For those of you who happen to stumble into this article, it is worth a little bit of time to explain the title: 2–2–6. This article was written on the New Year’s Day of 2022. As a tradition of making new year’s resolution, I hope to summarize three-part ideas that will help me (and a little wish to other innovators in various stages of their careers as well) to live a more healthy and productive life for 2022 and many years to come. As we are living in the era of social media, any comments and suggestions to this story will be very welcome.
For those who are well versed with stories from Asia, the term 9–9–6 is an infamous series of numbers that refer to (now formally unlawful) labor practice of working from 9am to 9pm for 6 days a week. However, when an innovator has a burning idea to create sometime new that could potentially change the world, it seems all the time in the world is not enough. After all, one great innovator of our time, Elon Musk, famously work two shifts managing two companies while putting in more than 120 hours a week, according to himself and this NPR profile.
In my family, both my wife Crystal and I are working with our startups in Silicon Valley, and we have a lovely daughter Angelica who we would love to spend ever more time with. As every other parent, we believe we are trying our best to offer her a normal childhood not being affected by the raging pandemic that has become the hallmark of her time growing up. All of these have made me wonder: What is the bottom line to make family and work work in terms of scheduling my daily hours?
Here is my 2022 New Year’s Resolution:
Reserve 2 hours of quality time with the whole family together, no matter how busy our schedules are. Reading books and playing outside are some of Angelica’s favorite activities (watching Peppa Pig and Cocomelon TV will not count), we shall keep a regular time everyday to enjoy the whole family being together, being healthy, and being loving.
Reserve 2 hours of strategy time with myself every day. Innovation and creativity take time to foster. As innovations coming out of our tech world are rapidly accelerating, such as the new buzzwords of metaverse, blockchain, and Web3, it is more important than ever to have a long-term strategy before putting it into action in daily operations.
My last wish for 2022 is to have 6 hours of rest time to keep my busy daily routine going strong. I will admit I have not been practicing minimum sleep hours like a religion in 2021. Looking back when I needed to teach and doing research and development at the same time, for long months, my sleep hours fluctuated between 4 to 5 hours a day. But I have reasons to be optimistic that 2022 will be a year of changes to make my life and work more healthy.
Finally, I wish all my friends a Happy New Year!
