Monthly Review of December, 2015
What you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while.
Welcome to the VERY FIRST edition of THE REVIEW ARMY 🎉
Hey, what’s up you guys! I’m Zake Zhang. As I share my monthly review with you guys, I tend to have certain commitment, which pushes me to go through the hardest part when forming a habit. And I’m really looking forward to seeing yours.
I am still a benginner at this, you might find my review is worthless or meaningless to you. But I promise you, everything’s going to be great. All I need is time.
BTW, please feel free to let me know if there is any mistake, so that I can improve my writing skills. Thanks!
This is my December.
December, the very last month of 2015, is probably one of the best month I have in 2015. I quit my internship in UBER as a community operation assistant on Dec. 2, which makes my life a lot more fun. I have more free time to do what I want to do, keep reading books, following inspiring blogs and getting to know more amazing people from all over the world.
I went to Shanghai to join ChaseFuture Stars event, where I met Greg Nance and Sebastian Marshall who have a great influence on what I’m about to do with my everyday life. And it is also the reason why start THE REVIEW ARMY project, trying to know more amazing people and forming small habits that have a great impact. (And I love Shanghai😍, it’s far more different than the image I had in my mind.)
Then right after the last final week of college, I got an email from Harvard HPAIR, informing me that I am welcomed to join 2016 HPAIR conference, which left me in tangle. Because I planned to go to Iran for a month, finishing a self-funded documentary film all by myself. This has been my dream for 3 years and I have saved enough money for this project.
“Now you want me to spend my goddamn money on this Harvard project?”
NO WAY!
But eventually, sadly, unwillingly, I said yes…
It’s like I, like most people, am defeated by the bloody reality.
I’m a loser while I’ve told everybody that I am a dreamer.
Since I have chosen to go to Harvard, why not maximizing this experience?
I applied to be the HPAIRx (like TEDx event) speaker of the conference, and submitted 5-minute excerpt of my speech.
Meanwhile, some friends in our college organized and started CRACKx四六级 event again. I launched this event in May, 2015, focusing on helping all students to CRACK CET4 and CET6 exams. I was impressed by the power of sharing and Love Circle that we built, and I was happy to see more people step out of their comfort zone to make an impact.
Review of December, 2015
I just started using spreadsheet to help me build these little habits. Let’s take a look:
(You can also download the template of THE REVIEW ARMY)
So many fails in these sheet😂😂😂…
Because sometimes when you get out of your comfort zone, go to another city, you just can’t keep it up! But I will try.
Findings:
- Too much reading may be bad for myself.
As you can see in this graph, sometimes I read 20 articles a day on Medium.com, which usually take me 2hrs or 3hrs to finish these reading and all hand-writing notes. Yes, I can benefit a lot from others’ story and ideas. But too much reading without writing will make me a superficial reader rather than a deep thinker. When you get addicted to something, like me for Medium, you will definitely lose something at the same time.
However, I’m not leaving Medium. It might take a while, but I believe that as I read more, think deep, write more and good shit will happen.
2. Only write down 70% of your goal as your basic goals.
If you want to take meditation 20 mins a day, cut it down to 14mins, 7mins in the morning and 7mins in the evening. But if you do finish a 20 mins meditation, that will be a bonus! Allow yourself to eat or purchase something you’ve always been looking for.
This can also help you form these habits.
3. More time on paper books
It seems that I’m hooked on this glow of monitor everyday, except for eating or doing experiments, all I want is my mac. And my mac has always been the biggest killer of my paper reading time. They are still fighting with each other.
Schedule of Jan. 2016
Keep using spreadsheet to build habits, and adapt them with my real situation.
Our holiday begins on 17th, Jan. 2016. And I’m flying to HK to attend MaD conference. After that, meet some friends, do some street photography of HK, then I will fly to the US for Harvard HPAIR conference.
If you are interested in these 2 events, click to see more details.
MaD: http://www.mad.asia/site/index
Havard HPAIR: http://www.hpair.org/
My travel plan in the states:
Jan 28th — Feb 3rd Chicago
Feb 3rd — Feb 10th New York
Feb 10th — Feb 19th Boston
If you happen to be there, let’s meet up!
And I’m trying to be a couchsurfer to cut down my expenses this time, already found a host in Chicago, but not pretty sure about New York and Boston. If you have a couch in your house by coincidence, and believe that I’m a good guy, please send me a message. Thanks!
PS, instead of doing a documentary film of Iran, I change to do a portraits photography collection of my trip to America. So make sure you add me on WeChat or follow me on other social websites.
“What you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while.”
Best regards,
Zake
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