2017 Annual Report
2017 is a year of finding myself. Originally, I thought I knew myself very well but that was not the case.
In 2016, I joined a Venture Scout Expedition Course which involved two hiking camps with a hiking distance of 20 km each. Then, several scout friends and I organized a 50-km hiking camp in the beginning of July. It was very hot, humid and tough but we still managed to complete the whole journey. I thought I could treat hiking as a profession in scout. Then, I decided to go for the Junior Expedition Assessor (JEA) Course. I passed the entry test in which half of the candidates failed. I felt that I finally found something I liked and at the same time I could excel at. However, it turned out I quit the course at the beginning of 2017. It was not an easy decision because I have devoted a lot of time to this course already. The course is by far the hardest and toughest course I ever attended. It pushed myself to the limit and I realized I didn’t really like hiking enough that I could spend so much time and effort on it. Yet, I was grateful that the tutor sacrificed a lot of their free time to teach me and classmates didn’t get mad at me because of my withdrawal.
When I started to lose my interest in hiking, I was attracted by bitcoin. It has gradually become the focus of my life. My classmates in the JEA course are really passionate about hiking. They do not treat hiking as the burden or coursework. Their holiday time is almost fully occupied by hiking. Honestly, I don’t have the willingness to do that. Instead, I can stay at home to study the whitepapers related to bitcoin on Saturday and Sunday. When I travel in other countries, I am more than happy to spend an hour to find a bitcoin ATM just out of curiosity. I even write my own articles related to bitcoin for the sake of popularizing this concept and spirit. This reminds me a famous quote by Steve Jobs.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
I think I am on my way to do great work!
Lastly, the USA exchange pushed my boundary and capability. I had a very poor time management skill that I was a constant deadline fighter before. It caused many problems in my life and others, especially when I was heading the team to organize some activities. Sometimes other colleagues and leaders needed to pick up pieces and sort things out for me. Although I cannot say I have made 180 degrees change during the exchange, at least I could meet most of the deadlines without burning the midnight oil. The secret is to set a weekly schedule to plan what should I do approximately on each day. Then in the everyday morning, I list out what exactly I need to do in each hour for the rest of the day. When I skipped a task due to whatever reason, I simply shift to do the next item without delaying everything all together. Overall, my exchange was quite a productive period that I struck a good balance between studying, travelling and writing. I wish I can keep it up in 2018!
