#013 | Q1 2021 Reflection

Hi, I’m Ryan! You are receiving this because you have signed up to my weekly newsletter for Natural Language Processing (#NLP365), Entrepreneurship, and Life Design content!

Hey friends,

This year, I am doing few things differently. For one, I never used to do quarterly reviews but this year I have decided to do one for two reasons: a) I follow the 12 Week Year system and b) it makes annual review “easier” to do as you don’t have to scratch your brain on what you have done for the entire year!

Secondly, I am sharing part of my quarterly review with you guys; sharing my progress and results but more importantly, my emotional feelings, thoughts, and struggles 😊

Q1 2021 Reflection

First up, I rate each area of my life 1 - 10 based on how well it’s currently going, with 1 being is everything is falling apart and 10 being everything is going amazingly well!

Oh and I followed the rule of not allow to give rating of 7 as that’s considered to be a neutral number.

1. Zeroton + Entrepreneurship (8 / 10)

2. PhD + NLP (6 / 10)

3. Youtube + Time Ownership (8 / 10)

4. Health (9 / 10)

5. Relationships (8 / 10)

6. Personal Growth (10 / 10)

There are some sensitive information in different areas of my life so I am still working through what I can / want to display in public. Here’s what went well and what didn’t go as planned.

What Went Well?

• I developed a new morning routine this year and it has been by far the best in terms of personal development and setting the momentum for the day!

• 12 youtube videos and newsletters and I am now experiencing the flywheel effect heading into Q2!

• Delegation and outsourcing were two of my focus keywords for Q1 and I have gotten better at it! 😁

• Met some amazing and interesting new people in Q1 and consistently catching up with friends using my personal CRM to remind me :)

• My balance between Zeroton and PhD is effective and I am doing both time AND context management well :)

• I finished reading 26 books in Q1 2021, which concludes part one of the 26/12 books to actions! Not going to lie, I fell in love with reading and will continue to read more books while I transition to action phase for certain books! More on this in future newsletters!

What Didn’t Go Well?

So… PhD is the only one area in my life that’s currently below an 8. Here are my thoughts and feelings on my PhD journey so far. Hopefully this will be useful for those who are looking into pursuing a PhD.

1. Highest level of uncertainty (internal) — PhD has probably got the highest level of uncertainty component amongst all my other projects (besides Zeroton, which has the similar amount but manageable). Compared to when I first started, I would say that I am now able to better juggle the uncertainty but still there are days where I feel like I am making no progress… and the worst part is… no one can really help you. But Ryan, what about your supervisor?

2. No proper supervision (external) — I am six months into my PhD and I have only seen my supervisor TWICE! Although different students have different experience, I recently found out that other PhD students have been seeing their supervisor every week for ONE HOUR! I do have biweekly meetings with other people in my department and they have been very helpful. It’s how I have been keeping sane from all these unsupervised uncertain work. But I can’t help but think I would have a stronger clarity if I have a supervisor whose guiding me and helping me out instead of passing me on to others.

One thing I know for sure is that you can have perfect 10’s in most areas of your life, but if one is not on track, you would still be stress and won’t be able to perform at the highest level.

Now that’s my current PhD situation. Here’s my internal thoughts and reflection:

I recently finished the book War of Art. A fucking great book!! In the book, it talks about using resistance as your life compass to guide you to where you should go next. The stronger the resistance, the more you should move towards that direction! That’s how I am seeing my PhD journey!

Additionally, I love to ask myself this one question whenever I feel resistance: would you have it any other way?

I love constantly improving myself, challenging myself, and be a better and stronger version of myself. I know what I have signed up for and the truth is, I won’t have it any other way!

This week I finished reading:

1. Think Again (29th Mar - 31st Mar 2021)

2. The War of Art (1st Apr - 2nd Apr 2021)

3. Sprint (3rd Apr - 4th Apr 2021)

Total: 28 / 26 books | 2 / 26 level 4 notes | 2 / 12 actions

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❓Question of the Week

What did you accomplish in Q1 2021? What would you do differently?

As James Clear said, “A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote”. So reflect and adjust for Q2 2021. And if you are thinking it’s too late… it’s never too late!!

Share your thoughts by replying to this email. I would love to hear from you! 👻 👻 👻

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🐦 Tweet of the Week

James Clear @JamesClear

Success is largely the failures you avoid. Health is the injuries you don't sustain. Wealth is the purchases you don't make. Happiness is the objects you don't desire. Peace of mind is the arguments you don't engage. Avoid the bad to protect the good.

Do you agree with this tweet? I love James Clear but I can’t help but think this is more of a defense mindset rather than an offense mindset.

💡 Quote of the Week

A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote — Atomic Habits

🔥 Recommendation(s) of the Week

We have launched our MVP for the Zeroton platform!!

Please check it out here @ https://beta.zeroton.io/.

Join Zeroton’s ACTION-FOCUSED Slack Channel — We are in the process of looking for STRONG ACTION TAKERS, who wants to self-improve themselves through non-fiction books, to join our slack community.

Through the slack community, you will have access to the following:

1. Weekly group zoom calls with myself and other like-minded people to discuss actionable insights from different non-fiction books. We will keep each other accountable and share personal experience in testing different actions!

2. Monthly Habits Challenge

To join our Slack community, click here.

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🔦 AI Research - A figure is worth a thousand words

Counterfactual Generator: A Weakly-Supervised Method for Named Entity Recognition

Named Entity Recognition for Social Media Texts with Semantic Augmentation

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🎥 This Week on YouTube

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That’s it for this week! I hope you find something useful from this newsletter. More to come next Sunday! Have a good week ahead! 🎮

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