Balance is a lie, and we are constantly leaning towards a particular aspect—as for me, I was focusing on my elder daughter this week in helping her cramming for the final test.

How about my performance on book reading? I shall say it was kind of superficial and a bit inconsistent.

I was hopping from one book to another. From Maye Musk’s autobiography to a spiritual writing“All-inclusive Christ”and then to “Microstyle”. Honestly, even for this, I still have not made up my mind to delve deep in yet.

I was kind of picky on the books for digesting on a daily basis— the language style, the author’s values, the thoughts and energy between the lines , the applicability of the book knowledge or skill in our own life, etc— are all considered or judged unconsciously.

The good thing is, I saw the improvement and steadiness of one of the three of us—David. I love the sentences he has been sharing, particularly the following two paragraphs:

A lot of this goes back to what Deming told the Japanese a long time ago: do it right the first time. The natural tendency when you've got a problem in a company is to come up with a solution to fix it. Too often, that solution is nothing more than adding another layer. What you should be doing is going to the source of the problem to fix it, and sometimes that requires shooting the culprit.

I can testify to the importance of idea of“do it right the first time”through my daughter’s learning experience. While she was in grade 1, the spelling of “pinyin” in mandarin was not an easy task for her and she got confused always with “b,d,q”as well as clusters like“ui, iu ”. with a shaky foundation in pinyin, she was having constant problems until now as a grade three pupil whenever she needs to use them. This is just one incident highlighting how critical it is to“do it right the first time”.

Another paragraph is what I had recited in 2017.

Here's how I look at it: my life has been a tradeoff. If I wanted to reach the goals I set for myself, I had to get at it and stay at it every day. I had to think about it all the time. And I guess what David Glass said about me is true: I had to get up every day with my mind set on improving something. Charlie Baum was right too when he said I was driven by a desire to always be on the top of the heap. But in the larger sense—the life and death sense—did I make the right choices?

Having now thought about this a lot, I can honestly say that if I had the choices to make all over again, I would make just about the same ones. Preachers are put here to minister to our souls; doctors to heal our diseases; teachers to open up our minds; and so on. Everybody has their role to play.

Hopefully, I would find more joy in reading “Microstyle”next week—a book about self-media.