One Step At A Time | Oct. 2019
A Letter to My Future Self
Dear Zake,
I’m the 26-year-old of you from 2019, how have you been? Since 2015, I decide to take a day every month to reflect on work, life and mental clarity.
This is the 48th mail I’m sending to you.
October — One Step At A Time
Multiple cores for processor, multiple cameras for smartphone, multifunction watch, speaker, even people who are good at multitasking. But I’m going to disagree with this “multi-” world.
It’s not because I think “multi” is bad, I feel like when we are trying to do multiple things at the same time, we lose the initial purpose and joy.
When you are sitting face to face with the one you love, when you are watching a movie and resonating with what the film wants to say, and when you want to reflect on your past month… These quality time will be remembered by you, and you feel much fulfilled.
But you won’t, if you sit at the same table while everybody is on the phone, either replying other people’s messages, or consuming other people’s content.
So I started to change the way I work and do things.
One step at a time, this is the lesson we’ve been taught in elementary school. When I really want to just focus on one thing, I find it becomes harder to do just one thing.
You cannot control your mind, while you are doing one thing, almost every 5 minute, there will pop up another idea or non-important thing, if you are not resistant enough to say no, it’s so natural to stop doing the current one, and start the new task.
At the end of the day, you will find yourself open up so many tasks, but none of them are finished. Even if there’re finished tasks, they are not that important, or at least not in your original plan of today.
It is the time that we are not scheduled in our calendar, stole away 80% of our time.
We never plan to waste 5–6 hours on our smartphone every day, but that could be base level of our average time spent.
So I think there’re 2 things I want to change:
1. Schedule time for whatever I’m doing
Things are important to us need to be scheduled, and so are those entertainment and relax moments.
For example, we can also schedule a 10-min relax with games, yoga or meditation. 15-min chill for checking Instagram and social media.
In this way, you won’t find yourself constantly check your phone.
2. Practice meditation
Meditation is the current 30-day challenge I’m doing. And I realize there’re formal and informal meditation.
Even if you don’t find yourself giving dedicated time for formal meditation, which is sitting quietly and following the instruction to clear up the mind, at least I think everyone should start doing some informal meditation.
For example, I consider swimming in the water and commute hours are my favorite ways of informal meditation. You are simply doing one thing, or nothing at all, giving all your focus to one part of your body.
Work
Instead of taking whatever it comes at work, I start to manage and control what I do and how long should I be focused on different tasks.
I tried Pomodoro technique for 2 weeks, eventually found it ideally beautiful but lack of practicality, especially for people like me in tech companies.
Before I always managing my work by the end results. I want this report to be finished by Thursday, and every new features to be locked down by Friday.
However, throughout the day, you will be distracted and caught up by so many unexpected and unscheduled stuff, even if it is just a 10-min discussion, but it adds up.
By borrowing and implementing the idea from Indistractable by Nir Eyal. I start to only care about the time I put in for each task. For example, now my day will be:
Have sync-up meeting for 45 minutes to set up schedule for delivery;
Discuss UX/UI solutions for an hour to confirm final design;
Work on product roadmap and long term project for an hour;
Research and experience recent competitors products;
I think you get the idea. By managing the input and time, we automatically improve our productivity.
I’m still experiencing with this technique, and will share more of my thoughts.
Life
In October, I wrapped up my latest 30-day challenge, cook every meal I have for 30 days. This is so far the most time-consuming challenge, and I have to admit that sometimes it brings me more pain than fun.
Although the food is really good.
As I decide to post video regularly, many brands reach out to me for video promotion or sponsorship. They look really nice, since I will be have an extra income by making videos.
But I reject most of them. I think the volume I have is not big enough, and if taking those sponsor’s money will affect what I post and produce, it will eventually kill the channel.
So instead of taking those sponsors who come to me, I go out and look for sponsors that fit my content actively. I might make less money or even no money at all, but I manage to keep the quality of the video.
As I bring meditation to my daily routine in the past 3 weeks, I’ve been working on rewiring all my focus back to the most important things in life, which is happiness and health.
Things to do, habits to build and money to spend, everything should start with our happiness and health. And I’ve also started to try Ramit Sethi’s method, which is cut off all the money you are not enjoy spending, while spend 10x the money on things you truly love.
We will see how this affect my life and happiness level.
What I’m Digesting
1. Happiness Is a Serious Matter
2. Why I Hire Product Managers Based on Emotion Over Experience
3. Q&A With Tim — On Happiness, Dating, Depressive Episodes, and Much More
4. The Random Show — On Fasting, Forest Bathing, How to Say NO, Rebooting the Self, and Much More
5. Sam Harris — enlightenment, real meditation, and consciousness explained
6. How to Be Patient in an Impatient World
7. Netflix Product Designer | Navin Iyengar | Design Like a Scientist
8. The Key to Happiness in a Distracted World
Hey Zake, I hope you will find this email helpful and bring your some great memories. LIFE IS A DRUG, LOVE IT, LIVE IT.
Much love,
Zake
