Well, at least I hope so, for 2025.
I started keeping a Learning diary on math and tech since September 2024.
Before that, I was working on a series of math notes, in a Zen mode, for months. I annotated PDFs in Margin Note 4, and forged definitions, diagrams into Forester trees which are bi-directionally linked notes that can be rendered into beautiful web pages and LaTeX PDFs, until I'm satisfied. During that time, I didn't read news, unrelated books, and solely focused on the books and papers needed for polishing the notes. I held my breath until one note reached a certain stage, so I might move on to a next note.
It was a mental paradise.
Then came the learning diary idea. Since September, constant context switch had dominated me at work. My attention for learning, had inevitably become fragmented. I started to check out interesting stuff from social media, still about math and tech, they are indeed potential elements of what I might want to work on. So I wished to log these readings or just findings daily, so they are not lost in time.
The habit was well-kept, to the end of 2024, even when the load at work had become unbearably distracting and exhausting. The breadcrumbs would be a gold mine for future me.
But it was a disaster to the mental state of my mind.
During that time, I managed to go back to a few open-source projects that I was working on. Most of them have almost no users, but I still feel the obligation to keep them up to date. Usually I just had little time for each of them, so after some chores, I ran out of time and energy for new features, and moved on to chores for a next project. This partially reflected my mental state caused by my fragmented learning.
The world had become an endless curiosity for me, the potential to work on a new project inspired by an element just learned about, was dazzling.
When I stood at the beginning of 2025, I realized that I'm almost fruitless in 2024. I didn't finish the notes before September, although they are nice in their partially completed form. I didn't create anything in a whole after September. I enjoyed the reward of the journey, but came to the end empty-handed.
I no longer log my learning daily in 2025 due to various reasons. My work and life still consume a lot of my time at the beginning of a year, like always. I still log them, but almost just weekly.
April is coming, I would hope to reach a similar Zen mode like the better half of last year. Hence, this post is poured out of me.