I just finished reading the Book “Finish what you start” by Peter Hollins. Surprisingly, what really touched me the most is actually not the methods Peter mentioned to control our procrastination, neither how to set our goals and manage our time to motivate ourself the best and use our time efficiently, but how short it took me to finish reading the book, 4 hours, and I finished reading this book whin three days during my ‘trash’ time.

I used to believe that reading is rather a time-consuming activity, and even though it is essential to our life, reading many books a year is a privilege that only belongs to the smart people and those who are really in reading. And, I am of none of them.

It is also because of reading this book, I started considering to write my English blog, a thing that I had planned for almost three years but always hindered by a lack of confidence in my English level. But in this book, Peter encouraged me, as a reader, to start doing whatever that is in our mind and do not be afraid of doing it. Therefore, here I am.

The title that I use for the first blog is, “The hard journey goes easy.” Because of the experience of writing this English blog is just like a lot of the other harsh choices I made in my life. Things like retaking the Colleg Entrance Examination, quitting a well-paid job, and head to the US to pursue this Ph.D. degree program that I am currently taking. Every time I made a choice, I always gave up the easy one since the hard one seems to lead to a better future, though uncertain and risky. I might get even worse grades in my second CEE, and hence waste one precious year of my youth. I also had had no idea about how life in the US would be like. The only thing that is certain is that leaving home and heading to a place 10,000 km away from my family and my girlfriend is very hard for me. Yet I still came, for some reason, I called a dream.

Hard choice, as usual, the hard decision as always, but it also seems that every hard path also leads me to an easier life. Without my second CEE and that crazy year, i might not even be able to get an internship from Tencent, and might also not able to find a descend job, and apparently, i will not have to face that hard choice to come to the US since no one is going to give me that chance.

And again, without coming here, I won’t be able to make so many kind friends from different countries and of course other nice Chinese brilliant students as well as professors. Life here is tuff, though, it is not bad. Two years ago, before I come here, I can still not speak English bravely, not to mention to write blogs, and here I am writing this blog. Writing this blog revoke me the memory of writing my first Chinese blog on oschina.net 6 years ago. Just like this one, I had to consider every word that I use and the grammar errors that I made. And after my first blog, I wrote many useful blogs which are read and shared by thousands of peoples, and many of them expressed them thankfulness to me of sharing my experience with them, and I am very happy about that.

In this blog, I will share about the books that I read, he papers I study, and some of the madness ideas and life experiences. This is my blog, and it will also be a part of my life, which motivates me to be a better man. Pick the tuff path, and life will be easy.