April Progress Report
April has been simultaneously a blur and filled with so much serendipity. Additionally, I came across another way of organizing my progress, inspired by Malcolm Ocean’s format for his 2015 reflections (I know, I’m 2 years behind…hey, better finding things than never).
I’ve been wanting to capture my monthly experiences more holistically and Malcolm does a great job of that by looking at it from three different angles. Here’s the gist of it:
- object-level: “what did I do?”
- process-level: “how did I do it?”
- meta-level: “why did I do it?”
Excited to try it out!
OBJECT LEVEL
Self feedback:
I did much better this month in that I vividly remember what the goals were. I even kept up with a calendar for half of the month — still figuring out what type of goals (new vs. old, daily vs. weekly, etc.) is most helped by using a calendar.
Here’s where I’m at for goals:
Previous goals:
- Writing: 1 article biweekly
- Video: 1 video biweekly
- Dance: 1 video per week + review
How I did:
- Writing: I wrote much more than expected — weekly! I published a synthesis on The Art of Asking, a reflection on Caring, and How to Break into Growth Marketing for Growthx, and now this :)
- Video: I made videos almost weekly, since I was running behind on some projects ;). I published an inspirational piece on a paralyzed BBoy dancing again (optimized for Facebook…it didn’t go viral but that’s okay), and my monthly March and April montage. My cruise highlights video is almost almost done.
- Dance: I haven’t been keeping up with taking videos to monitor progress, nor dancing in this case. I’ve noticed that previous excited feelings about practice has been replaced with dreading ones. In terms of progress, I can definitely feel myself falling behind — classes are great wakeup calls when I realized I’m too nervous to relax (underprepared!) or have less stamina than before. I need to get back to being consistent.
Here’s where I’m at for April Brain project:
- This brain project is an ongoing process because there’s so much to learn!(will probably take me at least 3 months to finish going through the cognitive bias sheet). This is more of phase one: I’m still in the process of familiarizing myself with all the biases. As a follow up monthly project, I will focus on a couple of biases per week and apply it to daily life.
- I mentioned serendipity earlier because in this month a FB group on the brain was formed totally outside my influence and I kept on running into biases, so it’s super cool to cross-train the brain muscle. And Wait But Why came out with the neuralink article*!
- Resources I’m using: Cognitive Bias Sheet, Mindshift Course, Tiago’s Building a Second Brain, Conceptually newsletter
*wanted to note that of course, this whole paragraph is influenced by the frequency illusion, where we start seeing a particular thing everywhere when we start learning about it.
Articles read:
Insightful posts:
- Boxes, all that we share: Very heartfelt piece on what happens when we put each other in boxes and realize that we have more in common than we think
- Oh hello, you’re alive: Witty narration of life, makes you think about the scripts that we follow and the big picture of it all
- Cheat codes to the game of life: distractions keep you at same level while solutions help you up a level
- How we built R place: incredible example of the internet coming together to create, and how there’s no art without destruction and unification
- Tiago’s throughput of learning: learning is about maximizing throughput of invalidated assumptions (assumptions that constrain your learning) -> insights
- Running life like a startup: life vanity metrics (what others use to evaluate you | pats on back) versus clarity metrics (use that to solidify your competitive growth advantage | direction). Use the former to gain a following, use the latter to build a career.
- How we judge others is how we measure ourselves: we judge others based on what we wouldn’t tolerate in ourselves; we judge ourselves based on what we’re insecure about (they rejected me because of xyz). Metrics are intentional choices that signal what’s important to us; everyone has their own values, unchangeable by you.
If you measure your life by how much you’ve traveled and experienced, then you will measure other people by the same standard — how worldly they’ve become. If they prefer to stay home and enjoy the comforts of routine, then you will judge them as incurious, ignorant, unambitious, regardless of what their aspirations really are. Know that if you value traveling, that doesn’t mean others aren’t open, inquisitive, etc.
- Healthy and strong boundaries: A litmus test to ask yourself: “If I stopped doing this, how would the relationship change?”. If you feel afraid, the relationship may be conditional. If you make make a sacrifice for someone you care about, it needs to be because you want to, not because you feel obligated or because you fear the consequences of not doing it
- Attachment theory: Two that resonated with me were secure attachments (exhibit both positive self-images and perceptions of others) and anxious attachments (exhibit negative self-images, but positive perceptions of others -> needy behavior).
Books read:
- Art of Work
- On Shortness of Life
- Switch
Currently reading:
- Tiny Beautiful Things
- How to Talk so Others Will Listen
Experimental section:
I eventually want to create a monthly project based on the senses I feel and how richly the day can feel. Still figuring out what format it would be in, for now, I’ve just started to keep track.
senses evoked:
- touch: togetherness, the urgency of absence heightening the senses; deeper relaxation through body stretches
- sight: fire and flames, the graceful gliding over the smoothness of shoulders
PROCESS LEVEL
Belief updates:
- Half-assing it with everything you’ve got: difference between quality curve (goes to the right to the right forever) and preference curve (what you want and your priorities). Use full strength to hit concrete goal as fast as possible; don’t waste motion and expend more energy than you need to.
Instead of being a perfectionist about the paper, be a perfectionist about writing the paper, about wasting no attention. Perfectionism may be a powerful tool, but there’s no need to point it at overachieving metrics you don’t care about.
- Rather than failing with abandon when something doesn’t go according to plan (eat rest of Cheetos bag because I already started unhealthy snacking anyways), try to still miss as little as possible from target goal (stops and puts the remaining 1/3 bag away)
- Feeling compassion for others by imagining they have angel’s wings
- The word “should” often prefaces guiltiness: like an algebra problem, a better method would be to look at the problem first and after deciding what is best, place it the “should” label on as the action item. Often with “shoulds”, we bypass the decision making process and feel guilty when it turns out that we couldn’t predict events in advance. On a related note, framing a decision as a choice rather than a should also heightens sense of agency
- Free-falling without safety net of fear (inspired by Tim’s community)
- Breaking through self limiting beliefs when I realized that I’ve achieved the elusive “dream job” — currently I’m in my dream job that I sought out 2 years ago. Now, how does that look like for me?
- GPA vs. Skills mindset: When you can’t demonstrate a skill, GPA is the backup indicator, rather than good GPA -> good opportunities, think Good at something -> good opportunities.
In the Skills Mindset, you focus on demonstrating your ability through practice, projects, and experience, instead of trying to jump through hoops for grades and accolades.
The marketing comparison especially stood out to me: “Look at these marketing classes I took” vs. “Look that these sites I helped grow”. At the end of the day, the fundamental question is: What do I want to be best in the world at?
META LEVEL
Sense of purpose:
- Referring to ikigai or reason for being, it’s the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, what you’re good at.
- The belief update about the dream job was really inspiring and hit me like a wave of “aha” moments. If I’ve already achieved that, I believe in myself to make additional dreams a reality as well.
- Ikigai: what’s my reason to get up in the morning?
Goals for next month:
- writing: 1 article biweekly
- video: 1 video biweekly
- dance: Dance 3x / week
Monthly project:
- Video Validation Experiment
Thanks for reading! This is month #3 of my monthly progress reports. You can read the previous month’s here:
