Flywheel
Creation vs Consumption
The Pareto principle is the general idea that most things can be broken into an 80/20 split – that is, you can gain 80% of the benefits of doing something in 20% of the time and vice versa. The actual percentages don’t matter – the general principle is what’s important: a small portion of the work takes up most of your time, but conversely, a large portion of the work Read More
Read by Learning
There’s this manga series I like to read, but for whatever reason, the translation group stopped releasing English scans of the series. I can’t read Japanese, but I did find Chinese translations. However, my Chinese ability is a bit rudimentary. To get around this, I use Google Translate to interpret phrases and characters I’m unfamiliar with. Here’s my strategy: translate the whole phrase and see if it makes sense. Then, Read More
Fix My Shit
I’ve been skimming my past blog posts, and it’s the damnedest thing – I noticed my editing is horrendous. Tons of typos, weird word omissions, and in one particular case, it felt like a whole paragraph was lopped off somewhere – I just stopped writing mid-sentence and moved on. I’ve got some ideas about why this happens: One, I either don’t proofread or I skim. Makes sense why these errors would Read More
On Vegetarianism
One of the biggest ethical issues I deal with in my daily life is my treatment of animals. While I never directly inflict suffering on animals, I implicitly support it by continuing to eat animal meat and animal products. I don’t think eating meat can be morally defensible in developed society. Having said that, I do eat meat every day, because it’s ingrained into me and my culture. That’s not meant Read More
On Preventative Care
I recently found out I have a cavity on my top right molar. I only realized this when I ate something cold and an aching pain shot up in my mouth. I went to the bathroom, took a look in the mirror, and pulled back my gums to see the damage. It’s actually pretty severe. This is compounded by me not going to the dentist in several years. In fact, Read More
On Getting Up Early
Recently, I’ve been setting my alarm clock earlier in an attempt to boost my productivity in the morning. I’ve been failing miserably. What happens is, I set up multiple alarms, and sleep through most of them. Well, that’s not entirely correct. I’ll wake up, check the time, and hit snooze until I really have to get up. I’ll wait until the last minute to wake up, where I have to rush Read More
On Life Experience
I remember when I was a kid, this older role model type figure was telling me about how he became lactose intolerant. Apparently, when he was in college, he was too lazy to cook, so he would just eat cereal every day. He did this for such an extended period of time that he was eventually hospitalized and afterwards was unable to drink milk again. I remember I laughed at Read More
On Manual Effort
I’ve recently started hand washing my clothes, as is the fashion nowadays. Actually, I’ve just lost access to my washing machine and I’m too lazy to bring my clothes to a laundromat. Anyway, washing clothes by hand is a massive pain in the ass. I remember reading about how one of the only jobs Chinese laborers could get in America during the gold rush was doing laundry. I didn’t really Read More
How to Accomplish Long Term Goals
Long term goals tend to be hard to accomplish for people – they usually require investment over a significant amount of time, which is why they’re not short term goals. Long term goals are usually pretty easy to derail, as well, because things that come up in the short and medium term might be higher priority at that moment. Imagine setting a goal of saving up 50,000 dollars for your Read More
On Life Goals
When I think about what I want to have accomplished before dying, I find it hard to come up with ideas. What do I want to have done in my life? It’s to hard to find a purpose, so instead, I’ve removed the ambiguity and came up with some more concrete goals to hit. This is basically a bucket list, but not in the traditional sense – I feel bucket Read More