Writings at Cal: Goals, Principles, Systems

I turned twenty, now what?

To be honest, I can’t help but feel a little unsettling while writing this article. I sense a surge of excitement, but also traces of apprehension. Turning twenty, I really hope I would be able to pursue my passions and live life intentionally.

“The Defining Decade” states that our twenties may be our most important years. Be it from a career, relationships, or even health standpoint, anyone should make the most out of these ten years and cultivate their personal capital patiently. Not until recently have I realized that I had quietly crept into this life stage where I have to seriously consider what impact I want to bring into this world. It is my hope that the goals I set for myself would not be like New Year’s resolutions, or be as fleeting as New Year’s fireworks.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

This is my objective in penning this article: to write down and share some thoughts on my life’s purpose, which I define as short~long-term goals, the principles I hope to abide by to achieve my life goals, and the systems I use to complete my daily tasks.

At the moment, I believe finding purpose starts with reading (or in other words, absorbing input).

A Mysterious Present

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Over the past few months, I fell in love with reading once again. But unlike past times, where I’d go through phases of reading fantasy fiction, Wuxia, or in more recent years an endless stream of self-help books, I’ve grown to love books that alter my worldview (Thanks to advice from the CEO of VSCO to use Audible). Books like Thinking Fast and Slow, Dopamine Nation, Siddhartha, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Zero to One and Sapiens have given me a sharper lens through which to view how the world works, how people think and behave, and how one’s wellbeing may be attained.

You might ask, “How applicable are these books really?” and “Isn’t learning from doing the best way to grow?”, or even “Isn’t ignorance sometimes bliss?”

My current view is that books are mysterious Christmas presents. You never know what you’ll get until you unwrap this bizarre gift. I say it’s mysterious but really it’s one of two things, a weird gadget or a weird lens. The peculiar part is that these gadgets and lenses can be very different. One might be a pair of red-tinted sunglasses, one might be a compound microscope, another might be a Disney-themed binoculars, whereas the gadgets can be a Swiss knife, an iPad, or even ping pong paddles. In other words, I see books as either tools to use in real-life situations (hence the various gadgets) or knowledge that changes the reader’s view about life, the world, or a specific field or niche (hence the sunglasses, binoculars, and microscope), and sometimes they are both. Although you can get these two assets through a myriad of ways, books are the densest form of tools and knowledge I am aware of. More about the benefits of books here.

Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash

Now for the last question. “Is knowledge always preferable to ignorance?” No, it does not. The “Curse of Knowledge”, the cognitive bias in which an individual tends to neglect explaining necessary background information when interacting with others, indicates that the more expertise someone gains in a specific field may hurt them in explaining their thoughts to others. This could result in effects such as failing to communicate the core objective of a project or initiative and focusing too much on the nitty gritty details. However, the “Curse of Knowledge” can be lifted through practice. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what I hope to accomplish with writing and telling stories: to practice clearly and concisely articulating my thoughts and ideas and hopefully retaining and applying these insights in the most optimal way.

And what better time to start this than at the confluence of two new beginnings — me turning twenty and the beginning of my quest to comprehend the world we live in.

Of course, I am aware that the knowledge and tools I’ve gathered thus far can only scratch the surface of my educational journey, just as the days I have spent on this planet are just a small portion of the days to come. Yet, no matter how infinitesimal they may seem, I like to think of the mental models I’ve developed and the years I lived so far as foundations for a greater purpose. They are like the setting the “stage” portion before the grand broadway performance, the 佈局 in the ancient Chinese game 圍棋, or the morning ritual at the outset of a new day.

My Purpose & Goals

So what does one’s foundation of tools and knowledge help them find their life’s purpose? Let’s start with briefly defining what purpose even is. These are the two ways of defining purpose that have stuck with me.

• The Japanese term “Ikigai” explains that one’s reason for being is at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs.
• Another one is how startups define their purpose. For startups, a purpose is a combination of the company’s mission and vision, which can be illustrated with the template “To {contributution}, so that {impact}” where contribution is the mission and the impact is the mission.

No matter how you define your “life purpose,” what’s important is that it is the intrinsic motivation for us to keep improving ourselves and contributing to society, as well as a potentially significant factor in life satisfaction.

How so? In times of rapid change and unexpected challenges, it’s easy to accept whatever life has in store for you and take a passive approach and react to whatever life throws at you or expect the future you to connect the dots in hindsight. As Peter Theil writes says in his book, Iteration without a bold plan will not lead you from zero to one. Building upon his ideas, life shouldn’t be like an investment portfolio, where people diversify in everything and keep their options open at all costs to wait for the best opportunity to come around. “Life is not a lottery ticket”, life is a blueprint, or rather, life starts with a brilliant blueprint for something larger. I call my blueprint the GPS-pyramid.

So the question here is, how do you define your purpose and how do you separate them into different phases of goals? I really like how Alan Chan, the founder of Heptabase, and Tim Urban explains it here and here.

Adding upon their thoughts, I believe finding a purpose contains the following three steps

1. Exploring yourself though introspection and evolution.
2. Exploring the world through education.
3. Finding the best fit and pursue it through experience.

The first step, knowing thyself is probably the hardest step of all. Sometimes we might even have to explore the world first to really know what makes us tick. But how does one find what they truly love? Well, the short answer would be that, it is a life-long journey that many don’t find fulfillment in. In fact, there is no destination in this self-discovery journey, it is humanly impossible for one to understand all the core motivations, thought processes, likes and dislikes of oneself. On the bright side however, one is able to paint a big picture overtime, and really it is the process of painting that picture that is the most rewarding rather than the picture itself. Some questions I often think about include:

Questions

1. What drives me into the state of flow (ultimate focus where time and space drifts away) and brings fulfillment?
2. What activities bring me enjoyment and what makes me closed off?
3. What initiatives or activities have I been a part of where I would spend my free time thinking about?
4. What things makes me say WOW?

Lastly, an advice I’m still attempting to follow is to try new things, try challenging things, try doing it with smart people, and try not to just follow recipes. By trying new things, you get to know what you resonate with. By trying challenging things, you see if you really have the intrinsic momentum to push forward. By doing things with smart people allows you to grow and create impact together. By refraining from following recipes, you train to become a chef. A chef is someone who is proactive, someone who creates from 0 to 1, someone who is at the top of their game because they have internalized the skills, knowledge, and mindset needed to excel. On the other spectrum is the cook, who follows instructions, copies answers, satisfies the expectations of others. One should never aim to be a cook. Always be a chef.

Principles

For me, I see principles as guidelines that help me achieve my goals on a daily basis. They often redirect me to more positive, productive, or meaningful actions then what I would’ve done intuitively. They are the following: BE HAPPPY (yes with 3Ps)~

• Optimize Balance
• Be Entrepreneurial
• Be Honest and Humble
• Practice Abstinence (in urges that may not fit human beings in modern society)
• Be Proactive
• Be Present
• Be Positive
• Say Yes

Systems

Systems are shortcuts that optimize a series of steps. The following are the categories of systems (Heal) I try to follow with.

• Habits: 6 habits I try to accomplish on a 2 day basis.
• Energy & Focus: Systems in check for me to allocate time and effort to deep work and focus. I definitely still need work on this one.
• Aspirations: The GPS system above.
• Learning: Note-taking system on notion for classes, articles, books, videos, and everything else.

Without delving too deep into the details, these are my own personal and professional goals. I keep track of these goals with a purpose to impact plan. The gist is this:

• Have long, mid, short goals.
• Set objectives of each one of them and set SMART objectives for the short-term goals.
• Include key strategies and key metrics that would help you attain these objectives and measure them.
• Recalibrate short-term goals monthly and other goals yearly.

Without delving too deep into the details, these are my own personal and professional goals. I keep track of these goals with a purpose to impact plan. The gist is this:

• Have long, mid, short goals.
• Set objectives of each one of them and set SMART objectives for the short-term goals.
• Include key strategies and key metrics that would help you attain these objectives and measure them.
• Recalibrate short-term goals monthly and other goals yearly.

Principles

For me, I see principles as guidelines that help me achieve my goals on a daily basis. They often redirect me to more positive, productive, or meaningful actions then what I would’ve done intuitively. They are the following: BE HAPPPY (yes with 3Ps)~

• Optimize Balance
• Be Entrepreneurial
• Be Honest and Humble
• Practice Abstinence (in urges that may not fit human beings in modern society)
• Be Proactive
• Be Present
• Be Positive
• Say Yes

Systems

Systems are shortcuts that optimize a series of steps. The following are the categories of systems (Heal) I try to follow with.

• Habits: 6 habits I try to accomplish on a 2 day basis.
• Energy & Focus: Systems in check for me to allocate time and effort to deep work and focus. I definitely still need work on this one.
• Aspirations: The GPS system above.
• Learning: Note-taking system on notion for classes, articles, books, videos, and everything else.

I wrote this the beginning of the year 2023, but am only publishing this now somehow. A lot has happened between now and then. I finally declared as CS at Cal, spent my summer traveling and working in Europe, and now in the midst of recruiting for my next summer’s internship. Even though I haven’t perfected applying such GPS’s in my life, some of them have internalized. Looking back on them, they do stand the test of time to be important in the long-run. The challenge of life is prolly just working hard on them consistently.