My favorite character is Andy, the protagonist from the movie The Shawshank Redemption. I watched this movie a year after graduating from university, with my boyfriend at the time. The first third of the film tells the story of a banker who lives a wealthy life but is wrongfully accused of murdering his wife after she is found dead following an affair. Despite knowing he is innocent, no one believes him, and he is sent to Shawshank Prison, where he endures violence and inhumane treatment. However, Andy remains steadfast and kind-hearted. Using his intelligence, financial expertise, and unwavering determination, he eventually digs a tunnel and escapes, regaining his freedom while exposing the warden’s corruption.

This movie is a metaphor for how life can bring unexpected misfortunes—things we didn’t cause or choose, like being born into a difficult family or being injured in an accident caused by someone else. When faced with such adversity, the most important thing is one’s mindset. Some people choose to blame the world, feel unjustly treated, and give up. Others, like Andy, choose to respond positively, blooming like a resilient flower in barren soil.

Andy spent ten years digging that tunnel, chipping away at the wall every night with a small knife while others slept, and disposing of the dirt and rocks during the day. Even if someone else had thought of this plan, most wouldn’t have had the courage to act on it. Andy did, but over those ten years, he must have faced moments of doubt, despair, and the temptation to give up. Every time he dug, he risked catastrophic consequences, and the tunnel could have been discovered at any moment. How did he endure such pressure? I think only by disregarding life and death could he focus solely on his goal, free from fear, and persist without distraction.

This classic film is one I revisit often, using it to inspire myself to be as patient, fearless, and goal-oriented as Andy. It reminds me to keep moving forward, no matter the obstacles.

Today, I thought about something: What things have I kept doing, and what things have I wanted to do but never started?

1. Badminton: I’ve played and practiced for 4 years. I plan to keep doing it once or twice a week.

2. Gym: I’ve gone twice a week for 2 years. I’ll keep doing it once or twice a week.

3. Piano: I take lessons once a week and practice a little every day. I’ve been learning for 2 years and will keep going.

4. English: I practice speaking for 25 minutes every day or every other day.

These activities are easy to keep doing because I have a coach or teacher. I don’t need to think too much—I just follow and practice. Over time, I get better.

• Web3: I learn by doing projects and earn a little money. It’s like an investment. I get to learn new things and find good opportunities. It takes time and effort, but I can ask for help when I need it. Most of the learning happens by doing.

• Daily Writing: Writing helps me organize my thoughts and share ideas. I’ve written every day for 24 days now. Before, I tried writing but never made it past 30 days. This time feels different. The key is to write just 300 words a day. It’s easy and doesn’t feel like a big task. This makes it easier to keep going.

I want to use this “easy” method for other things too. For example, I can add videos to my video channel little by little. Instead of thinking too much, I’ll pick one topic, like psychology, and start creating.

I still need a better system, but I’ll work on that later.

This version uses simpler words and shorter sentences, making it easier to read while keeping the meaning clear. Let me know if you’d like any further adjustments! 😊

Spoken English: 25 minutes

Day18 (Practice writing: 426 words)

Since I have long suffered from the problem of “reading a lot of books, but not remembering anything.” Recently, I've developed a crazy passion for learning methods.

In the past, I've always heard people talk about the Feynman Method of learning, which is to use output to help you digest knowledge. It sounded as if I could grasp the gist of it.

But it's not clear exactly how it works, so I recently bought a copy of the Feynman Method of Learning.

The first chapter talks about how the vast majority of people use, wholesale, input. Learning whatever the teacher teaches, memorizing whatever the book says.

Ultimately, in terms of application, they are unable to adapt to changing circumstances.

And truly effective learning. You need to take yourself as the main body to digest knowledge. Let the subject take the initiative to transform the information into their own experience and export it through discussion or writing.

The process of transformation is the fusion of the old and new knowledge within, and produces new links or new knowledge.

More heavily, the purpose of effective learning is not to take a test, but to understand what is happening around you.

Therefore the process of learning needs to be integrated with real-life scenarios.

Knowledge is understood through reality and, at the same time, real problems are solved through knowledge.

For example, if I were to study the study methods now.

I will buy relevant books and practice while reading them. By practicing, I can get real experience and test whether the method is effective or not.

The learning method is not only a knowledge in my brain. I know the method with my experience.

This is the real effective learning.

Public writing is not only about organizing your thoughts, but also about making your output understandable to others. A higher bar is set on output. Your output has to link with others. It is necessary to understand the characteristics of the person to whom the output is directed.

I'm currently in the beginning stages of phase one. Just starting to use the output and organize the inner information.

What excites me is that I'm clear about the goal of my writing, and I'm able to organize and summarize the information that I'm losing and digesting the input. This is a pain point I've been trying to solve for a long time, “I read a lot but don't memorize it”.

When writing is something that solves my own, urgent problems, it creates an endogenous motivation within me.

In other words, writing is about solving my own problems, not others'.

This closes the loop for me to write consistently.

It looks like this long chain, as if it is very reasonable. But ignores the complexity and uncertainty of real life. I'm in a very high-quality group, and I know a groupie whose parents divorced in middle school, and who slept all the way through his high school exams and got a 0 on the test. Now has his own guitar music studio, has a very good cash flow, and will soon immigrate to Japan. Some may say he is survivor bias. But in fact, if you understand, there are many people around you who had bad grades in the past, but are doing well now. I'm an example myself. I didn't do well in school growing up either. Always in slow classes in middle school, then paid for an undergraduate degree and got a hydrology hire. I also known a stand-up comedian who scored over 200 points in the college entrance exam, and then went to Tsinghua to give special performances to students who scored over 700 points in the college entrance exam.

There is no 100% correlation between whether you study well or not, and whether you can live your life well later, not even 50%, not even 30%, maybe 1%? Maybe. Because the process between the current point and the “future” is full of many other variables, with great uncertainty and complexity. If you stop and think about it, you can see the holes in this linear thinking.

It's just that we all rely on the path we can see in front of us, and are used to following the path given to us by others. And do not want to think of ways to find a belong to their own, currently can not see the road. Relying on oneself to find to create a road out, too much pressure, high risk, but also full of difficulties and challenges. The average person is afraid to go, preferring to squeeze to death with others on the visible path.

Enjoy the uncertainty and complexity, develop a good general strategy, then focus only on the present moment, do the things in front of you, encounter problems to solve the problem, do not create anxiety and problems in the brain, and leave the rest to time.

Emotions are signals sent to us by the subconscious mind, reminding us to pay attention to our inner needs, and there's no harm in telling ourselves to stop when we're sad or feeling ashamed when we're happy, whether it's taking an impulsive mini-trip or choosing to stay home to address our social fears.

I recently read an inspiring quote, “Life doesn't give you privileges just because you follow the rules, and truly transparent people never limit themselves to the rules” which made me realize that there are no absolute rights or wrongs in life, and that ignoring your feelings is the real mistake.

Starting from 2025, don't deprive yourself of happiness, eat what you want, drink what you want, don't let trivialities bother your mind, there is nothing wrong with being true to yourself, if someone doesn't understand, it only shows their limitations.

Let yourself live a more comfortable and happy life.

This most recent week's study was to read Wealth is the Realization of Cognition and give my own answers based on the questions posted. Today's question is: Why is it important to add to knowledge and subtract from mindfulness.

I had pondered over this question and wrote a 500 word answer in no time. The writing process was very fluid, but I was very aware that I had just been completely stream-of-consciousness, writing wherever I thought of writing, without a clear structure or hierarchy.

I gave the answer to chatgp and deepseek, and I wanted to see the difference between their revised version and my original version. As a result, their revised answers have clear logic and hierarchy.

deepseek's revised answers are more rounded than chatgpt's, which is in line with Chinese people's reading habits. I made a copy of deepseek's revised answer and compared it with my own, word by word and line by line, and I can see that there are some problems with my own essay: the sentences are long and complicated, and some of the contents are mixed up with each other and repetitive.

In the future, I will not pursue more words in my writing, but will pursue clarity of expression, concise language, and clear hierarchy.

I've wanted to write since a long, long time ago, not because I wanted to write, but because I was in a group with a big brother who suggested that all the students in the group needed to learn how to write, saying that writing was about everyone's future, and that it was one of the few tools that allowed ordinary people to turn their lives around. Hearing him say that made me anxious, and I felt like I had to learn this skill. But where to start? At the time, I attended a writing class run by Big Brother, followed by a writing camp. Neither the class nor the subsequent practice made much sense to me at the time. Then there was constant anxiety in my mind about trying to write on my own, but without a supervised environment, I couldn't keep it up on my own within a few days. Then joined a writing day punch card camp, in the entry of the camp charged a small fee, no supervision after entering the camp, rely on their own every day to post the article to the group, the group encourages each other to supervise, about one month to adhere to, every day always thinking about what to write? Pay attention to what happens in life. Once when I was writing an article, I felt as if my head was cracking open, and I wrote a lot at once when I couldn't write at all. During that month, it was like I found the feeling and rhythm of writing. But in the end, I gave up because I didn't know what to write about, and it seemed like I had written it all, and there was no hard and fast rule to monitor it. “Writing has been on my mind ever since. It's like a basket that I've always wanted to bring up but never have.

After many attempts, I often wonder about the matter of my writing, and I think the reason why I can't write all the time is that I can't stick to it. In my spare time, I also learn a lot of things, such as English, piano and badminton. I've been learning English for five years, and now I can have a relatively silky conversation with foreigners. I've been learning piano for two years, and now I can play the piano by looking at the five lines of music. I've been learning badminton for four years, and my movements are very standardized. These skills can insist on learning, the beginning is to find a teacher first one-on-one with. With the teacher's supervision, I just follow without brain and pain, put myself in this learning framework, do not have to spend half of the willpower. Based on this experience, I got a teacher to teach me to write one-on-one last year. Soon after I started, though, I realized that the teacher's philosophy differed from mine, and that I didn't really fit into the style the teacher was pushing. So I broke up peacefully in the middle of the process, and luckily the teacher was nice enough to refund me my money. After all the ups and downs in my writing journey, here comes 2025.

As it happens, I came across a book called “Card Note Writing”. It's been lying in my “big bookcase” for a long time. I bought it on impulse, but didn't have the patience to read it. Just flipping through a few pages, but there were still some concepts ingrained in me that I was just ignorant enough to accept that “writing is a bottom-up process.” “Writing is a workflow.” It wasn't, as I had always thought, a one-time write from the head. The “seed” was planted in my heart, but there was more out there that appealed to me, and I didn't have the patience to go any further. In the past few days, taking advantage of the Chinese New Year, I picked up this book and began to savor it. The more I read, the more I realize that my problem of “not being able to write” may be saved by this method. The problem with my writing is most likely due to my perception of writing from the very beginning. If writing is a workflow of recording and organizing thoughts or thinking. Get each step in that process right, and in the end the essay is just the result of that series of steps. Previously, my own steps were completely reversed, so of course I couldn't write. I decided to practice the method in the book as I read it. In addition, I also think that this method may be able to solve another embarrassment, that is, reading “a bunch of books, but nothing left in my head”. When it came time to say or write, I couldn't use a single sentence. At this point I was ambitious and determined to get this book, but I was still worried, “Will I be able to stick with it?” , the book was not that accessible, and digesting only one side a day was a test of my patience. At this time, I came across another person, on New Year's Eve, brushing the public number article, I saw “Shan Shan town” “daily writing” recruitment, 99 months a month to complete the card can be refunded, the number of words in the article of 300 words or more. I'm a member of a study group that requires me to write 300 words a day, so it's easy for me to write 300 words. The content of the article can choose to recommend, you can also choose your own theme. This setup, with its light task, flexibility and freedom and some supervision, suits me well. Try to digest the book in this writing framework. Just give it a try. I have a trick of my own for learning things... first I hack and slash like Zhang Fei . This is similar to what Shan said in the opening ceremony of the camp, “Write first,” but I'm being a bit harsh.

OK， let's start my writing journey !