Weekly Report #05 - Sense of Control over Work, Time, and New Friends

Preface#

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This article is a record and reflection on the life of the week from 2022-07-25 to 2022-07-31, and it is also the first week of work after returning from vacation.

After experiencing a long-awaited "mini vacation," I immediately plunged into the intense preparation of a new project without having time to adjust my state. This also prompted me to think more about the balance between work and life.

Sense of Control over Work and Time#

In a previous article, I mentioned that it has been a year since I ended my student life and entered the workplace. Thanks to the extreme pressure of the first project, I have already become proficient in most of my work responsibilities. Even when faced with impromptu meetings or technical presentations, I can handle them with relative ease.

The greatest benefit of being trusted at work is having a good degree of freedom. As long as I can coordinate and arrange the progress of the entire task and achieve good results, I don't need to succumb to meaningless tasks. The working hours are relatively normal, and the work pressure of most projects is not consistently high (because the main focus is on B2B business, so most of the deadlines are tight). This allows me to use the saved time to learn other things.

I used to think that this mode of work was good, but recently, I have encountered some problems. It feels like my life is slowly being consumed.

I am unable to control my leisure time after work as well as I had imagined. As time goes by, I sometimes spend more time on mindless leisure activities, such as binge-watching TV shows or watching short films on Bilibili (sometimes I get emotional when I come across something related to relationships).

Sometimes, several hours pass inexplicably, and because I have to work the next day, I have to take melatonin to sleep. There are also days when I come back and it's already close to 10 o'clock. I think about lying down for a while, but when I open my eyes again, it's already past 1 o'clock. I get up, turn on the computer, but don't do much.

As a result, the productivity during after-work hours is difficult to guarantee, and sometimes I have to force myself to do things. I can relate to a description from a group member:

"I now have a bit of a learning mindset towards the weekly report. Every time I want to completely relax, I think about what will happen if I don't write the weekly report, and then I sit up in bed, even when I'm seriously ill."

I reflected on the reasons for this state and realized that it is still difficult for me to achieve the desired improvement from work. Instead, I often exhaust myself mentally, and the time after work is not enough for recovery, completely destroying my productivity. Although there are no specific task requirements or external deadlines, I often blame myself, which is far from the ideal state of life that I pursue.

I heard a concept from a podcast that we all need to find the "B-side" behind the "A-side." If we consider work projects as the "A-side," the "B-side" is finding some aspects hidden within it, whether it is innovation or new technology experiments that can give us more subjective motivation to complete them. If we consider work itself as the "A-side," then we need to think about how to fill the other side of work that occupies the majority of our time. It can be learning and improvement or cultivating a simple hobby.

Of course, there is no standard solution to change this state, and it is never an easy task to solve. But it is always necessary to slowly sort it out. Currently, I am thinking that my next job will consider remote work more, so that I can better balance my own pace. I have also been learning about some related information recently.

New Friends#

The surprise of this week is that I met several friends on Twitter whom I have been following. It all started with a discussion with STRRL about Cloudflare Pages and exchanging links. Later, I joined a small group and got to know Homura, Manjusaka, Xin Yi, and Xuanwo and other experts. We occasionally have some daily exchanges about life and technology.

After graduating, I seemed to be less proactive in socializing, and I was not willing to participate in gatherings with strangers in real life. In addition, my circle of friends has been closed for four or five years, so I don't know much about the current situation of my former classmates, making it even more difficult to find opportunities for communication. I have always been in a closed state. On the other hand, I have been expressing my thoughts on Twitter since May, and I am often amazed by the interesting lives and deep thoughts of many Twitter friends, but I have always been silently observing and rarely have direct interactions. This time, I am very happy and surprised to meet so many new friends, and I hope to have more communication with them in the future. Everyone is very nice.

Learning and Input#

This section will record interesting things I have come across and some progress in work and learning.

Technical Learning#

This week, I joined a new project and did some environment setup, which involved a lot of operations related to Docker. However, because I have done similar things before, it went relatively smoothly. Then, because it involves the Cosmos blockchain, I started reading "Blockchain Architecture and Implementation: A Detailed Explanation of Cosmos" and made some notes. I will continue reading it gradually.

However, a few days later, I was assigned to the initial preparation of another project, which involved a lot of tedious work. I worked overtime for several days, but there was not much progress in development. I hope the project goes smoothly.

I didn't do much other technical learning this week. I need to make progress in CSAPP, contract development, and the new Go language-related books.

Input#

Books#

Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level. Although I heard that it mostly consists of reports and information summaries, I am interested in this company, Apple, but I am not very familiar with Tim Cook. Perhaps it's because Steve Jobs' aura is too strong, so I want to learn more about him.

TV Shows#

The Most Hated Man on the Internet. A new documentary on Netflix. The mother in the incident is strong, confident, and interesting. It is less heavy than the previous documentary about the Nth Room and has more of a sense of suspense. But even after watching it late at night, I still feel helpless (or powerless). I just hope that this world can have more kindness and humanity, even if it's just a little bit better.
A Lawyer, Yu Yingyi. The female lead is very cute, and the chemistry between the male and female leads is great.

Movies#

The Wandering Earth. A typical mainstream comedy film. The music and atmosphere are well done. The plot feels like a low-budget version of "The Martian," and the ending is a bit too focused on core values.

Anime#

Summer Ghost. Looking forward to the weekly updates of this anime.

Tinkering Notes#

Software Tinkering#

Arc. A newly popular browser. I tried it out, and the experience is quite different. Currently, I still see it as a secondary browser because I'm too used to Safari.
Arctype. A database management tool that I saw in a recommended article. The interface looks great, and it allows multiple workspaces. It also has a built-in visualization panel feature. I haven't explored it in detail yet, but my main tool is still TablePlus.

I read STRRL's weekly report and completely migrated my blog to Cloudflare Pages. The migration experience was seamless, and the subsequent usage feels great. So far, my Serverless blog system consists of:

Github as the source for Hugo blog files and running Github Actions to automatically update the About page.
Cloudflare Pages hosting the blog and using a domain hosted on Cloudflare for DNS resolution.
Railway and Vercel hosting the Cusdis comment system and Umami data analytics system.

I didn't write many articles this week, but there were some small milestones in terms of data. First, Google search reached 1000 clicks.

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Then, for the first time, the monthly page views reached around 10,000, with over 3,000 visitors.

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I need to continue working hard and write more.