When I told my friends about my recent struggles, it seemed like they tried hard not to smile at my first world problem- I’m so good at everything that I can’t make up my mind about what I want to do. My problem is that I’m looking for happines. Mum said I think too much. I laughed, but I think she could be right. Freedom, safety, control, happiness, feeling good enough, feeling at peace - all the wild gooses we keep chasing.

Here’s one thing I learned recently—it’s harder than it seems to acknowledge our own talents. I’ve always believed that humbleness is a great virtue: Being full of oneself is ignorant and gets you hated by everybody; there’s always something we can improve in life. When I was a child, I learned that Confucius said, “Whenever I walk with 2 other people, there must be a teacher of mine”. I aimed higher and tried to learn from everyone I met.

I still feel too busy every now and then, but I’ve come across some ways to solve it. Here are my reminders. I feel busy, when I think I don’t have time. But do we actually own time? Trying to exert ownership over something that can’t be owned is a lost battle. But it’s so easy to think, “These 8 hours of my time are for work, and those 8 hours are for sleep.

Recently, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get leaner and stronger for my upcoming Muay Thai (kickboxing) fight. I made an effort to do some research. The backstory Some people think I’ve got the genes to be naturally skinny and fit, but I actually try pretty hard too. Since teenage years, I’ve always been trying and failing to eat less. It’s hard to ignore the pop culture influences, even when you think it’s silly.

Self is a reference to the imaginary experiencer of the thoughts and sensations that we experience. Other people, as we know them, are representations that we built in our minds. We construct characters based on our memories of other people. Memories are interpretations of what we noticed. These characters have personalities. They have our thoughts and feelings attached to them. In the same way, we construct a character for ourselves.

I’ve been wondering about what love is. It seems people have very different understandings of it. I currently think of love as a pleasurable emotion that can be felt for children, parents, friends, pets and romantic partners. I heard a buddhist monks saying that giving love means wishing others to be happy. That might be it. But here are my thoughts on what it is and isn’t 🙂 Love isn’t making sure someone is happy There’s no way to really make sure someone else is happy.

Does working with computers make us more like computers? I think we programmers get very good at seeing problems as just problems. It doesn’t matter who caused it. No judging. No blaming. Just solve them and move on. Just like a computer. We try to be pedantic and thorough, no ego, just goals and solutions. Success is defined by getting problems solved. But the thing is, most humans don’t operate this way.

When I was a kid, I was happy, peaceful and healthy all the time. Now I have to try. I was going to complain about life, then realised it’s because I was an extremely lucky kid. Recently, I seem to get irritated quite easily, and only reach a peaceful state of mind when I put aside time to really try. Still, I think it’s good progress that I learnt to notice how peaceful I’m feeling, and use the agitation as an alert to know when I should calm my mind.

For a long time, I thought I had no time to read books. But somehow I got inspired to start reading last year. It was a great idea. I started a Trello board for my book notes in March 2019. As part of my end-of year retrospective, I counted the number of titles on this board. I was surprised to find 67 of them! I’ve never developed impressive reading speed, even though I was fascinated by the idea of photoreading in my teenage years.

Asking for help for fiercely independent people AmyRecently I had a realisation that I can do a lot better if I work with people. This blew my mind. I always tried to be as independent as I could be. As an entrepreneur, I like the philosophy where the founder tries to do everything themselves, at least at early stages of the business. This keeps the costs down and risks low. The founder can gain a solid understanding of every aspect of the business, which enables them to make better decisions, and hire well when necessary.

How habits that makes you good at coding can make you unhappy, and what to do about it After I finally got over the “I’m not good enough” hurdle (which took way too long), I’ve been wishing I could go to work with the same enthusiasm I had when I was a grad. I recently learnt how to love my job with the help of a wise lawyer friend. I want to share it with my dear dev community, because I think being a good developer is very hard work, and we all deserve to enjoy our jobs.