Personal Reflection

This piece is a thought experiment conducted through simulated interviews. The interviewees are composed of social psychology, editorial practice, and creator research perspectives and do not represent any real person’s original words. In November 2025, I recorded the phrase: “The creator’s loss: the scarcity of positive feedback.” In April 2026, I wrote: “Understanding generates positive feedback.” Together, these two sentences shift the question. Do creators truly seek only praise? When one hundred people like a piece but none articulate the contradictions it addresses, that void persists. Conversely, a single reader who precisely identifies how a detail altered their judgment—without public dissemination—might reignite the creator’s resolve to continue. ...

This piece is a thought experiment-style simulated interview. The respondents are composed of cognitive science, archival studies, and product design perspectives and do not represent any actual expert’s original words. In May 2026, I stopped using flomo. That month had no daily reminders, no faint sense of debt from “today’s notes still pending,” and no rapid conversion of thoughts into cards. Surprisingly, life didn’t thin out. Instead, Laotian cities, caves, injuries, strangers, and bars coalesced in late May into a more complete self-reading than fragmented pieces. ...

This piece is a thought experiment conducted through simulated interviews. The two interviewees are fictional characters synthesized from environmental psychology, behavioral science, and urban studies—representing no real individuals or viewpoints. In May, I explored caves, rode motorcycles, and met strangers in Vang Vieng. By June, back in Shenzhen, I often did not come alive until after dark, relied on short videos to lull myself to sleep at two or three in the morning, and lacked the energy even to step outside during the day. ...

This is a thought experiment-style simulated interview. The respondents are fictional characters composed of developmental psychology, field anthropology, and the author’s personal experience—no real experts are quoted. In December 2025, I wrote in my notes: Exploration no longer provides sufficient momentum. At first, moving to a new city wasn’t just a change of scenery. New languages, social structures, and rhythms would disrupt your existing self. Once your position loosened, your identity followed; once your identity loosened, possibilities multiplied. For a long time, “traveling” and “becoming someone new” were nearly synonymous. ...

This is the final essay in Reckoning with Reality. The first six considered profit, competence, action, feedback, and technology. The last returns to a question no model or market can decide for us: what kind of life am I willing to pay for? When we discuss a choice, we habitually list the returns. How large is the market? How high is the income ceiling? Will growth come faster? Can the path eventually produce a moat? The more complete the spreadsheet, the more rational the choice appears. ...

This is the sixth essay in Reckoning with Reality. The previous essay separated fast feedback from slow results. This one turns to a question that technological progress makes easy to neglect: when an old bottleneck disappears, where does the new one appear? Whenever a new tool arrives, people first imagine what it will eliminate. AI makes writing faster, code cheaper, translation nearly instantaneous, and video production possible without a full team. Work that once took days can now be completed in minutes. ...

This is the fifth essay in Reckoning with Reality. The previous essay asked what kind of action can produce evidence. This one examines the speed at which evidence arrives—and how speed quietly changes our goals. A friend told me that content and retail have one enormous advantage: fast feedback. Change the opening today and the view count responds within hours. Adjust the price or the page and clicks or sales may change at once. Compared with spending months building a product in private, only to receive a faint response at launch, this rhythm does make it easier to preserve morale. ...

This is the fourth essay in Reckoning with Reality. The previous essay examined how intelligent people use competence to escape. This one asks the next question: once we leave the study, what kind of action actually brings us closer to the facts? “Think less, do more” may be one of the hardest pieces of advice to dispute today. It sounds brave and direct, and it often works. Many people are stuck not because they lack ability, but because they never quite put their work into someone else’s hands. ...

This is the third essay in Reckoning with Reality. The previous essay examined the limits of profit. This one turns to a more personal question: why can greater ability sometimes make it harder to reach the facts? I used to think that avoiding something must look like scrolling on a phone, procrastinating, or doing nothing. Later I learned that the hardest form of avoidance to recognize is often remarkably diligent. It comes with thorough documentation, elegant architecture, an unbroken commit history, and late nights at work. ...

This is the second essay in Reckoning with Reality. The introduction began with a dinner-table argument. This essay asks only one question: what exactly does profit record on its scorecard? “If a business makes a lot of money,” my friend said, “that means it creates value.” My first impulse was to argue. Then I realized that calling him wrong was easy. Explaining precisely where he was right, and where he went too far, was much harder. ...

This is the introduction to Reckoning with Reality, a seven-part collection of audits on profit, action, technology, and choice. A few days ago, over dinner with a friend, we began talking about what to do next. “The essence of entrepreneurship is making money,” he said. “If a business makes a lot of money, that means it creates value. If it keeps losing money, it is wasting everyone’s time and capital.” ...

This article is available in Chinese. An English translation is in progress. From February to March 2026, I stayed in Lhasa, Tibet — a city that forces you to slow down before you can begin to understand it. The altitude arrives first, then the silence, and finally the weight of everything the city carries. This piece explores what it means to be a stranger in a place where time moves differently, where the landscape is both physical and spiritual, and where the ordinary and the sacred exist side by side. ...

I once thought metacognition meant thinking more deeply about an experience and explaining an emotion more completely. Over four months, I recorded hundreds of fragments: why anxiety appears, why travel quiets the mind, why I become more sensitive after drinking, how AI might change engineering, and what it means for a product to respect the person using it. The notes multiplied, and my explanations became increasingly refined. Yet the number of ideas was not what changed me. The shift came when I began to see how a thought appears in the body, how emotion amplifies it, how I turn it into a story about myself, and how that story quietly makes decisions on my behalf. ...

My 2023 Annual Summary As 2023 swiftly draws to a close, my university life is nearing its end with just half a year remaining. A friend once said, “What’s frightening is not losing your passion for work, but never being able to find it again.” This year, I encountered many people and experienced numerous events, gradually shaping my world view. I’m fond of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and often reflect on my own state through it. I enjoy challenges, both in my work and hobbies (like hiking, cycling…). It seems I’ve successfully fulfilled the first four levels of Maslow’s theory: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, and esteem needs. I’m probably at the stage of self-actualization needs. However, it’s worth mentioning that while Maslow’s theory is hierarchical, human needs aren’t always linear or fixed. For instance, someone at the self-actualization stage might still encounter needs from other levels at different times. If a person loses their job or faces financial difficulties, they may refocus on safety needs like financial security and stability. Similarly, the end of a close relationship or changes in one’s social network might reignite a desire for social needs. Even in everyday life, when we fall ill or feel hungry, our focus might temporarily shift from higher-level needs like self-actualization to physiological needs. ...

Hello, I am Xiong Xinwei. In the river of time, I’m so honored to step into this significant moment of my senior year. More than just a student, I’m passionate about writing those pulsating codes. Hence, I became an avid follower of open source. Welcome to explore my digital realm—My GitHub . Here, you will witness my love for technology, my third-generation blog, and I hope it becomes the ultimate link for my conversation with the world. ...