In the previous post 2019 Year-End Reflection, I wrote: I kept a daily journal. When people ask me why keeping a journal, my 2019 answer was to track TODO and activity log, then review at the end of the day. My 2020 answer is to make every day meaningful and counted. I will share the nuances in another post later. In this post, I will share how I got started and the 3 components of my daily journal....

It is probably easier to explain what ineffective reading is first. If you are “seeing” the words without processing, no matter how many words you “see” per minute, it is ineffective. If you cannot recall or refer to the key concepts of an inspiring book you have read in the past, no matter how many books you have read, it is ineffective. If you cannot implement what you read and make some differences in real life, no matter how many books you are aiming to read in a year, it is ineffective....

In this era, there are “productive people” who use “productivity systems” to manage day-to-day chores, TODOs, notes and so on. These productivity systems are usually note taking apps (Apple Notes, Evernote, Google Keep, OneNote), task manager apps (Todoist, Wunderlist, TickTick), paper notebooks or the combination of them. These “productive people” could be divided into two kinds. The first kind works for the system. They fill the system with unactionable tasks that will never get done and unreadable notes that will never get used again....

2019 is the year of changes to me, in terms of new habits developed and the new responsibility of becoming a father. Here are what I have done. I completed 9 English books. This number was a shameful ZERO for the 28 years before 2019. (Even when I was a student and being tasked to write book reports, I just paraphrased the introduction and/or some random pages of the books.) Reading have instilled new ideas into myself and also ignited other habits....