Bo2SS

1 Giving Up on Failure#

There’s nothing much to write about this week, so I don’t plan to write.

But I thought of the teleology mentioned in "The Courage to Be Disliked":

「No matter what has happened in your life before, it does not affect how you will live your life from now on. What determines your life is the you who lives in this moment.」

Actually, I’m not planning to write because I have nothing to write about; rather, I found an excuse to say I have nothing to write because I don’t plan to write.

Similarly, SS recently realized that she doesn’t want to write her thesis because she feels bad, but she feels bad because she doesn’t want to write her thesis.

So recently she actively asked me to find a way to supervise her thesis writing. To be honest, there have been many methods used, but over the years we haven’t found a suitable reward and punishment mechanism until she proposed, “If I don’t complete my daily goal, I’ll do a month of dishwashing.”

I think this might be the most effective punishment so far; it’s targeted and a win-win.

I look forward to the subsequent effects. In any case, under my supervision, I will definitely gain a few months of dishwashing freedom help SS graduate smoothly.

2 Eliminate Worries#

Speaking of having nothing to write about this week, it’s not because I haven’t done anything, but because I’ve been busy eliminating the worries mentioned last week (#3 I Started Recording My Worries Daily), which is to prepare a sharing session on "Common Knowledge Related to Apps" aimed at helping everyone in the broader front-end (RN, Web, iOS, Android) better understand the characteristics of our clients (iOS, Android).

After all, as clients that primarily provide system capabilities, we have many technologies that are transparent to the front-end (RN, Web). If the front-end overlooks some details of the client when designing solutions, it can easily lead to performance or logical pitfalls.

However, the topic of "Common Knowledge Related to Apps" is quite broad, and for me, I don’t know what to say or how to delve deeper.

So this week, I increased my input, seeking relevant materials, including those from WWDC, Geek Time, as well as from public accounts and blogs. I kept reading, trying to find inspiration and categorizing the materials I found.

In the end, I organized the following outline, which was supplemented by an internal team survey:

Currently, I’m following this outline, learning while organizing my own content. With these refined goals, worries are no longer worries.

In fact, the exploration process above can be distilled into the following 6 steps, which are suitable for many preparation phases of research work:

1. Understand the background of the problem;

2. Increase input related to the theme;

3. Categorize the input and produce a first draft outline;

4. Conduct a survey based on the first draft outline;

5. Update the outline based on the survey results;

6. Further learn and output according to the outline.

3 Leisure Life#

There haven’t been any major changes in my leisure life this week. I’m still reading "The Courage to Be Disliked," which I mentioned in the first week’s journal, and watching "Mao Zedong," which I mentioned in the second week’s journal.

Additionally, when my ears are free (like when showering, cooking, or washing dishes), I sometimes listen to audiobooks. For example, I’ve been listening to "Xu Kai Talks About the Korean War" on WeChat Audiobooks. After watching and listening to so many battles where the weak defeated the strong, I deeply realized a truth:

「Excellence is the great enemy.」

Becoming an impressive person or company is already quite good, but if they can maintain humility and continue learning afterward, it will be even more admirable.

Take "World War II figure, American military god, national idol" Douglas MacArthur, for example. The joint forces he led lost to the "Chinese Volunteer Army, which had no air power, no logistics, and was poorly fed and clothed" during the Korean War.

The reason lies in his two strategic misjudgments:

1. The Chinese would not enter the war because their domestic unification work was still ongoing, and their weapons were very outdated (the result was that China sent 300,000 troops to secretly cross the Yalu River at night, and the joint forces fell into the trap set by the Volunteer Army, paying a heavy price).

2. The Chinese Volunteer Army could not possibly have so many people, at most 50,000 to 70,000 (the result was that the joint forces once again fell into the trap of the Volunteer Army and were almost completely annihilated, which is known as the famous Battle of Chosin Reservoir).

The cause of these misjudgments stems from his arrogance and underestimation of the enemy.

Of course, we should also thank him; this war made the whole world view China in a new light.

4 Automatically Filter Emails#

Is your work email flooded with messages?

If emails are not handled well, you might miss some important reminders or be inefficient when looking for certain information.

In the section "Email Maniac" from my previous writing 《Xiao Qiang's Promotion Diary》 (Part 3, 4) I mentioned the approach to handling emails, which is key to:

1. Pre-establish email title standards;
2. Regularly process emails;
3. Categorize emails reasonably.

Today I want to share a little trick for automatically filtering emails: Filters + Labels.

Taking Gmail as an example, as shown in the picture below, it only takes 4 steps to automatically handle emails that meet certain conditions:

1. Open Gmail’s advanced search;

2. Enter filtering criteria, such as sender or title keywords;

3. Configure filter properties, such as skipping the inbox, marking as read, automatically labeling, and applying to current matching emails;

4. Complete the creation of the filter.

The final effect is as follows. I filtered emails related to code reviews, work order status changes, testing reports, and other reminder functions. We can just look for them in the labels when needed, without having them clutter our inbox and diminish the presence of important information. For important emails that need follow-up, we can manually label them differently for easier future searches.

If we want to modify the rules of the automatic filter, we can go to All Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses to edit.

In fact, this filtering capability is not only available in Gmail; most email platforms have this basic capability. At least I’ve seen it in QQ Mail. Everyone can give it a try and return your email to a clean world!

That’s all for this week. For the sharing on "Common Knowledge Related to Apps," I welcome all the experts to offer their insights!

This week is also the Mid-Autumn Festival, so I wish everyone a happy Mid-Autumn Festival 🥮, and see you next week!