2020 is coming to an end. It indeed was a strange year to all of us: at times, it felt like the year would keep going on forever, but now that we are looking back, time seemed to fly much faster this year than any previous one. Whether positively or negatively, I think we all agree that 2020 has been (and soon, was) so remarkable that we won’t ever forget it (in this lifetime, at least).

I decided to jot down some lines to reflect how the year has been, from my view. This note will be great reading for me in a few years probably.

Covid-19, Quarantine, and working from home

Covid-19 was a big hit for all of us. Thankfully, neither I nor any of my loved ones were infected (or maybe someone got infected and recovered so fast that they didn’t think of testing it); however, the quarantine period is still troublesome: my home country, Vietnam, for the last months, has forbidden all commercial flies from outside the country, so for me, there’s no way to come home; meanwhile traveling to anywhere else is also not recommended (and not worth the risk). Other than these, as an introvert, I have no problem with social distancing (well, maybe except with wearing a mask everywhere). I love staying indoors, so I don’t find it troublesome to not attend social gathering events. (especially those with hundreds of people, which I wouldn’t have participated anyway). It’s kinda nice, though, to see that now I can do such things from the comfort of my home.

The most significant impact that Covid had on me was the trendy big words working from home. I have always loved working alone. It is much easier to intensively focus when you know you can safely ignore everything else from the outside world and simply care about what you are doing. Working in an open-space, despite its several positive effects, kind of prevents that. (That is not to say you can’t focus on an open-space working environment, but it gets more challenging to focus on one thing for an extended time). However, working from home has never really worked for me though it has always been an option. I mean, it was not really easy when you were the only one who does so. You would likely miss vital information (which is typically delivered through casual face-to-face conversations in the office); and probably bump into infrastructure problems, too. When only a couple of persons work from home, technical issues are less likely to be found. The found ones won’t be solved as fast as office infrastructure issues that infect thousands of people’s productivity.

For these reasons, I was, in fact, looking forward to seeing how it would be when everyone in my company started to work from home at the same time. Turned out it was great: after a few weeks with struggles, we all eventually get more or less familiar and comfortable with working in our own home, with colleagues also sitting in their homes, from all over the globe. It required some extra effort to write down questions/answers/information, etc. (in comparison with merely poking the guy sitting next to you). However, in the long term, that turned out to be a more efficient way of communication. As everything is recorded, no critical piece of information will be dropped at any point. If you ever forget the reasons for some decision made a long time ago, you can just search for the thread. And new people or those who come back from vacations also find it easier to catch up on things that happened when they weren’t there, as all communications were recorded.

All in all, when being forced to work remotely, office communication will get closer to what’s called text-based communication, a term used by Gitlab (an all-remote company) in their Remote playbook. In short, it is a practice to make the primary method of communication is by documentation, i.e., everything has to be written down. There are several advantages in this practice: you don’t need to repeat the same content in every meeting, everything is written down in documentation, which serves as a single source-of-truth to any question which may be raised by newcomers, etc. Of course, things aren’t yet that perfect: it’s tough to keep documenting everything, so most of the time, some information will get stuck in some chat messages; however, even in that case, it’s still possible to track down the information should you need to. Personally, as someone without a “proper” IT background, I find it a blessing. Now I can spend as much time as I need reading some written-down conversation since there may be several terms I need to google to get the context. There was indeed no option like that in a face-to-face conversation. (Unless you want to stop someone in between of their thinking process, ask some basic questions that everybody in the room (except you) already understands). Meetings and knowledge-transfer sessions are recorded, which means you can do what you usually do with online tutorials: pausing, rewinding, forwarding, replaying in fast/slow speed, etc.

Working remotely also allows me to have an extra hour every day from transportation. As I can freely dive into a “deep work” state, my time usage is also much more efficient. That leaves me tons of time to build up the habits that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise: reading books, doing exercises, cooking, etc. 2020 will be remembered as the year when I couldn’t go to the gym but managed to get six-pack abs for the first time in my life. Ironic?

Other than these benefits mentioned above, working remotely daily also means no more hassles with public transportations, no more fear of forgetting something in the office, on the bus or somewhere else, no more walking in the dark (in a typical Finnish winter, we usually get around 5-6 hours with solar lights, things can even get more dramatic in the northern part of the country), fewer effects from the weather (rain, snow, icy roads, etc.), etc. God, I’m now so “addicted” to remote working, I don’t know what would I do if I have to come back to a life of going to an office every day.

From Sisu to Stoicism, and Antifragility

The Finnish term Sisu is kinda hard to explain by words. Every Finns I’ve asked about it explained it a little bit differently. Overall, it’s the attitude of staying calm and overcoming challenging situations without negative/unnecessary feelings or actions (like complaining or blaming others). I was partially forced to start learning about Sisu and applying it to my life some years ago. That was when I moved to Finland and suddenly found how difficult it was to live alone in a strange country. Complaining would be pointless as I was too far away for any of my loved ones to help me. Learning about how Sisu helped Finns people in their country’s most challenging times made me realize how ridiculous I was to think my situation was terrible. So I decided to change.

That was the story of some years ago, though. What’s new this year is that I, by coincidence, got to know of the term Stoicism, and saw its similarities with Sisu. While Sisu was rooted deep into Finnish culture for hundreds of years, Stoicism originated from old Greek philosophers, some thousands of years ago. Like Sisu, it instructs people how to overcome hardness in life, with courage and pride, but it goes a bit deeper by defining some meaning to it. Stoicism describes four virtues, which constitute one’s control of life: __ Wisdom__, Justice, Temperance, and Courage. Apart from these, one owns nothing, not wealth, power, or other people. It focuses on one’s inner peace, but it doesn’t oppose one’s links to the outside world; it promotes fighting for Justice and what is right.

Prudence (Wisdom) is the knowledge of things which are good, or bad, or neither good nor bad. … Justice is a habit of the mind which attributes its proper dignity to everything, preserving a due regard to the general welfare. … Fortitude [i.e., courage] is a deliberate encountering of danger and enduring of labor. … [And] temperance is the form and well-regulated dominion of reason over lust and other improper affections of the mind. (Cicero, De Inventione)

I will need many more years to understand Stoicism, but getting to know about it was actually a big step. It made me thinking: “what will make my life a good one?”. I haven’t found the answer yet, but hopefully, I’m getting there.

In the last months of the year, I started reading the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Just as the two previous ideas, Antifragile focuses on helping people overcome unexpected things rather than predicting them. According to Taleb, while human always tries to come up with an understandable model of the world, we will never succeed. There will always be unexpected elements that he called “black swans” (a term first used in a previous book), which cannot be predicted. Mother nature deals with these black swans by providing living organisms the ability to be anti-fragile. That basically means, instead of being destroyed by unexpected disasters (fragile), growing from them. Of course, that was just one lousy summary of the idea and may cause some misunderstandings. For one thing, “black swans” just means stuffs that are unusual and cannot be predicted, but they can be positive surprises, as much as they can be harmful.

While Sisu describes the state of mind needed to overcome the hardness and Stoicism provides the meaning for overcoming that hardness, this term, antifragility, includes instruction. This know-how is complicated to thoroughly learn, though. I will need to read and re-read all of Taleb’s books several times before qualified to say anything about his ideas. I may come back with a proper explanation then, but for now, please consider this part as my current lousy view only.

2021

Loading… 2020 was really a year that made you clueless about what to expect from 2021.

But whatever will happen, I wish you virtues and antifragility.

See you!