2019 Year-End Reflection

2019-12-31 #writing

2019 was a year of changes for me, marked by newly developed habits and the new responsibility of becoming a father.

Here is 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 tasked to write book reports, I just paraphrased the introduction and/or some random pages of the books. Reading has instilled new ideas in me and also ignited other habits.

I crammed 2000+ new vocabularies into my head. Last year, I learned about spaced repetition from Learning How to Learn and started memorizing vocabularies. Whenever I encounter new vocabularies (mostly from reading), I add them to my Anki collection and review daily. I use “crammed” instead of “learned” because I still cannot use most of them. This is something I need to fix in 2020.

I meditated. After reading a few books that recommended meditation, I started with Headspace. Being mindful, I must say, has the power to positively impact other areas of life.

I kept a daily journal. When people ask me why I keep a journal, my 2019 answer was to track my to-dos and activity log, then review at the end of the day. My 2020 answer is to make every day count. I will share the nuances in another post later. (Update on 2020-03-15: See Daily Journal)

I logged 1000 miles into Strava. This is actually far less than my targeted 1500 miles. I have been running for 17 years and have no intention of stopping, although with Casper, squeezing time for exercising will be more challenging. On the bright side, this could be an excuse to be less strict about pacing and mileage :p

We delivered Casper! This is marvelous even with the sleepless nights and all the other compromises. Taking good care of the little one and my wife is the overarching priority in 2020.

Life events are interconnected. If I hadn’t taken “Learning How to Learn,” I wouldn’t have started memorizing vocabularies. If I hadn’t memorized vocabularies, I wouldn’t have started reading to collect more English vocabularies. If I hadn’t read books like Ray Dalio’s Principles, I wouldn’t have started meditation.

As a new year resolution, I am going to start writing (yes, this blog), about my thoughts, learning methods, and engineering. Let’s see what chain reactions will happen when I look back at the end of 2020.