One Person, Multiple Careers
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 59th mail that I’m writing to you.
2021 is here! In this January review, I’d like to share some of my thoughts, as well as my first 2 months' OKR breakdowns. Hope this might not only help me have more clarity about my 2021, but give you sort of a reference for your New Year Resolutions. 😊
On the last day of 2020, my girlfriend and I summited the top of 5588M Mount.Nama, one of the mountains of Minya Konka.
One Person, Multiple Careers
I borrowed the name of the book, One Person Multiple Careers, as this monthly review title. Since I am also a firm believer in not putting your eggs in one basket. In today’s world and the near future, this could be the trend that would happen to most of the industry and jobs.
As for an individual, our parents used to fight for a living, which means getting a job and making ends meet. It’s about playing it safe and stay stable.
However, for most of us today, this cannot be enough. I need to fight for a GOOD/HAPPY living, which means besides paying your bills, there’s something more you need to pursue, and not everyone has the same pursuit.
Some value the amount of money you can make, some value the amount of power you can possibly have, some value freedom and the number of things one can explore, and some simply value the spiritual achievement and be holy to a belief.
This might be the hardest part.
No matter what kind of people you are, I think being multi-functional with your careers and skills, will only play a positive part in your life.
O: Become a self-reliant, confident human being who has more freedom over his life
This objective is the 2021 annual goal, but definitely also works as a long-term ultimate life goal. Let me break it down.
There’re 3 keywords in this sentence: self-reliant, confident and freedom. Each keyword stands for an independent aspect of our dream life.
Self-reliant
Since I’m really into outdoor hiking and climbing, let’s imagine you were exiled to an isolated island. Being self-reliant means you need to protect yourself and find a sustainable way of living. You might cut down some trees and build yourself a cabin, find ways to farm and collect your food, etc.
And being in modern society means creating a value that others would love to pay for. It doesn’t matter if you creating value for a company or just yourself, as long as you are clear about your value.
Confident
This may sounds cliche, but I think everyone should define their confidence to be confident. This requires a high level of self-awareness. It is when you aware of your capability, that you may feel confident doing something. There’re 2 very basic metrics:
- Financially, you should make far more than you spend to feel confident. You can use minimalism to help you define your real need, having fewer things automatically increases the amount of money you can spend on each, which almost immediately improves your life;
- Understand your skills and master your craft. You need to first be highly self-aware of your body, mind and skills. Then it’s about crafting your skills on daily basis in a long-term perspective, so that you have more autonomy to pick the one that will make you feel confident. As Sun Tzu famously said,
Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
Freedom
My definition of freedom is, having multiple preferred ways/options to choose from, whenever you are making decisions. You can pick your favorite from many good ones, without any limitations.
For example, you can have many offers from Ivy League schools, job offers that can help you promote, get a raise and achieve your goals, buy whatever you want without even thinking about the price…
Having freedom does not mean I will quit doing the work, but allow me to focus and do a better job at what I’m interested in and curious about this world. Every time I camp in nature, it feels like this is where I belong and what my life should be. Nature is my home, not living in a concrete apartment.
Some say this is so idealistic, but I believe the dream of living in the woods and pursuing things you love, has not been so realistic and easy to achieve in this modern and interconnected world.
Freedom is more accessible than any of the time in human history, the question is, are you able to resist all these temptations and give up something you’ve already owned.
KR1: Have at least 3 sustainable sources of income/titles, annual income xxxK
- Develop 2–3 potential possible sustainable sources of income based on my interests and skills in Q1, and define the gap and todos
- Analyze the potential market needs and subscribers’ complain, update the existing course or complete new product ideas and business model
- Set boundary and draft a principle for other sources of income (this could be the first version of Zake Zhang’s culture)
KR2: Build a No.1 video editing PC software
This has been meticulously broken down in my PM day job, and it is confidential. However, I plan to promote the product on my channel after I feel confident using it personally. Hopefully sooner, it’s out now called Jianying Pro (剪映专业版).
KR3: Grow my channel to 200K and build a 150-person study community
- Be consistent on content creation: With meaningful intentions, 3 videos per month (minimum)
- Find my niche: Explore more possibilities of video content, list all my personal interests, skills, and what the general public wants to see
- Run the course at least once a quarter, build a sustainable timeline and framework for my course as a side hustle
- Community building: Break the limited time range of the course, allow people to interact, study and communicate even when the workshop is over
KR4: Gain muscle and weight to 70KG, workout 300 days in 2021
- Workout at least 5 times/week, 3 swimming day (2KM/day)+ 2 burpee day(100burpees/day)
- Boxing 1 time/week
- Football every other week
- 100 more burpees when I fail on a workout day, or fail to go to bed before 12AM.
(KR5: Learn to care and love, have a strong relationship)
I have todos for this KR as well, but eventually decide to delete them all. Love is our emotion, a way of expression. It is perceptual, and cannot be measured by those rational decisions and todos. Love should be pressure-free.
Hopefully, I have more to share about love in 2022.
And there you have it, this is my 2021 and first 2 months’ OKR. We will review these KRs in March. If you still haven’t created your version of the annual review or new year resolutions, it is never too late to plan now.
What I’m Digesting
1. How to build a product people will fall in love with — a digital product strategy framework
2. Product prioritization frameworks: Making sense of opportunities in a resource-constrained world
3. Product Roadmap — Five Key Points to Keep in Mind
4. 微信互联网平民创业 — 李笑来
I read this book on the way back from mountain climbing in Chengdu, the whole book takes me around 1.5H, but gave me much support and inspiration on how to build an ultimate career and earn more freedom. I highly recommended this book to people who are not content with their current situations.
5. One Person Multiple Careers — Marci Alboher
LIFE IS A DRUG. LOVE IT. LIVE IT.
Zake
