Cover Photo by Prince C from Pixabay

10 lessons I learned in the decade

1. “Who am I?” and “Who am I in the society?” are unimportant questions.
2. To escape the competition trap, be authentic. Values are authentic, ideals are not.
3. You do not have any duty to your aptitudes. You are also not your accomplishments.
4. The biggest waste of a team is defending self-images and keeping a wary eye on others' impression.
5. The biggest waste of a person is managing beliefs.
6. The secret of work-life balance is that we should not separate work and life.
7. The underlying structure of anything will determine its behavior.
8. Those who misunderstand the functions of money are either greedy or idealistic.
9. Your responsibility to others does not and cannot supersede their responsibility to themselves.
10. Reading scales your learning. Writing scales your thinking.

Lesson #1

“Who am I?” and “Who am I in the society?” are unimportant questions.

What we think about ourselves is irrelevant to our life-building process.

Lesson #2

To escape the competition trap, be authentic. Values are authentic, ideals are not.

Focus on the value we can create, other things are secondary. Ideals are bare theories. They could bring prejudices, unless we had actions that touch reality.

Lesson #3

You do not have any duty to your aptitudes. You are also not your accomplishments.

A person, who is good at Mathematics, does not need to become a Mathematician. We are free of choices regardless of our talents. Justifying our existence is unnecessary. The fact is, we exist. Period.

Lesson #4

The biggest waste of a team is defending self-images and keeping a wary eye on others' impression.

I have worked in different corporate layers, from on-field to top executive positions. The reality as everyone can perceive is limited. This phenomenon often causes the Silo Effect in which no one can get a holistic perspective.

Lesson #5

The biggest waste of a person is managing beliefs.

The more beliefs we try to manage, the more anxious we will be. The synergy between rationality and emotion is a matter of consciousness. Upgrading our mental models had better precede updating our skills. It’s like we need to upgrade the Operating System before installing more apps.

Lesson #6

The secret of work-life balance is that we should not separate work and life.

Self > Family > Community > Society, we cannot skip any elements in this order. Without building up all social structures from the smallest unit, one can easily get burned out in the long run.

Lesson #7

The underlying structure of anything will determine its behavior.

This is true for any complex system, and also true for one’s life. Identifying underlying structures of anything will be a survival skill in this era. It requires both learning and unlearning.

Lesson #8

Those who misunderstand the functions of money are either greedy or idealistic.

I comprehended the functions of money just after doing intensive research on Cryptocurrency. I wish I could have known accounting earlier in life. Somehow, we are either mastering accounting or mastered by accounting. By being able to read financial statements, I find my universe expanded thousandfold.

Lesson #9

Your responsibility to others does not and cannot supersede their responsibility to themselves.

Usually, our attempt to prove otherwise is a distraction from our own problems. It’s a psychological defense against some change; especially changes in self-image and self-value.

You may think you have responsibility to make someone better. Or you may expect someone to take responsibility to make you better. Either way, you might have been more selfish than you think.

Lesson #10

Reading scales your learning. Writing scales your thinking.

Reading alone will lead us to the ceiling of brute force. It’s when our brain starts analyzing reality with memories and assumptions. Writing crystallizes thought. Crystallized thoughts produce actions which keep us in touch with reality.

The tag cloud below describes domains that I have read in the last decade. It’s been an incredible learning journey. I was writing frequently in private, and just rarely shared them online. In 2019, I launched this public space for my notes. It’s the first time I reset my blogging habit since Yahoo360 closed.

Most memorable moments

Atomic habits

I have kept some habits for over 10 years, and they shape the lifestyle as I have today:

1. Sleep at least 8+ hours every day
2. Drink more water than anything else every day
3. Read books every day
4. Listen to one talk on TED: Ideas worth spreading every week
5. Get my health checked twice per year

My flywheel of personal growth

Unlearning is an activity I have practiced recently to complete my flywheel. It’s my greatest finding in the last 10 years. Unlearning is about integrating the reasoning of scientific research into our subconscious mind.

Collect empirical observations
Make falsifiable hypotheses
Disprove or refine context of the theories with new facts

It was very challenging to integrate this reasoning into daily actions. Because we often cannot observe ourselves as objectively as we do with other objects. Re-examining your assumptions frequently, or you are forever haunted by past events.

The decade ahead

I prefer looking forward to surprises rather than planning backward from fixed goals. Without habits to continuously calibrate the goals, they will become distorted reality.

I’m eager to see how I will change in the coming decade. Meanwhile, I will build a few more atomic habits to increase momentum towards my mission.

1. Write self-reflection notes every day
2. Track personal time spent every day
3. Walk 10000 steps per day

Create values. Get surprised by the unknown. Unlearn.
To expand our time, let’s live fully in the present.