#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:...

#49 Try This Method to Answer Small Talk Questions

This week, I had a brief email exchange with a coworker Sarah. After we are done with the business, she asked me, "How are things going on your end?" Have you ever feel you can have so many versions of answers to this question? Depends on where it's asked / who asked it / how...

#46 What is a Failure that You Are Proud of?

At the end of 2018, I had a new years resolution for 2019: post 52 blogs. 2019 has passed. I posted 42. The turning of the calendar means that a new year has come. It also marked my official failure of this new year's resolution. Today, Jason looked at the 45 blogs I posted (3...

#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...

#43 Grit, Wealth or Intelligence, what would you choose?

Yesterday Jason and I were listening to Freakonomics podcast: How Many Prince Charleses Can There Be in One Room? At the beginning of the podcast is an intriguing multiple choice question: If you can choose to have one of the three super power, which would you choose? A. Top 1% grit in the worldB. Top...

#42 New Year’s Resolution

Last week, Jason and I went to a friend's place. Our friend X organizes weekly "family" dinner, a Thursday night dinner where all are welcomed, usually friends of friends. The topic of New Year's Resolution was brought up. This is my favorite topic. My resolution for 2019 Change to a more technical role at workMake...

#41 An alternative mindset to deal with personal issues

On June 29th , 2017, Satya sent out an email with subject line “Thank You & Our FY18 Opportunity”. It ended with this line “Our mission and culture gives each of us the opportunity to realize our personal passion and use Microsoft as a platform to pursue it. I am reminded of the closing line...

#40 Three Stories from Inside Bill’s Brain

Last month, Jason and I watched the documentary on Netflix Inside Bill's Brian: Decoding Bill Gates. This documentary consists of three episodes about his endeavor in the most pressing issues in the world, health and environment, his early life in Microsoft, and back stories about the influence his parents have on him. I did not...

#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...