March was a busy and long month for me.
Fortunately, Claude was there to help me recover from the doldrums and get back to working and developing with renewed energy.
Reading
Before my conversations with Claude, I watched a documentary called The Hermit of Mountains and Rivers, a biographical film about composer Chen Qigang.
I first learned about Chen Qigang in 2024 when I watched an episode of Round Table Season 7 titled "Joy and Sorrow." His ideas captivated me during that episode.
When Dou Wentao asked him what the highest standard of art was, Chen Qigang replied: My standard is the highest standard. Because art is inseparable from character—only by realizing your thoughts through action can you achieve the vitality you deserve.
He has an incredibly strong sense of self and pursues art to the extreme. Perhaps this relentless pursuit has taken a toll on his body—several sections of his lungs have been removed, and he's been living in seclusion in a remote mountain village in my hometown for years.
After that, I started reading The Fountainhead. It's a long book, and I haven't finished it yet. It tells the story of a young architect, Howard Roark, whose aesthetic sensibilities clash with society's preferences. He stays true to himself and refuses to compromise. A book that emphasizes individualism to the extreme.
From January to March, I was stuck in a rut—doubtful, hesitant.
My content creation had gone quiet, with no response. I had no motivation to push forward with app development. Lots of thinking, little doing.
A UI course I'd purchased earlier came with a one-month Claude Pro gift card, so I started chatting with Opus about my feelings, my thought patterns, my worldview, values, and outlook on life.
After those conversations, I realized the stagnation probably wasn't about ability—it was about how I saw myself. I'd been giving all my admiration to other people's products while leaving only a harsh critic for myself. Too much judgment, and the motivation disappears.
The drive to create doesn't just come from "can I do this"—more often, it's "do I want to" and "am I willing to." Ability always comes after willingness and heart.
The documentary I watched, the book I read, the conversations with AI—they all pointed to the same theme: knowing yourself.
During this time, I revisited Light's Small Talk column, which I bought years ago but find fresh every time I read it. It covers business, investing, products, operations, engineering—all sorts of topics.
I've bought several columns over the years, but Light's is the one I return to most willingly. His writing is incredibly dense—he can distill a structure in just a few sentences and excels at turning common sense into new insights.
I also watched Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.
The protagonist is vacationing in Paris and travels back to 1920s Paris every midnight, mingling with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, and other masters. He believes that was Paris's golden age.
But here's the interesting part: people in the 1920s longed for the Belle Époque, and people in the Belle Époque thought the Renaissance was the best era.
It's nesting dolls all the way down—no one is satisfied with their present. Every era has its own struggles. The so-called golden age exists only in imagination, and nostalgia is just another form of escape. Better to live in the present.
Creating
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I wrote "Sharing a Few Skills I Use," compiling five frequently used Skills into an article: blog to epub, Every magazine-style cover images, podcast tracking transcription, and one-click formatting. The Skills are now public on YouMind.
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I made a video about Jianying tips, sharing several commonly used shortcuts.
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After chatting with Claude and regaining my energy, I started working hard on Booko. It's now in the final sprint before launch—I've registered my Apple Developer account and will start beta testing soon.
Products
My favorite products in March: Claude Code, Codex, and mynd.
Codex and Claude Code will definitely change how organizations divide work, and they've already transformed collaboration for many small teams. For example, I now use them in my daily work to help with product and website tasks. Things that used to require developer support now only need developers to review and merge.
The way I use Claude Code and Codex is pretty basic—I use them in the client rather than the terminal 🤣 I've noticed that Claude Code's cache hit rate is consistently 95%+, while Codex is only around 40%+, more than twice the difference.
Plus Codex is particularly slow, and GPT 5.4's output is kind of strange. Keep at it, Codex—I also hope Codex gets integrated into ChatGPT, like Claude, where one app handles Chat, Cowork, and Code.
cbvivi also launched an indie product—mynd went live at the end of March. It's a local chat diary app that costs just ¥18 for a lifetime purchase.
The concept behind this product is to merge to-dos, diary entries, photos, and more into one place. The features might not seem groundbreaking, but the product form and approach are clever—it aligns with people's default habits and is even more lightweight and convenient than flomo.
It's like a little toy. Lately, I've been putting my random thoughts and to-dos into mynd.