Weekly review (2024-04-21)

I just realized that I spend most of my time on listening to people, not speaking, and that I love listening. These days, my interview with candidates takes around 2 hours, and during that time, I just listen to the person carefully. I also started my portrait photography practice, where I listened to the person’s story (around 3 hours) before taking photos. I have been doing the same thing in my photography in the field, and I concluded that this is the best way for me to take pictures.

I should say this is a rare quality because when I look around at other fellow entrepreneurs, they all love talking while listening much less. On the contrary, I dislike (thus am not good at) speaking, and I am constantly amazed by listening to others. To be clear, I am quite often not amazed by what they think about specific subjects (e.g., their political view, because people often end up using someone else’s words) but rather by their life stories, which are always unique, ugly and beautiful.

Unlike one’s opinion, which is often contaminated by others, one’s life story is always genuine despite the limitation of our memory (our memory often gets rewritten to modify the meaning of the experience). It is like seeing beautiful nature.