My 2018: Don't Dwell on the Past, Don't Fear the Future

Just now my phone reminded me that remaining storage was under 1%. I opened Google Files to clean things up, and at that moment I suddenly realized that 2018's remaining balance was also under 1%—time to write a year-end recap.

Simply writing a “2018 Recap” would be too thin and pale, so I went back through the past year and thought of Qi Baishi’s “Don’t dwell on the past, don’t fear the future.” Flipping through my 2018 journals and diaries, the words I saw most were “staying up late,” followed by “productivity,” so I can briefly sum up my 2018 as “first half staying up late. second half working hard to improve productivity.”

Keyword: Staying Up Late

The reasons for staying up late can be different every day, but one thing never changes—daytime efficiency is low, which is why I need to put in extra hours at night to make up for time wasted procrastinating during the day. Moreover, because too many things were left unfinished or not done well, I didn’t have the courage to fall asleep in peace: “Perhaps too many people lack the courage to end the day.” So I fell into this day-after-day cycle: “wasting time during the day with dark circles under my eyes, then fighting on at night with guilt and exhaustion.” One of the biggest gains of 2018 was slowly shifting from actively staying up late to “passively staying up late”—unless necessary, I never stay up late.

Keyword: Productivity

Why am I so focused on productivity? There’s only one reason: our time is too limited. “Life is too short, and there are too many things to do.” So we can only try every possible way to raise the efficiency of life and work—what we call “productivity.” This year I read some ancient and modern literature, and occasionally I was absorbed in the ancients’ leisurely, tranquil, natural, easy way of living. But returning from the books to reality inevitably brought a huge gap. After all, our society has developed over hundreds and thousands of years; science and technology, social productivity, and so on can no longer be compared with the ancient agrarian society. Modern people may have a more “comfortable” way of life than the ancients, but they also have greater pressure to survive, especially in a developing country like ours that is in a stage of rapid development.

2018 can be said to be a year of continuous exploration on the path of improving productivity, and of achieving some success~ On the production tools (Computer) side:

• In February I added another SSD to my laptop, plus a RAM stick, raising usage and development efficiency in the simplest, most brute-force way;
• In March, to make reading more convenient (mostly literature), I bought a kindle, and I did use it to read quite a few books, and from now on I’ll keep reading at least two books a month;
• In May, unhappy with my laptop’s terrible support for Linux, and to avoid further tinkering, I decisively built a desktop, and from then on focused on developing with Linux, never looking back at Windows;
• In November I caught a Suning promotion and got an iPad; now I can skip professional books, notebooks, and journals.

Besides hardware, in 2018 I also fully switched to the Linux camp, bidding farewell to Windows’s dirty, inefficient development environment.

Although I had been a loyal Linux fan long before this, on one hand my experience and knowledge were still insufficient, and on the other I didn’t have particularly suitable hardware for Linux (the ASUS laptop’s Linux compatibility was “touching”), so I had always been switching back and forth between dual systems. That meant I inevitably had to set up a development environment on each system, an extreme waste of time and energy. So in the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018, I kept tinkering with Linux environments, reinstalling the system on average every two weeks, because whatever system I was using always had something I wasn’t satisfied with. I basically tried every mainstream Linux distro. But I still never found a Linux distro that was especially compatible with the ASUS laptop. Not until I built a desktop in May did all the problems fall into place. From then on I could use Linux for development and study without distraction. Starting in May I stuck with Arch until school started in September, when I reinstalled Ubuntu, which I’ve used ever since. I no longer have to waste unnecessary time tinkering with the system, so sometimes you should just buy what you need without waiting. Time is more precious than money, and besides, electronics are already dirt cheap these days. You might spend very little money and get a much better experience, and even raise productivity—why not?

Keyword: Mindset

At every stage of growth, one’s state of mind changes, and I happen to be someone too easily influenced by the outside world, so I’ve always been working on cultivating a healthy mindset.

In nearly three years of university, my state of mind has changed quite a bit, with some progress compared to middle and high school, but there’s still some gap from my own expectations. For example, sometimes I’m a bit indecisive, lacking decisiveness (lacking execution). Although this happens rarely now, when it does it still affects me a lot. On the other hand, I’ve become very decisive about certain things, which counts as great progress~

Another is the ability to control emotions. I know this ability is important and I’ve been working on it. Basically, I’m better at controlling anger, but feelings of disappointment still affect me quite a bit. Fortunately I also vent and channel them in various ways in time, but in the future I still need to learn more about this, using more scientific methods to control emotions, so that when my mood fluctuates I can be more rational and avoid being ruled by emotion~

Speaking of mindset, now it can more often be described as “Buddha-like” or “desireless.” I do things more and more “as they come,” and that actually makes things go more smoothly and makes it easier to get what I wish for. Treating everything with an ordinary mind often brings unexpected surprises and gains. The hardest thing in the world is “wanting and not getting.” People with overly large desires often live unhappily, regardless of how much they have. Back in school, teachers always told us to have “never-satisfied ambition” and to “pursue perfection” in what we do. That statement itself isn’t wrong, but in life, people really shouldn’t be “never satisfied.” Many such people find everyone and everything in life and work displeasing, because they pursue perfection too much. Where in the world are there that many perfect things? Even if there are some perfect things, can you be sure you’ll have enough luck to run into them all? I think if you can slightly lower your demands on life, work, and other people, you can at least raise your sense of happiness by several levels. What we need to understand is that “life is short,” but living can be long. A perfectionist’s every day may be exact to the last detail, so in their eyes decades of life are like a few days, because every day they have to repeat the look of the word “perfect,” all the same; but to a Buddha-like player, every day in life is different, because “perfection isn’t necessary,” so ordinary life always has novel colors appearing, and small differences can greatly raise the happiness of living. (Of course “Buddha-like” doesn’t mean “having no pursuit”; the two are different, no need to go into detail.)

Changes in 2018

The first half followed the 2017 path, with no major changes. In the second half I changed to a new environment, met different people, and I also adjusted my direction and positioning.

On the technical side, starting in the second half I gradually shifted from the Python/C# stack to the Java stack (to be honest, switching to Java now is a bit late; I can only say I wasn’t sensitive enough to the market before, and I learned whatever I liked and felt like). Of course I definitely won’t abandon Python and C#, but next I’ll put more energy into learning Java’s underlying knowledge. At the language level alone, learning a language is a matter of a day or two, and besides I was already using Java before. I was mainly drawn by Java’s ecosystem. The JavaEE ecosystem is truly unbeatable, and in the coming years it should still have considerable vitality. Before this, my approach to tech had always been: learn whatever I like, learn whatever looks fun, with no clear purpose, entirely by mood. Although I did have a pretty good time, I inevitably learned too much and too scattered. Without going deep in one direction, I lack competitiveness. And recently news about the “internet winter” has been flying everywhere, so as for anxiety, I have some of it more or less. Also worth mentioning: I started paying more attention to learning fundamentals, not staying at the language level as before, groping at the surface. I spent a lot of time on fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, operating systems, assembly, networking, etc.). Of course the results were fairly obvious: a deeper understanding of all kinds of tech. The only part I’m still not satisfied with is math. (Seems this should be classified under learning.)

On the learning side, the biggest change is that my attitude toward math has greatly improved. Why do I say that? Because there was a time when I rather disliked math, finding it dry and dull, not very interesting, far less of a sense of achievement than “what you see is what you get” programming. So I always neglected studying math and turned to learning things I was interested in. Later I realized this was a mistake, and only after going deeper into various technologies did I appreciate math’s marvelous role and status in computer science. Also regarding foreign languages: in 2018 I started learning Japanese, but so far it’s lukewarm. I’m addicted to memorizing vocabulary and can’t stop, but I can’t spend that much time every day on vocab, so I can only take it slowly. I hope to pass N2 before graduating from university. On English: I never used to think English was my weak point, because I encounter quite a bit of English every day and my language sense is pretty solid. But I have to admit I really haven’t properly read English or memorized English words for a long time (complaining again: there really isn’t enough time in a day), so when doing exercises I clearly feel the strain. I also know how to study English, but I just don’t have that much time to study it. What to do? The most important foreign language is English. This is also a rather confused area that I need to plan well.

On relationships, in 2018 I broke up with my ex-girlfriend. This was also the most correct choice we made after a complicated cycle of breaking up and getting back together. The specific reasons for splitting are hard to summarize. This was also one of my rare moments of resoluteness and decisiveness. Perhaps going through this and reading some literature made me a bit doubtful whether “love” in real life is less substantial than “compromises of living.” So when someone says my attitude toward love is rather negative, I feel it may not be my problem, but that this is simply the true face of life. In any case, being able to study without distraction is good. Of course I still hope to meet someone to strive together with, but preferably someone “not so ambitious,” matching my “Buddha-like” personality, haha~

In other respects, let me think—there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special. I don’t yet have a mindset good enough to make every day wonderful, so I especially envy those optimistic classmates who can feel happy no matter what happens. To sum it up: “Embrace change, meet challenges.”

About the Future

Lately I’ve often been thinking about future work and development. My family of course hopes that after graduation I’ll go back to my hometown, an eighteenth-tier small county town, and become an ordinary civil servant or teacher, living a “desireless” life. Yeah, that does rather match my mindset, but having seen the bigger world outside, I always feel it would be too much of a pity to just go back to a small county town and live that kind of retirement life. And it doesn’t seem to match my major either. The IT industry only has related jobs in first-tier cities, so my personal inclination is still to develop in a first-tier city, “raising the next generation’s starting point through my own effort.” The older generation doesn’t have much concept of high-tech industries, and their idea of work is still stuck on the “iron rice bowl.” Actually, if cities weren’t good, why would so many young people from the countryside throw themselves into city life every year? A retirement-style life isn’t impossible, but I always feel that kind of life has too little passion, and most importantly, the income isn’t enough.... (this is the real key)

No rush, take it slow. Go 2019! May all the regrets of 2018 be the groundwork for 2019’s surprises.

Xi Yuan January 1, 2019