#6 | Start a new day with a slight sweat

Hey guys, happy Monday! This week's journal is a bit late because I spent the weekend at my relatives' enjoying a feast 😛.

This time, I'll share 1 experience from my personal life and 1 from work.

1 Starting a New Day with a Little Sweat#

The best state for drinking is a slight buzz, and the best state for morning exercise should be a little sweat, right~

Starting this week, I adjusted my biological clock by 30 minutes earlier. After waking up in the morning, I followed a certain exercise app called Kxxp for a 20-30 minute workout (I bought a membership that provides a weekly plan, so it's convenient and saves me time). After breaking a sweat, I take a shower.

And thus, a new day officially begins.

This "starting with a little sweat" mode instantly dispels the morning grogginess and awakens the body that is still in "sleep mode".

Actually, I usually go to the gym to exercise, so why suddenly add exercise in the morning?

One reason is that I happened to see a video that introduced how many successful people, like Cook, Wang Shi, Fan Deng, Luo Zhenyu, etc., would go for a run or exercise in the morning. They said it can help them enter a state of flow, and their work performance would also be better after stopping.

I was curious about this state of flow, so I thought it's better to take action than just being curious.

The second reason is a sentence I read in an article called "Avoid Dual Battles When Making Career Choices", which further strengthened my determination:

"Health is 1, and the rest of the wealth, reputation, status, etc., are all 0s behind."

The author suggests that when making most choices, we should not sacrifice our health (such as in exchange for a high salary), and investing in health will never be a loss.

I also strongly agree with this because I have indeed benefited a lot from the habit of exercising, such as having abundant energy and high sleep quality.

Although I haven't found the feeling of flow yet, after executing it for a week, I think the benefits of the "starting with a little sweat" mode are:

Enjoying the relaxed feeling after breaking a sweat, making me more focused on work.
Encouraging myself to develop a habit of going to bed early. Reducing the ineffective time before bed (doing random things), otherwise, the morning exercise plan might be ruined. Even if I still procrastinate due to various reasons, at least the time I go to bed is earlier than before.
Improving cardiovascular endurance. Most of my exercises at the gym are anaerobic, so adding some aerobic exercises in the morning can make up for the lack of cardiovascular exercise.

2 Two Tips for Preparing a Presentation#

Last week, I completed the presentation within the team. Although I prepared for this presentation half a month in advance, I was still working on the initial version of the PowerPoint presentation just 1 hour before the presentation. So, I had a big problem with time allocation for preparing the presentation 🤔.

What caused my procrastination?

For me, the reason for this procrastination is that I didn't have a thorough understanding of the technology I was going to present. I couldn't find the right starting point for the presentation, so I kept inputting knowledge without outputting it to the PowerPoint.

But in the end, I managed to finish the PowerPoint in a short period of time. So, besides having a clear outline (preparing a good outline in advance, goal-oriented🎯) and the MVP mindset (Minimum Viable Product, minimizing unnecessary content👀 because completion is more important than perfection), what other techniques did I use?

Here are two points that you guys can learn from:

1) Using images as clues. Search for related knowledge points in the image section of Google search engine. While quickly browsing, you can find the common points among them, which are often the core content of that knowledge point.

This is similar to looking at the table of contents of a knowledge book first. It's generally not recommended to get caught up in details right from the beginning.

Usually, good books have a logically clear and interconnected table of contents. The same goes for good articles. If you find excellent flowcharts or architectural diagrams, there's a high probability that you've found a good article (usually, you can click on the image in the search results to go to the source of the image~).

2) Practice, practice, practice. No matter how much content you read, it's not as good as hands-on practice. For technical knowledge, you can usually find methods for practice online.

For example, for computer knowledge, writing code is generally the way to practice.

When learning some difficult and in-depth knowledge, find the corresponding demos first. You can start with the most basic and simplest practice, gradually progressing. You don't have to "eat a whole elephant" right from the start.

Also, it's better to type the code yourself instead of being a copy-paste engineer.

If this process doesn't go smoothly, congratulations, because in the process of encountering and solving problems, you will have a deeper understanding of that knowledge.

I also received similar inspiration when reading the article "Try a Different Approach to Improve Learning Efficiency". The article says:

"Practice quickly, get positive and negative feedback, and then go back to lay a solid foundation. It's definitely feasible."

➕) There's also a technique that I didn't use well this time: external discipline.

Make an appointment with a senior or someone close to you to review the content of the PowerPoint a few days in advance. This also allows you to have some flexibility and anticipate risks.

But pay attention to the "a few days in advance" part, it shouldn't be too early:

Firstly, it might be unrealistic in terms of time, and you might not be able to finish it;
Secondly, if it's too early, both parties might forget or not pay much attention to it because it's still far away (don't ask me how I know👀).

So, it's recommended to have the review a day or two in advance for regular presentations.

Alright, that's it for this time. Are you ready for the new week, the last week before the National Day! 🇨🇳