WHY

The reason I wanted to write this article is because I get one question very often from GitHub. Actually, I get a lot of questions, but there is one that stands out:

How can I speak fluently about many different topics?

LOL~

To be honest, I couldn’t speak English fluently even though I had been learning it for many years.

I know you want to speak like a native English speaker. You want to sound natural. You really want to speak fluently.

Well, in order to do that, you must use the words and expressions that we actually use in real life. And that’s why I created this series for you: Real life English.

Now I’m going to teach you words and expressions we really use. Are you ready?

Well then, let’s jump right in.

FIRST TOPIC

One of the most common problems I hear about nowadays is: I am so tired.

And you are not alone.

I experienced the biggest failure in my life in the past year. The startup company I ran went bankrupt. I lost my wealth, a precious friendship, and the person I loved. For a whole year, I couldn’t sleep well and felt very tired every day.

Trust me, I know that terrible feeling.

So, our first topic will be: why are you always tired?

Whether you are experiencing unemployment, or just broke up, or are confused about the future, let’s calm down and talk like old friends.

Before I created this course, I searched online for many articles on this topic. Some YouTube videos and even some ChatGPT answers inspired me a lot. I summarized the ideas of several popular videos and shared them with you here.

Apart from medical health issues, I’d put most reasons into three buckets, and we’ll talk about them one by one:

• sleep anxiety
• unhealthy lifestyle
• stress

Sleep Anxiety

The first one is Sleep Anxiety.

Sleep anxiety is the feeling of being scared, worried, or concerned about sleep, which paradoxically makes it harder to fall asleep. That creates a vicious cycle.

I’ve been reading about the science of sleep for a while, but even with a medical background, it can get confusing. And when you listen to different people, it’s hard to tell what advice is good and what’s just noise.

For sleep anxiety, here are a few myths to watch out for:

Myth one: It doesn’t matter when you sleep as long as you sleep enough

In the 1990s, Russell and his research group discovered that there are some cells in our eyes that detect light rather than helping us see images. This light-detection mechanism tells our brain what time it is and helps regulate our internal clock.

Since our internal clocks are sensitive to light, generally:

• we want to be awake when it’s bright outside
• we want to be asleep when it’s dark outside

Russell and his team also studied what happens when the circadian rhythm is disrupted by sleeping at odd times (jet lag, night shifts). They found higher stress hormones, higher risk of heart disease, and people getting sick more often. They also became more prone to emotional and cognitive problems.

Reference video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlf9-573MhI 00:02:28,070 - 00:02:38,210

It’s also worth remembering: our internal clocks aren’t identical. That’s why some people are morning people and some are night owls. It’s related to your chronotype.

If you’re a morning person, it often makes sense to do high-focus work earlier. If you’re a night owl, that can work too—if you can control your schedule.

Myth two: Everyone needs eight hours of sleep

The truth is that sleep needs vary a lot. Instead of panicking over “only seven hours”, focus on habits that improve sleep quality.

Myth three: We should wake up at the same time every day

It’s generally good to wake up around the same time, but you don’t need to be insanely strict. Also, chronotypes change across life stages (teenagers often skew later).

Myth four: You should avoid blue light before sleep

Blue light has a short wavelength and higher energy. Some researchers believe it affects the eye/brain in ways that make sleep harder.

UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE

The second bucket is unhealthy lifestyle.

My short advice: move more. Be physically active during the day. Exercise can boost mood, metabolism, and energy.

I’m not a fitness expert, so I’ll keep this part simple.

DEAL WITH STRESS

The most important thing I want to share is how to deal with stress.

Manage your stress and learn to relax properly.

Here is a video that might help you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QiE-M1LrZk

I mentioned in my article on Zhihu that I was addicted to games for a while, but I overcame it by using the dopamine detox method.

Even when you logically know that studying, exercising, building a business, or doing something productive will benefit you in the long run, you still prefer watching TV, playing video games, and scrolling social media.

One might argue it’s obvious: one activity is easy and effortless, while the other is difficult and demands focus.

But some people seem to have no problem studying, exercising, or working on their side projects regularly.

At the low point of my life, one thing kept me moving forward: programming.

I needed a high-performance rich text editor for my previous company’s product. I couldn’t find an open-source project that met our needs, so I built one and open sourced it on GitHub.

Whenever I felt depressed or distracted, I quietly worked on it. Challenges I faced and overcame:

• designing and coding the editor
• developing the core and plugin system
• designing a data structure for complex tables and submitting a PR to slate.js
• refactoring the rendering engine to move away from React

If you are interested in this project, you can join and contribute.

I was very happy that I could finish it after more than a year of continuous development instead of giving up halfway.

Today’s lesson was very long, but fortunately it is OVER now.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope you learned something useful.

Prev: Misc