2024年年终总结2024 Year in Review

To the ends of the earth — Jason Zhang, "To the Ends of the Earth"

Piece No. 4

Prologue

Sometimes freedom feels like happiness.

A healthy sense of being alive matters.

A journey under the sun.

Eyes that never waver.

Looking Back

How fast it goes — another year is nearly over.

2024, what story did you have to tell?

This year, in the coming and going of time, we turned moment after moment into a thousand different flavors. We lived a jolting life, and lived it brightly.

2024, the Paris Olympics, made dreams take on flesh.

2024, the world still tangled in turmoil.

2024, still believing: sincerity always finds an answer.

Turning past this year's laughter, regrets, and letting-go, I take every earnest moment of living and let them gather into the good harvest of the future.

Let's high-five 2024 one more time.

2025 — go embrace a life concrete enough, and unknown enough.

Anyway, here's my 2024 year in review — enjoy:

01 Reading: A person still needs to make something

In 2024, I read thirty-four books in all. Life is bitter sometimes, and reading is that little bit of sweetness.

Looking back on 2024, my reading journey was pretty rich and varied. Over this year — "366 days without a break, all year long" — I kept company with books, and the numbers tell the story: 535 hours and 5 minutes immersed in the sea of books, a figure that surprised even me — more than double the time I spent running. A river of 2.19 million characters, a feast of thirty-four books for the mind. Every month I had my date with books, and September especially, those fifty hours of quiet reading, felt like the warmest greeting of the autumn.

I still read late at night in the hush when all is still. Compared with the previous two years, in 2024 I've grown more mature and more settled in my reading. No longer chasing quantity blindly, but caring more about the quality and depth of the reading. Every choice of a book was carefully considered; every reading, I tried to come away with something.

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Though the range of what I read is still wide, I've found my own main thread: sociology, psychology, business and management, and biography together form the four pillars, and beyond them I mix in fiction to add another vantage point.

In short, my reading journey in 2024 made me believe all the more firmly: reading is the one thing that, when you're lonely, makes you feel a little less alone. It found me a patch of quiet amid the world's clamor, a guiding lamp in moments of confusion.

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On this year's reading map, economics and personal finance were the most dazzling spray, while history and the humanities were the eternal background hue. Behind these books is the depth of a dialogue with myself, and the breadth of an encounter with the world.

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Reading is like sipping tea — bitter or astringent, yet always with a sweet aftertaste. There are golden houses in books, and in autobiographies and in conversations with admired figures, I found that those who carry a mysterious self-confidence all reached achievements they themselves hadn't foreseen at the start.

Chanel only meant to sell hats at first, and ended up building a fashion empire; Larry Ellison merely wanted to make somewhat better software, and forged Oracle; David Senra only wanted to read some biographies of famous people and then organize his notes into audio form, and ended up making the most beloved podcast in the venture world.

No one fully knows what they're really doing; everyone is feeling for the stones as they cross the river, full of doubt and anxiety on the road ahead. But they have a super-strong self-confidence that helps them beat the demons inside and carries them onward. This isn't survivorship bias — it's more like a reality distortion field.

As the saying goes: "On the court there's no one else, only you." You have to trust yourself doubly, and doubly affirm yourself.

02 Film: Slowly giving way to American TV

On the film front, this was a quiet year. As of this writing, I've watched thirty films this year.

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I keep having this feeling: over the past few years, I seem to watch fewer and fewer films, more willing to watch American series? And I still like Korean, Indian, and such films. Or else I rewatch the domestic classics over and over. And this year, after changing environments, I really haven't had the setting or the appetite for films.

Another thing: I'd rather, and hope, to go to the cinema more with my parents, then come back and talk it over.

03 Running: To the ends of the earth

On the running front, I made real strides this year.

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🏅 WMM 6-Star Chaser (2⭐)

In Chicago, I witnessed a world record once again; and in Berlin I once again lived through a milestone of my life, graduating from Berlin Marathon "sophomore year" cleanly, with a PB.

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At Chicago '24, Kenya's Chepngetich, born in '94, crossed the line at 2:09:57, breaking her own former world record of 2:11:53 from last year. It was the equivalent of a man's sub-two feat! In 2022 she was just 14 seconds off the world record; this time she pushed it forward by a full 116 seconds.

No human is limited.

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A few loud cicadas cry out; I jog through the cool of a high-summer dawn. How far must a person walk to become who they long to be. It would be a lie to say summer training isn't hard, but autumn is bound to be the season of harvest.

Running has become my shortcut to pouring vitality into life: those training schedules conquered through rain, high heat, and blazing sun; those promises kept to myself; those countless accumulated 1%s — that's how you gradually come to look full of life.

Starting from Michigan Avenue, 42 kilometers through 18 neighborhoods. At the halfway mark I thought of the countless dawn training sessions; a breeze off the Chicago River carried a hint of cool, easing the fatigue for a while.

After 25 kilometers, my will was at war with my body; I saw the once-weak version of myself, my legs growing heavy as if filled with lead. But the rising and falling cheers along the route lent a little momentum, as if I could hear the rousing movement of the Chicago Symphony.

The last 2 kilometers, the final sprint, the finish line in Grant Park in sight. As if turned into "Air" Jordan, I gave it everything for that last leap.

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And Berlin — for every runner, it's a place of pilgrimage. Berlin has always been a lucky land for me, and my favorite city in Europe, bar none.

Fifty years of course legend, thirteen world records.

The final kilometers of the Berlin Marathon course are fairly flat. As I passed through the crowded city center, I tried not to be distracted by the cheering spectators along the way. The last two hundred meters turned out to be the longest distance in the world.

I stayed fully focused, thinking of just one thing: in a little while, I'll pass through the Brandenburg Gate. As I crossed the finish line, all the pain and sweat crystallized into my finest hour. After the physical torment and the psychological challenge, the joy of surpassing my own limit is hard to put into words.

Countless witnesses there were, yet I was the sole protagonist of this journey. The best birthday gift.🎁

In recent years, I've been very happy to see more and more people take up running and join the marathon ranks. Surveying over 1,100 respondents, The Washington Post found that people are most prone to epiphanies in three places: in the shower (30%), commuting (13%), or exercising (11%).

Another report, which interviewed 98 professional writers and 87 physicists about when and where in the day creative ideas most often came to them, showed that their major mental breakthroughs tended to arrive while doing something else, like washing dishes or bathing.

So, when you're stuck on some problem, there's no need to fixate on it too much; you might, like Einstein, take out his violin and swap music for the work at hand, or, like me, go out for a run, or lift some weights, or dance.

It may sound counterintuitive, but when your anxious brain tells you to work harder, maybe it's time to stand up, stretch, and go for a run.

04 On People: Reading people is a lifelong lesson

1. Over the past seven or eight years, in trying to let the right people see me, I put in far too much wasted effort, and the result was that too many wrong people saw me, and then quickly forgot me. The world is like a TV set you can flip channels on endlessly, and for a few right pauses we have to perform around the clock.

2. In a lifetime, one is bound to suffer because of hope, to be pricked by conscience, to know loneliness because of love.

3. Kindness, a youthful spirit, courage, drive — these are things precious as gold, to be treasured and never squandered. Guard them well.

4. Initiative matters enormously. At many turning points in life, I actually went out very actively to gather information. I think just "striking up a conversation" with someone, or asking them, is a life shortcut: not everyone is an output-er, and much information and experience lives in their heads. You can't wait for them to write it down — you can only go dig for it yourself. Two parallel life trajectories, without "striking up a conversation," will never intersect; but starting from that conversation, an intersection can become an overlap.

5. Maybe because of covering consumer, I tend to think more from the category/market angle, and less from the channel/traffic angle.

People with an internet background tend, in their work, to have only a traffic mindset — fixating, say, on TikTok or WeChat Channels, and then figuring they can write to the assigned prompt. Without following up further: why do this category on Channels, and where are the opportunities and growth of the category itself. The result is this category this year, that category next year, because traffic is always shifting — and if a premise, say AI or Channels e-commerce, turns out not to hold, or the scale falls short of expectations, then what?

6. The three great mountains of the new era: education, healthcare, housing. The goods an ordinary person needs to break through to a higher class grow ever more expensive, while the goods that make ordinary people more mediocre grow ever cheaper.

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7. Most people you meet in this life won't truly like you or care about you. Even if the feeling or relationship is good in the moment, that's only the moment, only for now. Place too-high expectations on too many relationships, and you're bound to be let down. To be self-reliant is to be resilient; nearly all your relationships are built on the premise that "you're of value to others." Put your time and energy into the one thing of making yourself stronger, rather than into courting others' liking.

8. On Weibo, Moments, Xiaohongshu — the visitor to all this social media is forever your future self.

9. The perception of the poor is the resource of the rich. The essence of life is a game of probability where one or two big opportunities can lift you up, and one or two big blunders can bring you down! The wealthy friends around me keep quiet most of the time, then seize one opportunity that lays a huge foundation. I didn't feel this deeply before, until the eve of the US election this year — one big bet, and they can basically lie back and coast.

So to raise your probability of success, you need to increase the number of times you "catch a wave" and the success rate of the wave, drawing the blade only at the most crucial moment; and to lower the probability of falling, besides constantly learning and refining yourself, you also have to face your own shortcomings squarely, and keep making up for them by playing to your strengths and learning from your "brain trust."

10. I understand more and more now: intense emotion is also intense vitality. But emotion alone isn't enough for vitality to flourish — only with the reins of emotional management, moving through it all with room to spare, can vitality endure.

05 Perception: Even idle thoughts yield something

1. A line I heard today moved me deeply: to live a life without drawdowns. People really are sometimes just like stocks. Life, from a certain angle, is also a process of continually exercising options. So constantly controlling drawdown is the core idea. Zero drawdown is impossible; even someone as strong as Buffett has drawdowns. Volatility is the price of return; a life of guaranteed profit-no-loss has a limited ceiling.

2. What was your 2024 regret / unresolved ache?

Now that I'm middle-aged, there doesn't seem to be much left to regret? What matters most in this life, I think, is still all the people who love you: family, lovers, friends.

I hope my parents stay healthy and can often be by my side. Together we'll make more memories.

I hope the one I love is well in every way. She loved me at twenty; as for whose wife she is at thirty, whose mother at forty, I wish her well all the same. Even as she fills out and grows old, temples turning gray, she stands forever upright in my memory.

Indeed, most people can't hold youth and the feeling of youth at the same time; there's always something that must vanish to prove how precious it was. Life is nothing but an experience growing ever fuller — may this life be lived to the fullest, and that's enough.

3. In recent years I've slowly come to understand: most people live not to seek truth, but to blend into the crowd and find a comfortable spot to tuck themselves away. It's a way of living that "settles the self within a conformity that doesn't violate the common denominator."

Like clocking in and clocking out, going with the flow, not asking why we're so busy; and when a hard problem in life comes up, that mess inside the heart, like a Pandora's box being shaken.

Some people, not firm inside, get muddled the moment a problem comes; their days pass in a haze, their spirit slowly going dim. Some find an excuse and gently paper the problem over; as long as they don't tear off the scab, the days can keep playing dumb. But some are different: they know the answer isn't urgent, they welcome the questioning when it comes, because after the pain is the herald of rebirth. Like an eagle growing a new beak, pulling out old feathers to fly again, they understand that after the pain comes a stronger self.

Friends, don't be surprised when you meet a wise person — they're only more sensitive; problems come earlier and more often, and their inner struggles are more frequent too. But it's precisely these pains that taught them to be strong and unruffled. Thick skin is forged, not born; it's not bulletproofing you're issued at birth.

On the battlefield of life, we're all soldiers. Are you the general who commands with calm, or the obedient foot soldier? Until one day life says to you: "Rest, soldier!" — then, will you choose to lay down your weapon, or rise up and fight? The answer is in your own heart, for you alone to decide. This drama called life — you're the lead, and you're the screenwriter too.

4. What people truly envy isn't those who genuinely dare to bet; it's those who were "forced" to bet along, and inexplicably struck it rich.

06 Work

1. You should choose your career by your love; usually people tie love to happiness, but something is actually missing in that.

You want to achieve great things — that's not easy to do. When you do something that isn't easy, you won't always enjoy it. Not every day of work is a day you love; not every day brings me happiness — and happiness isn't necessarily the definition of a good day.

So what people get wrong is this: the best work always brings you happiness. You have to endure suffering, have to work hard, have to do the hard things and overcome them, and truly grasp everything you're doing.

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2. Making a hobby your work isn't necessarily a bad outcome. Making a hobby your business is painful; going to work at a company connected to your hobby can also be painful. But work that lets you decide freely by your own heart, and is also your hobby — that will be happiness.

3. The things you need to force yourself to keep up, you can never keep up for long. Comparative advantage often is: what others have to force themselves to keep up is exactly what you enjoy.

4. A team's, or a company's, real "underlying operating system" is the building of its human-resources system, not the business itself.

Human resources includes two big aspects:

• Doing well the building of mission, vision, culture, and values;
• And the building of a matching mechanism for distributing benefits.

These two together form a company's complete human-resources system. HR isn't just the professional, technical (the "how") layer of compensation and recruiting.

From great companies to the building and growth of political parties, all of them stress: the building of mission, vision, culture, and values, and the matching mechanism for distributing benefits.

5. A line I loved this year: if a person can stay quiet for a long time — seeing, hearing — they're bound to be full of drive.

Wang Xing of old, and Zhang Yiming too, both came across as quiet, but today surely no one doubts the drive of Meituan and ByteDance. The problem is that in life eight or nine things in ten go wrong, and they often wear down a person's drive, leaving them dispirited and wanting to give up. The matters big and small in life are like this too, and the annoying ones always come one after another.

So how to understand the setbacks to one's drive, and how to repair the helplessness, the void, and the sense of defeat in daily life, becomes very important.

07 Closing

Wind and snow and light and heat, the years wheeling around, summer nights and blue lightning, storms and the weariness of the road.

In an ordinary, unremarkable life, to know what you truly love is already remarkable. This is my biggest realization of late.

To know early what you truly love and are good at, and to work for it, is lucky and rare. More often you follow the worldly track and run through a process of elimination, and that clear answer hides amid one mistake, one confusion, one impasse after another.

And another thing: real truths are the ones you come to feel yourself, having walked the road once. Not reciting them over and over from a textbook, or under the world's influence — that isn't real understanding or comprehension.

When a person truly faces being dimensionally out-classed (someone with a higher starting point, a sharper mind, higher EQ, and who works harder than you too), they oddly won't feel strange emotions like envy or jealousy, but rather look up in admiration.

Beyond the dimensions of time and space, this world actually has one more hidden dimension; everyone moves in their own parallel world, and it's very hard to cross over — very hard to form deep connections with people from different worlds.

Lately, in many a mind-blowing moment, I can't help but sigh: my life has a limit, but knowledge has none; to spend a life-with-a-limit chasing the limitless — how satisfying.

Everyone's foothold in living is different: some live to gain, some to have their fill of joy. And I live to experience.

Just like running: the finish line is only a marker; what matters is how you carry yourself the whole way.

Sun and moon shine on; the seasons turn. Snow is both an ending and a beginning.

In 2025, keep on trading blows bravely with the world.

May every journey you set out on find you full of spirit and firm in purpose.

"Thank you for the glory you've given me — I bow to you, deeply."