May Progress Report

“definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”

OBJECT LEVEL (what did I do?)

Self-feedback:

This month, I’m pretty proud of finishing the video validation project. Although some habits were on and off, I feel that I’m building a strong foundation for it to be more consistent over the long run. I also feel that I’m understanding better how to create the behaviors that I want.

Here’s where I’m at for goals:

Previous goals:

• Writing: 1 article biweekly
• Video: 1 video biweekly
• Dance: Dance 3x / week

How I did:

• Writing: I haven’t felt the pressure to publish this month, this article is actually the first in this month. I’ve noticed that in the mornings, I’ve also been less in flow. Sometimes to fill out the writing routine I’ve set for myself, I’ll transcribe quotes from books into notes. So right now, I have a lot of backlog of writing to be synthesized. I miss writing out thoughts and pondering questions in the morning.

→ Lessons learned: I’ve found that the road block is often having not much to write about, so for next month, I’m going to try an experiment using thoughtful questions as a prompt and writing down my answers. That will get me started, and to keep me going, I’ll listen to music so that I am more immersed in the process.

• Video: check. I made two videos, one for May’s video validation project and another for my monthly videos. The validation one did well! I spent probably 30~ hours on it (which was much much longer than I thought it would *haha* even though I have personal experience that editing always takes much longer than you think you will). I’m really proud of it and how much I learned; I go into more detail later in the post. As for my monthly videos, I’m still kind of salty. Facebook has banned me from uploading videos for probably a whole week (I know it’s longer than 24 hours since I tried multiple times) because I used a semi-popular music soundtrack. I’m just really bummed that I couldn’t release it on the first of every month as part of consistency.

→ Lessons learned: test upload the videos early so that if it gets banned, I’ll have time to reedit the songs and upload the final video on time.

• Dance: I definitely think 3x a week is a good number to start out with. I’ve been doing pretty well with that and right now, I’m still trying to figure out on which days can I consistently practice, especially since the weekends are often up in the air. I also think I need some sort of progress reports to keep me motivated. There’s more in depth analysis of how to make this into a habit later in the post. p.s. tried ballet earlier this week and dancing to piano music was incredibly beautiful.

→ Lessons learned: have a routine plan for each practice and record practices at the end; review recordings weekly to see what went well and feel sense of accomplishment

Here is where I’m at for May’s Video Validation project:

• I spent a lot of time learning how to make a wedding highlight reel and here it is!
• It was definitely one of the best hands-on training I could’ve gotten, during the process, I learned how to: color grade, animate, do transition effects, mash together music, etc.

Feedback from others:

• was shaky and not straightening the horizon → need to stabilize
• music jarring → slowly fade in, longer fade
• too much focus/unfocus → edit shots for overall effect
• red overlay too strong → make color grade subtle enough that you notice the emotional effect before you visually notice the color

Learnings for next time:

Experiential

• “Point of art is making it as pleasant as possible”
• Storytelling: think of every wedding video as the story of two people who love each other getting married, therefore there needs to be establishing shots, slow reveals and emotional buildup of what’s about to happen
• Think about what the payoffs are: kisses, intimacy, those should always be last
• Typical sequence: her alone getting ready, him alone getting ready, ceremony, celebration, the end (3 parts: pre-wedding, wedding, distance)
• Voice-overs add much more dramatic and closeness effect

Technical

• Leave the individual clips longer with some more editing room, so when putting it together, there is more content to work with
• Use music and emotional rises to direct the dynamics of the video
• Rather than using music from a free site and spending 4+ hours cutting out parts and blending them together, use music sites like Audiobed, it’s well worth the pain and time saved

Study up more on composition

• Photography: rule of thirds | balancing elements | leading lines | symmetry and patterns | viewpoint | background | depth | framing|cropping | experimentation
• How to take good pictures

Insightful posts:

• Atlas of emotions: wonderful visualization on the 5 universal emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness and enjoyment) and triggers + actions for each. I learned that anxiety is under fear, which is really helpful
• My family’s slave: not just a reminder that modern forms of slavery still exists, but how resilient a human being can be and the extent of how cruel fellow humans can be to each other
• Gurus are scamming you: working hard is the baseline, you also need to work smart + luck. “Your success is heavily predicated on the opportunities available to you, your underlying talent, and the amount of deliberate practice you put in.”
• Creating professional growth: some tips — staying challenged, setting big goals, finding good mentors, surrounding self with good friends, reading a lot, developing willpower + moderating indulgence, becoming comfortable with failure, quitting more
• Rethink risk: we feel fear when we take a risk, we also feel fear when we get closer to our dreams. It’s how we interpret those changes on the physiological level that can lead to different emotional states. Fear (from a new opportunity) can be reframed and channeled as excitement and courage for the new project
• Seek novelty through curiosity: “the more gaps you fill, the more you see. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know, the fractal nature of your ignorance unfolding endlessly before you”
• The Tail-End: puts your life in perspective in terms of how much in person time left you can spend with your close ones and family (<7% if you’re working full time and live cross-country) as well as your hobbies and future projects
• Trucking jobs: intriguing read into the life of truckers, whom we often pass by and try to avoid on highways, without thought into how their daily lives may be
• Nayyirah’s poems: incredibly powerful and succinct poems on “love, identity, feminism, race”, she is amazing with words!!

Books read:

• Tiny Beautiful Things
• Smarter Better Faster
• Power of Habit
• Peace is Every Step
• To Sell is Human
• Gateless*

*one of my favorite life education books

Currently reading:

• Grit
• Designing Your Life
• 4 Hour Chef

Experimental section: Senses

Things I like to experience more of:

• live music
• taste sensations

Live music

Imagine waking up to the sound of a piano alarm, only to realize that it is actually live music. My roommate’s friend stayed over one night to get doughnuts nearby the next morning, and played beautiful dynamic music for 10–15 minutes that night. And graced us with his musical presence in the morning.

It was incredible to see him play it from memory and know that he’s playing it and he practices purely because he enjoys it. (And not one of those things where you do it because your mom sent you to piano lessons).

This is especially meaningful to me since I’m currently taking Coursera’s Introduction to Classical Music (my piano teacher didn’t teach me music theory or history, just minimal reading notes, because I was “too old” when I started to compete in music competitions so she didn’t think it was necessary). It’s really so wonderful to be surrounded by music.

Taste sensations

I borrowed Tim Ferris’s The 4 Hour Chef from the library (can we just pause and talk about how massive the book is). Cooking has actually been at the back of my mind since meeting friend of a friend who’s a personal chef. And we had this amazing conversation on experiments she’s done to train her palette and how certain foods can bring out the tastes of a country’s cuisine.

I’m super excited to start reading it and being able to better savor daily life and appreciate the senses more. As Tim says: “Life itself, becomes high definition”.

Momentary : Dining in the Dark

I’ve been wanting to “see” how eating in the dark was like ever since hearing about it while studying abroad in HK. I finally had the opportunity to indulge in this experience this month when Momentary held their signature event.

It was a great experience, I felt so much more relaxed and present in the dark, with the anticipation of what exciting food I would taste and savor in my mouth. I also became much more attuned to voices around me while being blindfolded. It was fun imagining what the room and set up looked like and comparing that to reality.

Some thoughts: People talked less loud when the blindfolds were lifted…I wonder if it was because we talk louder when we can’t see or because everyone can see, they’re more aware of their surroundings? Or that our listening senses are heightened while blindfolded and it seemed louder when it’s actually at the same volume?

PROCESS LEVEL (how did I do it?)

Belief updates:

• Local maxima: constrains us by tying us down to compete with others locally (often times it makes you non-memorable because 99% of others are doing it or has those qualities) whereas global maxima opens up the radius of competition and opportunity; you define a new maxima when you diversify your skill set and combine your interests in new ways that makes you difficult to replace or compare.

The common thread here is stand out. Don’t just be “different” since different isn’t necessarily good, but figure out what the goal is (get a job, start a successful company, build a massive readership, become a best seller, develop a brand, etc.), look at how everyone else is doing it (the likely local maxima) and then find a better way.

• Risky vs. Challenging: challenges like the $100 challenge or 3 clients challenges can often serve as motivation. Ask yourself, are you hesitant because it’s truly risky? Or are you hesitant because it’s challenging and you don’t know where to start?
• Self compassion works better than self-esteem: high self-regard is often achieved through “undermining others or comparing our achievements to those around us” and contingent on peer approval, perceived appearance and success, which is often quite unpredictable. Self compassion is a better route because it’s you “treating yourself like you would treat a best friend” with kindness (we live imperfect lives), mindfulness, and self worth that is much more stable over time by treating yourself kindly.
• Never split the difference: there’s a space between yes and no in negotiations, and often, no is the start of conversations. Simplify amount of thoughts: do you have few minutes to talk? (multiple thoughts) vs. is now a bad time to talk? (2 thoughts). If you get no, try to get to: that’s right. There’s a difference between high value trade (win-win) vs. compromise.
• Redefining words: “everything is neutral until you shine your light of awareness on it. X exists because it exists (I am that I am). X has no meaning until I assign it. It only has potentiality. (Why not choose to assign productive meaning?).
• Barriers are your enemy: active barriers (kind that stop you from doing something aka plastic wrap) vs. passive barriers (the kind that its absence actually stops you from getting things done aka laundry bag vs. washing sacks which automatically dissolve in washer). Barriers aren’t binary in terms of good or bad, you can create barriers (like remove distracting sites) to help you succeed. Talk to others before you create barriers (like it has to be perfect, or I need xyz before I can do it) for yourself.
• Accumulated advantage: a small advantage gets bigger over time — one plant only needs a slight edge in the beginning to crowd out the competition and take over the entire forest aka winner take all effects. You only need to be a little bit better than the competition to get all of the rewards and the cycle continues as winning one competition increases your chance of winning the next.

The 1 percent rule: why habits are so important because people who do the right things consistently maintain a slight edge and accumulate disproportionate rewards over time.

• Learning through abstractions: when learning it’s better to learn the higher level overarching picture first and slowly get down to the technical . Otherwise it’s much easier to lose interest, for example, learning all about how to set up terminals and such before writing code to solve a problem.

Deeper look into dance consistency:

• I’ve noticed that it’s getting more difficult to consistently dance. This week, I’ve been reading Power of Habit and it’s been super relevant to learn about how habits are formed: cue → routine→ reward
• The cues have been inconsistent. I used to practice every night around 10pm –11pm, which was sustainable because I would get back around that time even if I went to events after work. Due to an earlier sleeping schedule these days, I practice sometime between 9pm -11pm, depending on the day.
• Routine: dance itself — it remains unchanged
• Reward: I’ve always skipped this step because I thought sense of accomplishment was enough. However I realized that I need something more tangible, because if the reward isn’t strong enough, I won’t be able to reinforce the behavior I want consistent enough for it to become a habit
• I’ve also learned that what drives the whole process from cue to reward is a craving for something. In other words, the underlying motivation. Is it to improve in technique? Receive compliments from instructors? Become stronger and more fit?
• Applications: Because the underlying behavior remains constant, it’s time to experiment with different cues and rewards. For cues, I think it’ll be easier if I plan out in advance to practice on days that I most likely won’t have engagements and see if there’s a weekly trend so I can consistently practice on certain days. For rewards: I think what motivates me the most is seeing improvements. In this case, I can keep track by taking practice videos. Another idea is to reward myself with something I really enjoy, like saving a video that I’ve been wanting to watch for after practice.

other related notes:

• Sometimes habits happen out of consciousness, sometimes through deliberate intentions. I definitely need to make it a deliberate intention.
• For new habits, willpower is incredibly important so on days I want to practice, I’ll try to conserve as much mental energy as possible earlier in the day so that I’ll have ample cognitive resources to ensure practice actually happens
• “You have to stress your body and your mind for it to grow, or else it stays at the same place”

META LEVEL (why did I do it?)

Sense of purpose:

• During Memorial Day weekend in SF while many friends were off visiting elsewhere, I had a lot of free time to think and reflect. The thought of working remotely full-time always appealed to me: it felt like the all inclusive answer to me wanting to travel the world, spend time with family and being free in general, all rolled into one.
• At the end of the day, the benefits of being location-independent would be that I’m able to live and spend most of my time with the people I care a lot about like family and friends.
• Then it dawned that my community is here in SF, and a smaller set in Virginia. Even if I were to go elsewhere, I would experience a lot of high intensity, short termed connections but rarely as meaningful as the ones rooted here that I’ve cultivated and have the ability to spend time with. Even if I can work anywhere, the majority of people are still going to work from 9–5 so I wouldn’t be able to see them anyways during the daytime
• The sense of wanting more connectivity, perhaps it’s not that being location independent would allow me to deepen it but rather, an internal decision to value those relationships more and nourish it. After all, what is a life, not shared?

Goals for next month:

• Writing: respond to a prompt 5x / week
• Video: make video 1x / 2 weeks
• Dance: dance 3x / week

Monthly project:

• 1% rule: do something that gets me 1% closer to my long-term goals every day

Thanks for reading! This is month #4 of my monthly progress reports. You can read the previous month’s here:

April Progress Report