#50 Do You Feel Stuck? Here is What You Can Learn from Ants

If you are reading this, you might feel, to some extent, stuck. You might feel stuck in career, in school, in life situation. And you want to unstuck. I hope this blog will help you. First of all, I would like to emphasize the importance of awareness, and the different level of awareness: Level 1:...

#44 The Myth of Falling out of Passion

I was very passionate about--and consistent in-- posting blogs from January to October 2019. I posted 41 blogs in 41 weeks. Then, I didn't post anything for two months - partly because I was so interested in my job that I was working most weekends; partly because I didn't have any good ideas to write...

#38 What’s between You and You-Wanna-Be

This morning, when Jason took the first bite into his peanut butter sandwich, he said, "I often say that when we have this much money, when we don't have kids in the house, we will do XYZ. But really, most of these XYZs I want to do, we can do them now." That got me...

#37 What Does One Year of Commute Look Like on Paper?

Last week, inspired by Seth Godin, I decided that I will get data, make easy-to-understand, convincing and memorable visualizations for each of my blogs. The goal is to inspire my readers to take actions in their own lives. This week, I want to start with a v2 for Those Painful Gifts: Commute Since February 2019, I...

#36 Be Remarkable. No One Has Time for Anything Less Than That. You neither.

Last week, after a meeting with a marketing director Kevin at work, he asked if I have fun plans for the Labor Day weekend. I said, "Fun for me but probably not for you. I will write blogs. Like I do every weekend." He is amused and surprised by my answer, and nice enough to...

#33 Amazing Art: Ten Lessons from Ten Illustrations by Yaoyao (1-5)

Today I discovered an artist Yaoyao Ma Van As. Amazing is such a overly, inappropriately used word. People say this is amazing, that is amazing. I often question, "Do you really mean it? Do you understand what amazing means?" When I found her work, I have to say, they are AMAZING. Her work makes me...

#30 How to Unblock Yourself: Four Emotional Stages of Original Work

You are working on something that you think is original and exciting. Then you found out some other people are also doing that, or have done that. Do you feel disappointed (that you are not original)? Do you feel discouraged (that if someone else is already doing it why should you do it too)? Do...

#27 The Bright Side: It’s OK to Not Know What Exactly You Should Do

…As long as you don’t let go the goal and keep pushing the fuzzy front end. A few weeks ago my manager introduced a phrase to me: Fuzzy front end. It means the unclear path of actions to get to a goal. Here are some of my personal examples. They may seem to all be...

#12 Those Painful Gifts: Void

Do you bring your cellphone to bed? I did. Until a week ago. I always know that staring cellphone in bed is bad. Bad for sleep. Bad for eyes. Bad for brain. Last week, my sleep has suffered enough that I decided that’s it. No more cellphone in the bedroom! Here is one thing that...

#02 What I Have Learned: The Danger of Being Goal-Oriented

(Note: in order to protect privacy, in this blog, specific information is masked.) I have always been an intensely (and stubbornly, and sometimes intimidatingly) goal-oriented person. Until last week I realized one danger of being goal-oriented. Last week I talked to a friend Crystal. Crystal works in marketing at a big corporation. She told me...