2019 Year-End Reflection

2019-12-31 #writing

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.

I crammed 2000+ new vocabularies into my head. Last year, I knew 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 “learnt” because I still cannot use most of them. This is something I need to fix in 2020.

I meditated. After reading fews books that recommend meditation unanimously, I started with Headspace. I have to say being mindful has the magic power to change other axises.

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. (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 never going to cease, although, with Casper, squeezing time for exercising will be much challenging. On the bright side, this could be an excuse for ignoring the pacing and millage :p

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

Life is composed of events that are interconnected. If I did not take the “Learning How to Learn”, I won’t start memorizing vocabularies. If I did not memorize vocabularies, I won’t start reading to collect more English vocabularies. If I did not read books like Ray Dialo’s Principles, I won’t start meditation.

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