for games, I hope cloud gaming could get even better soon.

These past 2 months, as we need to purchase many new gears for our next outdoor hiking trip. I spend way too much time browsing and looking for the best deal, which somehow doesn’t change the final decisions at the end. This makes me wonder, how long should be a perfect duration for making a purchase decision? My current principles are:

1. If you know exactly what you are looking for, and the thing is cheap (under ¥500 CNY), then the decision should not take more than 5 minutes;

2. If you are buying something you have never owned before, maybe you need some time for research to see which one meets your needs, then use the fragmented time for researching, and when you know what you value the most, make the purchase decision in 5 minutes;

3. Most of the time, you get what you pay for;

4. If a purchase won’t help with your health, relationship, and long-term happiness, then usually it is a low-priority want, not an essential need. Get rid of it.

5. Money can be made, but time cannot replay.

5. Long-term Oriented

This mindset totally changes how I think about the problem & solution, how I make every decision, how I adjust my priority, and how you can be an unfuckwithable asshole to live life the way you want, not the way other people tell you.

On learning, lifelong learning really is definitely the basic skill that everyone should have in the future. When you decide to stop learning, or even you cannot keep up the pace with the world, the moment the world will quit on you.

On career, do not limit your potential and opportunity to grow inside the box, inside the company. You should take every job as a new offer for a new city, new campus, new environment to adapt and make the best out of it. And remember, the end goal is being a world-class professional and craftsman.

On investment, I don’t have much time for knowing every detail in the market, neither I’m capable and interested to purchase a house. So I only do auto investments plan, and focus on transfer money to those funding accounts, every week or month.

On relationship, when you are in a committed relationship, I think it is always helpful to plan and collaborate on long-term plans together. See your future as a whole, and have both the needs and dreams fulfilled.

On video channel, keep the initial drive and do not be manipulated by money, temptations, your core value. I said no to most of the sponsor offers, one is because I raise my price and bar really high, I don’t work with mediocre brands. And I will work myself up to become the best, and only speak for the best.

What I’m Digesting

1. 96 Hours Inside Afghanistan in 2020

The video from YES THEORY is exactly the type of video I always want to make. What they have experienced in Afghanistan, is pretty similar to my experience and vlogs in Iran back in 2018, which keeps reminding me my “LIFE IS A DRUG” motto.

The world is always there and waiting for you to explore.

2. Book: WHY WE SLEEP — Matthew Walker

As I found it really hard to stick with a healthy bedtime, I picked up this book and hope it can bring me some changes. Currently only finishing 200 pages, still a long way to go.

LIFE IS A DRUG. LOVE IT. LIVE IT.
Zake