I was fortunate to work closely with a philosopher and got introduced to some ideas in philosophy. I came across this mind-blowing idea called Idealism. This post will require a large amount of open-mindedness. It’s about what consciousness is. I will talk about the common misconceptions of Idealism and why I disagree with some mainstream ideas. Then I will try to introduce Idealism. Some of the following ideas will seem very controversial to a 21st-century mind, but I think they offer a plausible and useful point of view, if you take it slow.

I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but something about the cover of this book spoke to me. Then I bought the book wondering what instructions the author’s got about life, and thought I wouldn’t mind getting better at writing. This book is mostly about writing stories. But rather than focusing on writing techniques, it focuses on the mental challenges and how to handle them. It talks about what to write about, and the creative process.

I’m a developer and a tech founder. I’ve had a strong interest in business since my teenage years. I like to read about sales and business in general. I’d like to introduce the good type of selling to my technical peers, because there are unhelpful stereotypes and misconceptions about selling. We technical people like to believe that a product sells because it’s good. We like to believe it because we put a lot of effort into building the product, and it’s natural to think that people get rewarded for their effort.

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.

I always assumed the fastest way to work is to go hard until I think I need a break, because I should know when I’m tired better than a fixed schedule, until recently I tried a break reminder. When I talk about my student life back in Beijing with anyone who hasn’t experienced it, nobody believes that the kids can actually focus the whole time. But subjectively, I think my focus back then was sharper than when I studied in New Zealand.

How It Started One day I wondered, what if I’m supposed to be left-handed but got taught to use my right hand for everything? Also, could handedness be a myth? From there, I started an experiment of learning to write with my left hand. This is perhaps the most useless side project I’ve done, but I loved it a lot! The Method A few months ago, I discovered this lovely granny’s handwriting method.

I think long-term solo projects take more than motivation and persistence. Your willpower is like a muscle. Even if you are strong, it can still run out if you rely on it for everything. In this post, I’d like to talk about how to achieve and maintain great productivity for long-term projects. The Background I’ve not a naturally organised person. I like to avoid putting my things and thoughts into boxes.

This month I’ve been fascinated by meditation. At the end of last year, I got interested after I heard that meditation is the best way to learn about our minds and reality, from Yuval Noah Harari in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I’ve been following Sam Harris’s meditation course. I think it’s profound. Motivation To always know that I don’t have to react to every thought and feeling that crosses my mind.

Joshua FoerNature vs. Nurture Inspired by Joshua Foer’s TED talk, I became interested in learning memory techniques. Here are my main takeaways from his talk. Great memory is learnt. The memory champions use the spacial memory and navigation parts of their brain to remember, while untrained people don’t. The trick to remember is to engage as many senses and meanings as you can. The Mnemonic Peg System I came across the Mnemonic Peg System while reading about how to remember dreams better.