Newsletter › #11
People Who Stop Learning Don't Stand Still — They Get Dragged Along by the World and Other People's Expectations
【What I've been up to】
Hi, Reader.
Did you celebrate Christmas last week?
I went to lots of events last week —
probably because it was Christmas and year-end.
I went to:
1. a gift exchange at Kaohsiung's multilingual café meetup
2. the Inspiration Village x Ramen Club year-end gathering and party in Taipei
3. a book club event in Kaohsiung
A very full week 😁
I've made some changes in my life lately:
trying to get out more,
go to more events,
and not stay home all the time.
How about you?
Done anything fun lately?
If you know of good events —
book clubs or outdoor activities —
in Tainan or Kaohsiung,
let me know.
Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter.
Meeting some of you made me especially happy
and gave me more motivation to keep writing.
I've noticed
some newsletter readers
don't follow my show.
I warmly invite you to subscribe.
The show is about to pass 100,000 downloads,
and I'm hoping to get there before December 31, 2025.
Here are the links to the show (in Mandarin):
Thank you for your support this year.
The next letter you get from me will be next year.
Happy New Year in advance 😄🫰
【What I learned】
Today I want to share
what I learned at the Inspiration Village x Ramen Club year-end gathering.
It was a full-day event,
so I can't pass on everything;
instead I'll share
what I found especially valuable.
Kim said:
“People who stop learning don't stand still;
they get dragged along by the world and other people's expectations.
If you don't choose to learn, life will teach you —
the world will teach you — through setbacks and inner turmoil.”
Those words really struck me.
They reminded me of Who Moved My Cheese?
The cheese didn't disappear suddenly;
it got a little smaller every day.
Some people just chose not to look.
After more than a decade in my job, the most painful thing toward the end
wasn't that my income had plateaued,
but doing the same things every day —
I felt my growth had stalled.
I couldn't stand standing still;
I knew I had to keep moving forward.
Back then I was desperate to grow.
When I started creating in September 2024,
I felt myself moving forward again,
learning new things every day and pushing myself to keep growing.
Psychology
divides how people face difficulty
into a “growth mindset” and a “fixed mindset.”
People with a fixed mindset
see ability as innate.
When they get stuck or stall,
they tend to tell themselves:
“This isn't for me.”
People with a growth mindset are the opposite.
They don't treat “I can't” as an excuse,
but as “I haven't learned it yet.”
So even when they get stuck,
they keep learning and adjusting.
The biggest difference between the two
isn't how hard you work,
but whether, when you hit a difficulty,
you choose to stay put
or keep growing.
But even if you choose to stand still,
the world will still force you to grow.
It's growing pains either way —
do you want to be forced to grow,
or choose to grow?
I prefer to choose to grow.
So when Kim said those words,
they really resonated with me.
I'm passing them on to you.
---
Another guest, 薑餅資,
also shared things I loved.
When she runs into a problem,
she looks for the answer in books.
She thinks books are very much worth investing in —
a book costs only a few hundred NT dollars,
which is actually very cheap.
I'm the same.
When I face a hard problem,
I look for answers in books too.
So
I'd like to share a good book I'm reading
with you every week.
I hope it helps.
If you're reading a good book too,
write and recommend it to me.
If I enjoy it,
I'll write about it in the newsletter
and credit you for the recommendation.
I'd love a bit more back-and-forth 😊
---
Finally, at the event
I met many newsletter readers.
It surprised me,
and humbled me.
The people who read my newsletter
are so accomplished and driven!
Now I don't dare write nonsense.
(Just kidding — I'll keep writing nonsense, ha.)
Here's a short video I edited of the gathering.
I hope you can feel our positive influence.
【Book share】
The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)
- Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This is the book I shared at last week's book club.
Why this book?
At this book club we read on the spot
and then share,
so I chose a book that isn't too long.
It's thin, but rich in meaning.
When I first read it in my twenties, I honestly didn't get it.
In my thirties, after some life experience,
I read it again — and not only understood it,
it left me in floods of tears 🫣.
Now in my forties, rereading it, I'm still moved.
The story is about a fighter pilot
whose plane breaks down and crash-lands in the desert,
where he meets a little boy: the little prince.
Let me share one part that especially moves me.
The little prince comes from a tiny planet, asteroid B 612.
One day, a rose sprouts on his planet.
The rose is delicate by nature
and orders the little prince to water her,
to put up a screen against the wind by day
and a glass globe against the cold at night.
He puts a great deal of time and care into the rose,
because he believes his rose is unique —
the only one in the whole world.
Then he comes to Earth
and stumbles upon a rose garden
with thousands of roses.
He bursts into tears,
because the one-of-a-kind rose in his heart
turns out to have so many twins on Earth.
While he's sad, he meets a fox.
He tells the fox about his rose
and wants to get closer to it.
But the fox says they can't be close yet,
because the fox hasn't been tamed.
To the little prince,
this fox is just an ordinary fox,
no different from thousands of others.
But if he tames it
and they form a bond,
everything changes.
How do you tame a fox?
The fox says:
be patient and come closer little by little,
and come at the same time every day.
If you always come at four in the afternoon,
then from three o'clock
I'll start to feel happy and look forward to it.
That's what a ritual is.
When the fox says this, the little prince understands.
His bond with his rose
was formed through just this kind of ritual and taming.
So his rose
isn't just an ordinary rose,
but a rose bound to him.
When I read this in my thirties,
I cried my eyes out.
I'd just come out of a relationship,
and kept asking myself why it hurt so much.
It was because I'd been tamed —
I'd put so much of my time and myself into the other person.
So losing the relationship
meant the bond between us was cut,
and that's why it hurt so much.
Reading The Little Prince
healed me back then.
I was really surprised
when I asked the book club that day:
only two people had read it!
And you'll feel differently about it
at different stages of life.
Such a classic —
I really recommend reading it yourself.
There are many editions;
pick one you like.
This week's episode
#58 | Three real digital nomads I met in Kanazawa, and the three abilities they share
A Japanese calligrapher living on subscriptions, a Taiwanese couple buying back time through outsourcing and property management, and an engineer using geo-arbitrage. English, minimalism, and leaving the default path — plus the loneliness nobody talks about.
Read the full show notes in English › (the episode is in Mandarin Chinese)
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That's it for this issue of the FIRE Life Weekly.
If you have any questions about the show or the newsletter,
just write to me at doug@firetw.com.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Have a lovely week,
and see you next year.
Doug