Airing

It's that time of year again for the annual summary, and I feel like 2021 went by so quickly that I don't know what keyword would be appropriate for this year. After thinking about it, "Self-Reflection and Moving Forward" seems pretty good. As the ancients said, "When faced with obstacles, the first thing to do is not to attribute them to external factors, but to reflect on oneself." My personal growth this year mainly came from introspection, and the purpose of this article is also more about introspection than summary. Just like Haruki Murakami, I am the kind of person who has to personally write down my thoughts on paper in order to look back on the past, gaze into it, and transform them into visible words and readable articles. And "the more I write, the more I go back and reread, the more I have a strange feeling, as if I am gradually becoming transparent. It's like raising my hand in front of my eyes and being able to see the faint light on the other side." I hope this habit can continue to encourage me to move forward.

Now, let's start with work in 2021.

Work#

In the first half of the year, I completed the development of Flutter Kant and integrated Flutter's capabilities into QQ Music, which was a milestone project. Afterwards, I had few opportunities to work on client development and returned to traditional web development.

In addition, with the help of three consecutive 5-star ratings, I qualified for the T9 exam in the middle of the year. After a month of thorough preparation, I passed the defense as expected, but unexpectedly, I got the highest score in the defense. Regardless of the score, the result of the defense is either pass or fail. Before joining, I never thought that I could reach level 9 in just two years after graduation. At this moment, I passed smoothly, but I didn't feel excited. In the process of continuous growth, I have already realized that my growth rate exceeds my expectations when I graduated, and I completed the goal of reaching level 9 in 3 years ahead of schedule.

At this moment, I experienced a sense of confusion about losing my goals. If I numbly set the next goal as level 10 for next year. If I achieve it next year, then what? What if I can't achieve it? Do I need to continue chasing?

This is the sense of confusion that arose in my work this year, but fortunately, I found a solution, which I will discuss in detail in the "Goals" section later.

This year, Ross took over as TME CEO and established the Interactive Live Broadcasting Department, which correspondingly changed my work from QQ Live Broadcasting to Interactive Live Broadcasting, and the department moved to Kexing. In the second half of the year, I was responsible for the major projects of the new department - "Lazy Man Project" and "TMELAND Metaverse". These two projects exhausted me, involving remote communication and collaboration across multiple departments, business lines, and companies. Working late was a common occurrence. After a busy period, the projects were successfully completed by New Year's Day. After the projects, I reflected on the problems I encountered during the project:

1. Weakness in handling multi-threaded transaction processing: Basically, as soon as there are multiple tasks, I forget about the concept of "priority". I tend to handle the tasks of whoever is in a hurry first, and my ability to "restore the scene" after being interrupted is also weak. Upon careful consideration, I realized that I had always been working on "research-oriented" or "focused" single projects before, pursuing a state of flow, so the output was good. However, once it involves coordinating with 10 developers, product managers, and testers, I become flustered and lose my footing. Although it is true that coordinating with 10 developers, product managers, and testers is difficult and not easy to coordinate, I also lack experience in handling such situations, so it can be considered as a learning experience.
2. Tendency to fall into anxious negative emotions: When things are out of my control, I find myself easily falling into anxiety, which reduces my efficiency and gradually leads to a vicious cycle. In the past, I rarely experienced situations where things were beyond my control. I was always the one leading the development of things. When that line of control is lost, I try my best to find a way to regain control (such as if the initial exam results are not as expected, then prepare well for the final exam; if I fail the college entrance examination, then study harder to get into a good university for graduate school). But I have never experienced a situation where the control is in the hands of multiple people and not in my own hands. Therefore, when I see things deviating from the established direction, I become anxious and don't know what to do.

There are other areas where I feel I haven't done well enough, such as having a sense of ownership but losing it after feeling anxious, not keeping it in the first place.

Although the two major projects have been completed, I realized my shortcomings through them, which gave me a direction for the future. I know that I am not strong enough and still need to sharpen myself, which is a good thing.

At the end of the year, I received another five-star rating, and in a few days, I will be eligible for level 10. I don't have much confidence this time, but the result is not important to me. What's important is how much experience and growth I can gain during the process.

Life#

During the May Day holiday, Ding Ting moved out and Jie Rong moved in. Jie Rong is a roommate from my undergraduate days, and it's a coincidence that we meet again.

Along with that, our family adopted the sister of Gloves, a red panda named Little Panda. She is a beautiful cat, and her birthday is the same month and day as mine!

We went on a team building trip to Changsha and played Nintendo Switch with our team members (you can't play Switch alone!). We had a great time drinking tea and enjoying ourselves. It was truly a carefree and free-spirited time!

During that time, I went to Guangzhou CVTE to give a presentation and met with Shubao, but unfortunately, I didn't get to eat at the "Motorcycle Cafeteria" that I had been looking forward to. Instead, I went to another restaurant that I liked when I was in college, the "Former Tavern". The taste was not as good as before, but perhaps it was fate. After that day, I found out that it was the last day of business for the tavern.

Books, Movies, and Music#

I watched quite a few movies, anime, and TV shows this year:

• "Inception": Awesome!
• "Demon Slayer: Mugen Train": The only anime that made me cry QAQ
• "The King's Affection": Watched it because of the cast, but the quality has declined in recent weeks and tends to have a rushed ending.
• "Free Guy": GTA 5 movie version.
• "Departures": A slow-paced work of art, worth watching repeatedly to appreciate.
• "Doraemon: Stand by Me 2": I watched it because of the excellent performance of the previous film, but this one is aimed at a younger audience.
• "A Man and a Woman": A slow-paced art film, worth watching repeatedly to appreciate.
• "The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale": A classic Korean horror film, watched it with my eyes closed the whole time.
• "Edge of Tomorrow": Another movie with an infinite loop, worth recommending.
• "Tomorrow War": ...
• "Hello World":
• "A Quiet Place Part II": The pacing of the storyline during the parallel plot was well done, but the story itself was average. I thought it could have been more epic.
• "Soul": A movie that resonates with my values.
• "Children of the Sea": A surreal anime, the director tried to express many things, but it felt pretentious.
• "Inside Out": Amazing storytelling and gentle imagination, like magic, telling the story of a little girl's emotional journey.
• "Godzilla vs. Kong": I forgot what it was about, I just remember that Godzilla, Kong, and MechaGodzilla had a fight... Don't bully Kong.
• "The Novelist": I only remember wasting my Saturday morning...
• "Hi, Mom": Worth watching with family.
• "The Landlady of the Hot Spring Inn": Carefully arranged environment and characters, although not a fairy tale, it is like a fairy tale.

I didn't read many books, mostly listened to audiobooks, so I won't list them here.

• "Replay Summer": Highly recommended (out of five stars)! It will be adapted into an anime in April this year! A manga that I finished reading in one weekend, logically consistent, intellectually stimulating, supernatural suspenseful mystery heartwarming healing battle manga!
• "The Courage to Be Disliked"
• "Heart"
• "Abandoned Cat"

Sharing#

In addition to the technical sharing at CVTE, I also did some short Flutter sharing within the team. I was also invited to give a presentation at the Apple campus in Shenzhen for the iOS Club, as well as invited to give a presentation to new undergraduate majors.

The first few were more technical, so I won't review them here. I want to focus on the sharing with the new students - the topic I prepared for that was "The Art of Questioning".

The sharing was divided into three sections: Perception and Reality, Learning Methods, and Thoughts and Dreams.

I answered three common questions:

• Why do we need to learn (Why)?
• How to learn effectively (How)?
• What should we learn (What)?

Here, I want to record the process of answering the first question:

1. Starting with the question "Why can't we perceive the real world," I shared the theory of "interpreting the world through models."
2. Then I answered the question "After interpreting the world, how do we evaluate actions?" and introduced the concept of "perspective" - as in "The Analects of Confucius" where it says "If you can't see it from others, you can't see it yourself (intention/perspective)." Only by starting from a perspective can we grasp things.
3. Then I discussed whether "perspective" is really important and analyzed why we "seek the truth" and the process of decision-making in the brain.
4. By analyzing the proposition "Logic is an object under a concept," I deduced that "what we can grasp are only the characteristics of individual objects, and we cannot grasp the specific individual objects." Therefore, the formation of a concept in our minds is the result of the fusion of countless perspectives.

Combining the above arguments, let's explore why we need to learn.

I summarized four points here, hoping to inspire myself:

1. Improve our models: Understand the world we live in correctly and cultivate good values.
2. Broaden our horizons: Enhance our perspectives, enrich our historical and cultural perspectives, so that we can view problems from a higher dimension.
3. Distinguish right from wrong: Know what is right and have the courage to practice what is right and resist wrong beliefs.
4. Cultivate empathy: Be able to empathize with the suffering in the world, experience the emotions around us, and be good at discovering happiness and beauty.

Goals#

Finally, let's write about the goals for the coming year. Looking back at last year's goals, most of them were not achieved, so I discussed with Lulu the necessity of year-end summaries. Everyone has different purposes for writing year-end summaries. Some people want to discover problems from the previous year, plan goals for the coming year, and improve their shortcomings. Some people simply want to record memorable moments from the past year, so that when they look back in the future, they can evoke memories and experience the emotions of that time again. As for me, as mentioned at the beginning, my purpose is to reflect through recording, so that when I review it in the future, I can experience different feelings.

In this regard, goals are not important. But I also want to reflect on why last year's goals were not achieved. It seems that there was a lack of timely review mechanism. Therefore, next year, I plan to use "specific project goals + monthly reviews" to execute my plans. Specific project goals are dynamic and short-term, and I try to control them within a timeframe of 3 weeks. Monthly reviews will be in the form of retrospective reports.

In addition, I explored many good habits last year, and I hope to record them so that I can continue to maintain them next year.

1. Fragmented Intake: I no longer have dedicated time for learning except on weekends, but I found that listening to audiobooks while walking to and from work is a great way to utilize that time. I can finish a book during my commute! I also use Drafts to quickly jot down articles I read on my phone or blog posts and reports I read on my PC as drafts.
2. Regular Integration: However, in the current fast-paced work environment, with various short videos and fast-paced entertainment filling our lives, learning in fragments can easily turn us into "fragmented people". Pursuing efficiency blindly can be exhausting, and life becomes a hollowed-out fragment. Therefore, every Saturday, I will set aside time to organize the drafts I collected during the week and compile them into notes before moving on to other things. If I only collect fragments and don't integrate them regularly, I will fall into a state of only input without digestion.

Goals in life:

1. Cultivate my mindset and accept all successes and failures with a grateful and humble heart. Try not to be tempted by unworthy desires. Be calm like Confucius' "abstaining from food in Chen and Cai" and firm like Wang Yangming's "being ashamed of being moved by failure."
2. Aspire to a poetic life like Su Shi, not to escape from the world, but to be carefree and detached, to have the calmness of not being affected by external circumstances.
3. Stay curious, constantly curious; pursue true knowledge, seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

Goals at work, I quote a motto from Nintendo's Mr. Iwata: "When working with others, make them say 'I want to work with that person again next time.'"

Finally, I hope that my 2022 will continue to be lived with seriousness and positivity.