Annual Review 2020
One of my favourite days of the year: chasing waterfalls in Hamilton, ON with my best friend
I’ve done an annual review every year for the past 3 years. Here’s last year’s review.
I initially wanted this to be a “what went well”, “what didn’t go well”, and “what I want to work on next year” format. But I’m learning to take external events without judgment, without trying to force change.
So instead of that, I’ll review the lessons I learned this year in chronological order. I’ll also pull from my most impactful books and quotes from 2020.
I won’t dwell on how the pandemic affected my life. But briefly:
Was it tough? Yes.
Do I miss life before the pandemic? Of course.
But to me, this is the most important question: Did this experience provide more “grist for the mill”?
Most definitely.
I’m lucky to report that lockdown and quarantine has done me more good than harm. I wouldn’t wish it on any generation – I for one, am beyond ecstatic for the vaccine – but despite the difficulties, I’m thankful for the difference it’s made in my life.
And it’s these 10 lessons that made 2020 worthwhile.
A short message before we dive in: I usually write about web3, creativity, and the creator economy. If these interest you, you’ll probably enjoy my weekly newsletter. Subscribe below to get more posts, or check out previous editions to “try before you buy”.
1. A meaningful life requires high quality leisure
”The wise man is sufficient unto himself for a happy existence, for he needs many helps towards mere existence, but for a happy existence he needs only a sound and upright soul, one that despises fortune."—Seneca
Leisure and rest are not meant to support work. Work is supposed to support a life of leisure.
I’m not just talking about a binge-watching-Netflix kind of leisure. I’m talking about serious hobbies — creative, challenging ways to spend time and energy that grows and challenges a person.
I didn’t realize how important serious hobbies were until the pandemic took ultimate frisbee away from me.
Playing ultimate gave me hours of weekly social interaction that filled up my tank and my time. It used up mental energy that I would otherwise have spent anxiously overthinking the rest of my life – which I struggled with in the first half of 2020 (more on this in the next point).
In the first 2.5 months of 2020, all the training I’d been putting into growing as a player were finally showing. I had my first layout goals — first on beach, then on turf. I was supposed to try out for a professional womxn’s team in Toronto the weekend we went into lockdown.
I’ve since replaced ultimate with writing and reading, Spikeball in the summer, making time for friends, going on walks, and pursuing creative and artistic projects.
It’s not the same. And I’m still looking forward to the day I’ll jog on to the grass/turf/sand again (and semi-dreading how horribly out of shape I’ll feel).
But I’m glad I found other activities on which to spend my time.
2. Actively manage the chaos of life
“Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option."
—James Cameron
Unless one learns to control the chaos in their external and internal lives, entropy, anxiety, and fear will always be their unwelcome bedfellows.
I managed the internal chaos by doubling down on my journaling. I started my journaling practice 5 years ago on the advice of a productivity coach, in order to control my monkey mind.
My journaling practice helped me ease my anxiety, untangle my convoluted emotions, and just friggin’ get on with my day, more than any other activity I did this year. As I type this, I’m on my 10th morning pages journal and my 6th bullet journal.
To control the external chaos, I underwent Tiago Forte’s Getting Things Done Like a Boss course in March to learn David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system. In April, I took Tiago’s Building a Second Brain (BASB) course and implemented that as my note-taking system.
Committing to these 3 simple activities – journaling, implementing GTD, and mastering BASB – were instrumental for dealing with the flaming projectiles of garbage that 2020 kept lobbing in my direction.
3. Differentiate then integrate
“What does it really mean to be ‘in the world but not of the world’?”
This question is based on Jesus’ prayer to the Father for His disciples in John 17:15. This was also one of the 12 favourite questions I identified during my BASB coursework.
Shifting gears from chaos to creativity, here’s my answer to that question: becoming “in the world but not of the world” requires differentiating oneself from any other human being in the world and to integrate back to contribute to society as whole.
I learned this firsthand when I participated in the 5th cohort of David Perell’s Write of Passage in July. Finding success in online writing requires one to publish compelling articles on a consistent basis.
I achieved differentiation by drawing heavily from my personal experiences around being an immigrant and going back to work for someone else. I achieved integration by asking for feedback from my peers (shoutout to Robbie, Kevin, Michael, Ari, and Brandon!) as I wrote the articles.
On a personal level, this meant acknowledging and understanding my unique experiences. And in order to detach myself from self-consciousness, shame, and narcissism, I needed to share my story with others. Thus my Tuesday newsletter, and the tagline of my blog: “open sourced self-reinvention”.
4. Build valuable career capital to make career moves that pay well
You go do something that you love and make money, like making films. Then you go get to do something that you love that people won’t pay you for, like deep ocean exploration.
—James Cameron
Writing online built my career capital. This year, it finally paid off.
In the tail end of July, as I was taking Write of Passage and trying not to feel sad about the world, I achieved the sweet spot of being able to do for work what I would do even if no one paid me to do it.
In July, I landed a job doing work I love with people I respect.
Publishing online opened the door for a friend to know what I was interested in, career-wise and connect me with Convictional. It also gave the hiring team to an extended cover letter to assess how well I fit the company and the role.
Most importantly, this blog showcased that I could communicate complicated topics well — particularly valuable for companies doing business-to-business work.
"I have this principle about money that overrides my other life rules: Do what people are willing to pay for. Money is a neutral indicator of value. By aiming to make money, you're aiming to be valuable."
— Derek Sivers, as featured in So Good They Can’t Ignore You
5. Become autotelic and actively direct my attention, thoughts, & emotions
The outcome of having an autotelic self – of learning to set goals, to develop skills, to be sensitive to feedback, to know how to concentrate and get involved – is that one can enjoy life even when circumstances are brutish and nasty. Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
While my journaling and self-therapy self-care routines helped, I was getting really emotionally tired of having to work through my issues myself with no seeming end in sight. So I did two things:
I started seeing a therapist in September
I actively worked on being autotelic — finding challenges and setting goals on every little thing I did
While seeing a therapist for someone from my background isn't normal, I’ve come to view it the way Morning Brew co-founder and CEO, Alex Liebermann, does: as mental sparring practice, done to improve long term fitness as much as address short term issues.
(Shoutout to my fellow Fil-Chi Cherry for helping me find my therapist through Inkblot Therapy.)
The other half is about becoming autotelic, which translated loosely, means “self goal”. After finishing the book Flow in November, I learned that:
The autotelic self is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony. A person who is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes on, and in flow most of the time may be said to have an autotelic self.
One of my goals moving into 2021 is to turn the bouts of anxiety into flow and treat them as a way to grow, instead of as a dreaded adversary.
6. Depth over breadth in life and in friendship
In October, I watched Netflix’s The Social Dilemma and afterwards, tore through Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism.
The lessons from both cemented one key idea in my mind: Replacing my relationships with social media vastly diminishes the social boost I could potentially receive from my IRL relationships.
Because of this, I deleted Instagram from my phone. I also reached out to friends and my friend groups, with an emphasis on rich interactions and face-to-face conversations.
This led to a number of creative, socially-distanced activities, like playing Among Us with childhood friends from the Philippines, a Zoom Secret Santa with my university frisbee friends, and a bi-weekly book club with my capstone project team from university.
As Cal says in his book, “The problem, then, is not that using social media directly makes us unhappy. The key issue is that using social media tends to take people away from the real-world socializing that’s massively more valuable. The small boosts you receive from posting on a friend’s wall or liking their latest Instagram photo can’t come close to compensating for the large loss experienced by no longer spending real-world time with that same friend.”
7. Pursue enjoyment over pleasure
In Flow, Csikszentmihalyi writes, “Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create new order in consciousness. Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment. We can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention.”
In other words, quality of leisure trumps the amount of hours spent. Here are 3 criteria I now use to vet whether or not a leisure activity is of a high quality:
Requires active mental or physical participation over passive consumption
Uses skills to produce valuable things in the physical world
Requires real-world, structured social interactions
The more of the criteria an activity fulfills, the more enjoyable it is.
For example, leisure in solitude is still enjoyable as long as there is a goal to fulfill and a way to challenge myself. I experienced that this year when I took Write of Passage and made friends. I felt a similar surge of accomplishment when I finished reading Ron Chernow’s 800-page Alexander Hamilton – the longest book I’d finished in a while. In the same way, a passive activity like watching a show can go beyond pleasure into enjoyment if it’s done with others.
8. Simplest solutions, hardest problems, & frequent iterations
”Slow is smooth. And smooth is fast.”
—Jocko Wilink
November was undoubtedly the most intense month of my year. Without going into details, I really struggled in the days that surrounded my 60-day milestone at work. (Incredibly thankful for my therapist and for my friends who helped scrape me off the floor like a wad of unwanted gum.)
My working mandate of “simplest solutions, hardest problems, & frequent iterations” came about during that tough time. This encapsulation reminds to:
Work on the hardest, most impactful problems I can solve day to day, even if that means saying no or pushing off smaller tasks
Solve the problem as quickly as I can with the tools, knowledge, and resources I already have on hand
Accept that my initial product won’t be perfect and that it will need to be reworked and improved over a period of time (this is where further research and more refined solutions come into play)
In other words, as long as I was working on the highest-impact project I could, I could settle for a B+ grade on my initial solution, in service of speed. I could always retake the test again and again in the future.
9. Develop standards for relationships
The root of suffering is attachment. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
Credit to Visualize Value
My favourite moments this year were spent throwing discs and playing Spikeball with friends in the park until the sun went down.
This year I worked hard to cultivate people with whom I can go through life. I spent multiple, consecutive days with friends. I hosted my teammates for a sleepover during a tournament. I initiated a virtual Secret Santa and a book club.
I’m even more thankful for these current friendships when I recall several, less-than-healthy friendships I’d had in the past. Some were with people who didn’t respect my boundaries or who just weren’t as invested as I was.
So to prevent future mistakes and pain, I developed two criteria for the kinds of people I want in my life:
They demonstrate that they value our relationship by investing attention into it
They inspire me to be a better person and I inspire them to be a better person
To achieve the 2 criteria, all parties must work to maintain a level of honest communication, trust, respect, and a mutual growth mindset. These two points help me identify people that I overlooked or people to whom I should give more attention.
I still maintain contact with friends with whom it’s all just fun times, or ones who fulfill one but not both. But the most rewarding friendships in my life are both invested in the friendship and also serve as inspiration for me.
Of course, I’ve also done my fair share of crossing lines and rebuffing kind souls in the past. So I had to learn how to be a good friend myself this year, too.
I had to learn how to be vulnerable, without using it as a crutch to force closeness. I learned how to communicate and express how I felt in healthy ways. I learned how to step back and value solitude as much as I relished being with others.
(Side note: I strongly believe in marrying your best friend, so it’s not a coincidence that these are also most of my criteria for a life partner.)
10. Let the old die to let the new thrive
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
2 Corinthians 5:17
People talk about what a dumpster fire 2020 was. But then, why wouldn’t we want to get rid of trash?
(Of course, we know it’s because dumpsters fires are harmful for the environment. But let’s not stretch the metaphor here.)
Just before Christmas, I had a lump in my throat that just wouldn’t go away. It subsided a few days before the New Year.
I’d had dozens of fearful, anxiety-laden, psychosomatic attacks like this throughout 2020. They had always threatened to come to the surface in previous years, but I’d always distracted myself with more work, more people, or more ultimate.
But I couldn’t do that this year. The Great Dumpster Fire of 2020 stripped away the rubbish I’d accumulated all these years.
I had to face the music.
I had to face the truth that all my fear and anxiety was rooted in a lack of love and thoughtfulness for myself. And this held me from having healthy relationships and from loving others unconditionally.
The heat of 2020 proved too uncomfortable for me to stick around with my old habits and creature comforts. It weaned the gold from the chaff in my life.
I had to dig into the dark places of my life and lovingly coax them to into the light. I’ve had to constantly remind myself, “That’s SELF 3.0 talking. SELF 4.0 wouldn’t do that.”
Moving into 2021, I’ve have had to put a match to my old pathways of thinking.
I needed to let go, let the Old Me die so the New Me could live.
I’ll be taking this final lesson well into 2021 and beyond.
Favourites & highlights
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously." —Charlie Munger
Favourite song: "Good Things Fall Apart (with Jon Bellion) – Stripped" by ILLENIUM (Here’s the rest of my 2020 favourites)
Favourite shows: It's Okay to Not Be Okay, The Queen's Gambit, Itaewon Class (all on Netflix)
Favourite movie: The Old Guard (Netflix)
Favourite purchases: Apple Airpods Pro & my Miele Espresso Machine 6350
Most impactful books I read: Flow, Digital Minimalism, & Thinking in Systems