This book covered all those major moments of his football life. From his childhood, how he got his work ethic from the family background, where his love for Manchester United is from, to the “infamous” tragedy in 1998 World Cup, last 3 minutes vs Bayern Munich in 1999 UEFA Champions League final, 2002 revenge to Argentina, to the final match as a football player. In a very personal story telling way, as if he’s sitting there talking to you. I’ve watched some of his talks before, gentle, humble, honest. You would enjoy this book if you are a fan of David Beckham for sure.

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I still remember the 1998 World Cup England vs Argentina match, vividly. I was just about getting 15, the good age to be able to fully enjoy the football match, just started to understand the tactics of teams and skills of individuals. That year was special to me, and what made it more special was that match.

As Beckham wrote himself, after he was provoked by Argentina player Simeone and got sent off the pitch, and then was blamed for the lose of the game, “I was the most hated man in England”. There’re people, super skilled, super smart, but they just like the dirty plays and mental tricks, Simeone is one of them, to me at least. And Beckham as the inexperienced player that year, paid the price, he suffered a lot. What made it worse was that his families were also involved in that national hatred. There was an envelop with bullets in it sent to his house. His dad was yelled by a stranger in the street. During that dark era was his teammates and his club, Manchester United and its supporters embraced him. You would thank the past self that you’ve had done something with your full heart and earned those respects and people around, that one day when you really need a hug, they would come to you.

I would also like to mention about his work ethic. He wrote in the book that throughout his career he had been getting this criticism that he’s more of a fashion star rather than a football player. Maybe it’s because his handsome look, maybe because he married to a fashion star, but people may not know that how much effort he had put into training and practicing. Those free kicks are not luck. That’s a natural consequence. He started practice earlier than everyone, and stayed late than everyone in the team. Rainy days, snowy days, all the same.

Confidence is a funny thing. People often say that you need a lot of luck to win. But, for me, confidence comes down to preparation. When you have practiced something so much that is has become a part of who you are. Second nature.

When Beckham talks about free kicks and confidence.

Football is a sport, but in many ways, it’s also an attitude to life. To me Beckham made a huge positive influence on/off the pitch, to his supporters and enemies.

Note: The kindle version of this book is unlike the normal ebook, more like scanned and turned it to a pdf, has the original book layout but it also makes it terrible to read on laptop/phone, and can't highlight or keep any notes. A hardcover book is recommended.

I read about how ants communicate with each other by touching their antennae, and I felt that is fantastic! So many times I felt myself lack of skills of communicating my real thoughts to the people around, for quite a long time I dreamed of, it would be nice if I could tell my true feelings via some kind of “antennae”, like a handshake, a hug, or even just letting people look at my eyes, see how sincere I am. If I could tweak any part of the human DNA, I’d add the antennae.

But recent years I’ve come to realize that, actually I’ve been using that fantasy as an excuse of my poor communication skill. I blamed it so I could escape from that thing, I justified it as if I was nothing wrong, it was a flaw of human nature, life would be easier if we could communicate like ants.

Apparently I was wrong. There’s a huge difference between just thinking inside your head than verbalizing it and walking your talk.

When you are in school, you’re guaranteed to hang out with your friends, it’s granted, it doesn’t take too much effort. But once you step into the social society, it takes quite a lot of efforts to physically hangout with your friends. It takes your time, your attention, even you money and resource to do so. But all these efforts, because of the inefficiency, it means something, and your friends would appreciate it. It means in the busy world where we want more and more but the 24 hours today just feels less than last year, we choose to spend the time together with our family, our friends. It doesn’t happen by default, we make it happen.

It’s not rare that your good friend lives in the same city yet you’ve only met once a year. Some relationships do need your effort to maintain. It’s not a bad word, it doesn’t mean your relationship is not sincere. Because it matters, that’s why you need to put efforts, otherwise the world has all sorts of ways to get us derailed from the essentials.

So, now I don’t want any “magic antennae” anymore, all I want is to be more intentional about how I spend time with people who are truly important in my life, and really put it into action.

Again, it makes quite a difference, if your thoughts are sincere, you got to find a way to verbalize it, to act it, to find the exact word to describe it, to sacrifice your resources to make it happen. It’ll pay off eventually.

How do you see yourself, and how would you describe it?

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)

Until I read this book, I’ve seen myself as a rational, reasonable human being, most of the decisions I made were the best judgements I could give given the situation I was in. Of course I made mistakes, and there’re some “would have’s” but most of the people would’ve done the same. I act like as a humble person everyday but I do know deep down there’s a arrogant aspect of myself, and I’m fine with that.

This book just helps me to uncover those events I consciously or subconsciously self-justified as “I’m right”, it could be perfectly described as:

When we explain our own behavior, self-justification allows us to flatter ourselves: We give ourselves credit for our good actions but let the situation excuse the bad ones.

Self-Justification

The book explores self-justification through the territories of family, marriage, memory, therapy, law, prejudice, conflict and war. It helps us to preserve our beliefs, confidence, self-esteem and self-image, but also could get us into big trouble in all these areas.

You may or may not be aware of it, but it’s happening everywhere. Like when you take a super cheap economic flight you would speak to yourself, “look at how much money I’ve saved, this is definitely worth the pain and inconvenience”, and once you get the chance to take on first class, “look at the service and comfortable seat, this is definitely worth the extra money to enjoy a good journey”.

There’re some fascinating writings and stories in the book, how politicians could ever speak like a silly person, how the law enforcement is flawed, how even professionals reject obvious evidences and still claim they’re right, how convenient memory is and could be tweaked to support our version of self-image, how perpetrator and victims interpret to same event, and how a person who seems perfectly normal could ever firmly truly believe he’s abducted by an alien and even have children with them.

Here I’d like to pick up a few topics and add some of my takeaways.

A Pyramid of Choice

You may have heard the quote: “We are the choices we make”, that’s indeed the truth but itself fails to reveal a compound effect of decision making. It’s as if we we gain 1 point when we do one thing good, and -1 when we do something wrong, but it’s not that flat.

This book introduces this new concept of pyramid, a pyramid of choice. At the very beginning, we’re all at the top of a pyramid, and then we face a situation in which both choices have each benefits and costs, like cheating or not cheating in an important life-changing exam. Then you make a decision with an implicit side-effect: you’ve justified it. Next time when you encounter the same situation, you’re highly possible to repeat the same action you made before, otherwise how would you explain the last action? Admit you’re wrong now?

Whenever you make a seemingly just one-time decision, you’re actually starting a process of entrapment — action, justification, further action — that increases your intensity and commitment and may end up taking you far from your original intentions or principles. So each time, remind yourself: how do you want to step down the pyramid or just want to be slid down to nowhere near your initial goal. Once you slide down you would fight yourself so hard to climb up.

This also reminds me of the hot news: FBI tries to force Apple into a backdoored iOS for “just this one time, we swear!”. Cook tells them no way. Apple is refusing to do so because that means to create a “master key” that could unlock any iPhone and no one could guarantee to do no evil.

Comparing the technology news to psychology may sounds absurd but I can’t help thinking, does it also mean whenever we use the excuse “just this one time I swear” to indulge ourselves, we’re indeed trying to forge a “evil master key” that leads to a dark path we definitely don’t want to go in the first place.

The big question is, again, would you like to step down the pyramid, firmly, towards who you really want to be, or just slide down with some crappy excuses to nowhere near your original destination?

Self-awareness, Letting Go and Owning Up

The structure of book is Chapter 1~7 to explain in very details of self-justification in various areas, and then Chapter 8, the last chapter to give you some advice you can take once you’re aware of the wrongs and want to make it right. Maybe it’s constructed exactly this way to prevent people from hunting “quick-fixes”, but if you’re suffering extreme regret of actions you’ve taken, and eager find a way to cope with the scar on the soul, I recommend you to pick up this chapter first.

The book says there’re 3 stages in the act.

• Act 1 is the setup: the problem, the conflict the hero faces.
• Act 2 is the struggle, in which the hero wrestles with betrayals, losses, or dangers.
• Act 3 is the redemption, the resolution, in which the hero either emerges victorious or goes down in defeat.

People can’t just skip the Act 2 to true redemption. It says “Active, self-reflective struggle to see the silver lining is a key ingredient of maturity.”

The guidelines I summaries is:

1. Self Awareness - I Could Be Wrong

In our private relationships, we are on our own, and that calls for some self-awareness. Once we understand how and when we need to reduce dissonance, we can become more vigilant about the process and often nip it in the bud, catching ourselves before we slide too far down the pyramid. By looking at our actions critically and dispassionately, as if we were observing someone else, we stand a chance of breaking out of the cycle of action, followed by self-justification, followed by more committed action. We can learn to put a little space between what we feel and how we respond, insert a moment of reflection, and think about whether we really want to buy that canoe in January, really want to send good money after bad, really want to hold on to an opinion that is unfettered by facts.

2. Accountable External Procedure

Because most of us are not automatically self-correcting and because our blind spots keep us from knowing when we need to be, external procedures must be in place to correct the errors that human beings will inevitably make and reduce the chances of future ones.

3. The Arduous Journey to Self-Compassion

Something we did can be separated from who we are and who we want to be. Our past selves need not be a blueprint for our future selves.

The road to redemption starts with the understanding that who we are includes what we have done but also transcends it, and the vehicle for transcending it is self-compassion.

Getting to true self-compassion is a process; it does not happen overnight. It does not mean forgetting the harm or error, as in “Ah, well, I’m basically a good, kind person, so I’ll treat myself gently and move on.” No; you might be a good, kind person but you are one who committed a grievously harmful act. That’s part of you now, of who you are. But it need not be all of you. It need not define you—unless you keep justifying that act mindlessly.

At last, as the book says, the most dangerous thing is not you make a mistake and find an excuse to escape from it, it’s the terrible thing you committed and are still being blind about it. I was that person, and I’m feeling extremely thankful for this book to make me open my eyes and reflect on past events.

I confess, I was wrong, I’m sorry.

Well actually to put it correctly, it takes a lot of time to change, but when it’s happening, it happens in a second. But we’re all suck at noticing those subtle signs, slowly fill up the tank.

Life is full of those unexpected changes. Not sure if I want to mention things that come to my mind right now, but when I look back I do have experienced a lot in recent years. Anyone, anything you firmly believed in might change in the next second, expected or unexpected, predictable or unpredictable.

So how to and what to prepare? You can’t prepare for all, so you’d better to have some wise advice, or further more, principles to follow.

Be Flexible

You can’t do everything you want, but you can do anything you want.

When you look back, how many plan B turns out works way better than the initial plan A? If all my plan As worked I wouldn’t come to Japan, I wouldn’t have the desire to learn English, and I wouldn’t writing this piece of post for sure. Those examples will just get more and more when you grow older.

React with your best judgement at that moment. And how to make better decision in those situations? I think it’s through daily practices. How you feed your brain with great contents, how you educate yourself and tweak little parts towards mentally tough everyday, does have a huge impact when that day, that moment comes. Would you just let your emotion and impulse take control of your body and do whatever they want at that moment, or you could still be yourself, pause, and respond properly?

10% of life is made up of what happens to you, the other 90% is decided by how you react.

Lighthouse Principles

I believe there’re lighthouse principles that never change. They’re universal, and timeless.

One of the many famous quotes from Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A set of principle based values will show you the direction, provide you clear sense of vision, purpose for the future, that you live by.

Surprisingly I found a draft principles I wrote in 2014, what a timely reminder. Don’t think at the time of writing I followed any formats or guides, some of them are probably not that universal and some are event just questions, but after reading it I felt quite, content.

• Love is a choice, a commitment. I commit to love my family unconditionally.
• Life is a gift, do what matters, go make it count.
• I can choose my response, no matter what circumstances are.
• Money is not the symbol of success and happiness.
• I can’t change the default scripts handed to me, but I can rescript it by my free will, by design from now on.
• Treat people the way you want to be treated.
• I can be right but wrong at the top my voice. Be conscious how I delivered the message.
• Imagine my funeral, what do I want people to say about me?
• Imagine myself is the husband of my daughter, do I want her to marry a person like me?
• Don’t over investment on personal hobbies, but also don’t less investment on self improvement.

Progress. Not Perfection.

(Just some random midnight thoughts)

I’ll just paste those guides and demo code as a reference, credit to Mark Otto (@mdo), and full list is in http://codeguide.co.

Reducing markup

Whenever possible, avoid superfluous parent elements when writing HTML. Many times this requires iteration and refactoring, but produces less HTML. Take the following example:

<!-- Not so great -->
<span class="avatar">
  <img src="...">
</span>

<!-- Better -->
<img class="avatar" src="...">

Declaration order

Related property declarations should be grouped together following the order:

1. Positioning
2. Box model
3. Typographic
4. Visual

Positioning comes first because it can remove an element from the normal flow of the document and override box model related styles. The box model comes next as it dictates a component’s dimensions and placement.

Everything else takes place inside the component or without impacting the previous two sections, and thus they come last.

.declaration-order {
  /* Positioning */
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  right: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  left: 0;
  z-index: 100;

  /* Box-model */
  display: block;
  float: right;
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;

  /* Typography */
  font: normal 13px "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
  line-height: 1.5;
  color: #333;
  text-align: center;

  /* Visual */
  background-color: #f5f5f5;
  border: 1px solid #e5e5e5;
  border-radius: 3px;

  /* Misc */
  opacity: 1;
}

I’ve always wanted some guides on this topic, putting positioning and box-model related stuff first does make sense.

Media query placement

Place media queries as close to their relevant rule sets whenever possible. Don’t bundle them all in a separate stylesheet or at the end of the document. Doing so only makes it easier for folks to miss them in the future.

We used to have a separated single file called responsive.css to write all those media queries for various screen sizes, but later found that it was hard for anyone else to track these changes.

.element { ... }
.element-avatar { ... }
.element-selected { ... }

@media (min-width: 480px) {
  .element { ...}
  .element-avatar { ... }
  .element-selected { ... }
}

But different than the code above, I’d like to nest the media queries right inside the selector, instead of separating and grouping them in another place. This way you don’t have to rewrite the selector another time and also can see them in one place so you won’t miss it.

.element {
  ...
  @media (min-width: 480px) {
    ...
  }
}
.element-avatar {
  ...
  @media (min-width: 480px) {
    ...
  }
}

.element-selected {
  ...
  @media (min-width: 480px) {
    ...
  }

Shorthand notation

Strive to limit use of shorthand declarations to instances where you must explicitly set all the available values. .. Excessive use of shorthand properties often leads to sloppier code with unnecessary overrides and unintended side effects.

/* Bad example */
.element {
  margin: 0 0 10px;
  background: red;
  background: url("image.jpg");
  border-radius: 3px 3px 0 0;
}

/* Good example */
.element {
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  background-color: red;
  background-image: url("image.jpg");
  border-top-left-radius: 3px;
  border-top-right-radius: 3px;
}

I’m still having problem for 3-value syntax like margin: 0 0 10px;, 2-value and 4-value syntax are fine, whenever I see it I still need a few extra seconds to convert it to top, left and right, bottom accordingly. I’ve seen some other guides recommending always using the shorthand notation but I guess might be good to have some exceptions. So personally really want to give this style a try: avoid excessive use of shorthand properties.

Sleep is essential to us. Sleep is a priority. Sleep keeps us sharp. Sleep helps us remember, learn and grow. Sleep refreshed our emotional state. Sleep enables the highest levels of mental contribution.

This is something really really need to invest your time, cultivate it into your daily life. No one can sleep for you, not your mother, not your wife, it’s the one single core activity that only you can do, to protect yourself so you could achieve more.

The Cost Of Lack Of Sleep

When I’m lack of sleep, the chemistry inside my body is totally different, it turns me to basically a bad guy:

• Not just less fun but boring
• So so impatient, this really would hurt people around me
• Not energetic at all
• Bad temper
• It affects my work, my relationship, all my activities

And then I feel guilty about myself, I can’t blame for sleep but me, in the end I’m responsible to take care of myself as an adult.

And sleep is also more important to the brain, not just body. When volunteer research subjects are deprived of adequate sleep, they maintain their physical strength; what suffers are mental skills like perception, abstraction, and reasoning.

Bedtime Procrastination

It’s easier to just go on than go to bed, researchers call it “bedtime procrastination”. from “Shave 10 Hours Off Your Workweek”

That rings a bell. Even though I think I’ve understood all the great juice I could get from a sleep, and all the cost I wouldn’t need to pay when I’m lack of sleep, I still fail to go to bed as scheduled.

Why is that people fail to do what they know is good for them to do? Hehe, it’s a very interesting area.

Sometimes it’s tempted to just keep going than stop, but is the thing that important that need to be done right now, 11:30 pm in the night? Or is it the same to get it done tomorrow morning, except then you’ll have a refreshed mind and better decision making ability?

Quick Checklist To Get A Good Sleep

• Commit to it
• Schedule it
• Establish a ritual
• Exercise during the day
• Expose to sunlight
• Avoid eating too late
• Kill the lights an hour before the bedtime
• Turn off all electronic devices

These are recommendations I read from multiple sources, and I practiced before, it works, it’s proven strategy. But if you don’t keep paying attention on it, it’s easy to derail from it in your busy life.

Remember: one less link, one less episode, one less page, now, you’ll get more tomorrow.

Deliver The Message To The Unknowns

When I was young I simplify believed sleep was a waste of time, I could do more if I could somehow trick myself to skip it. I did remember when I first got to Japan, there was a guy in the TV who bragging that he only took 4 hours sleep per day, and even once had an accident when driving the car because he fell asleep. Sadly he took that as a badge of honor, and more sadly, I bought it and took that as a role model.

There were lots of nights I refused to sleep, and wouldn’t listen to any kind advice from people close to me. I thought that sacrificing sleep was the price I need to pay in order to achieve more.

I was wrong. Completely wrong. And now I look back, I feel this tremendous amounts of guilt, I made them worried. They knew how sleep is essential to us, and wanted to deliver the same message to me, but my blindness and arrogance turned them down, I was the unknown.

I wish I would have known the truth earlier. Now I know it, but it’s my turn to be struggled about how to deliver the message to others.

Listen to those who are telling you to go to bed on time, they say it because they care about you, you might not buy it, but at least show some respect. Meanwhile, if you’re on the other side trying to push this idea, be sure not to send it in a demanding tone, what you’re doing is a good thing, stay patient and creative.

If you have the similar experience, no matter being the unknowns or knowns, please leave a comment and let me know your story, it’s worth sharing.

If you want to read more: there’s a chapter in the Essentialism just named “Sleep”, and also one in Mentally Tough: The Principles of Winning at Sports Applied to Winning in Business, and it’s repeatedly mentioned my favorite podcast, the list goes on and on.

Can’t remember how many times I’ve been bothered by the red dotted underlines telling me “favorite”, “customize” are spelled wrong… apparently the system is using British English to check the spell.

Here is how to change it the use to American English.

Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text, Change Spelling to U.S. English.