Driving Home for Spring Festival

From Beijing to my hometown in Sichuan—1,800 kilometers. My first time driving an all-electric car home. A few observations:

Before departure, I worried most about two things: weather and charging. Neither became an issue.
Weather-wise, I avoided the heavy snowstorms forecasted along the route. The trip was smooth overall—no traffic jams, and road conditions were excellent.
Charging turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. NIO’s battery-swap stations delivered the best experience among EVs I’ve tried: no waiting in line, swaps completed in three to four minutes. A few times, I watched long queues of gasoline cars at gas stations beside the same rest stops—and couldn’t help but smile.
NIO also offers 12 free cross-regional swaps per year, plus monthly complimentary swaps included with ownership—effectively cutting electricity costs to near zero.
Since I drove alone, I split the trip into three legs of roughly 600 km each to avoid fatigue. With assisted driving engaged, the drive felt relaxed—not taxing.
Having ample time meant no rush. I rarely exceeded speed limits. That calm mindset itself lowered risk on long stretches.
99% of the route was highway—and in good condition. Assisted driving truly felt like having a second driver sharing the wheel.
What occupied my thoughts most throughout the journey? Safety—above speed, above schedule, above everything.
As for speeding: the math is straightforward. Going faster saves, on average, just six minutes—even on a 1,000+ km Spring Festival trip, you gain maybe one hour. But that hour comes at the cost of dramatically increasing your risk: one fatality per 700,000 hours of driving. Not worth it—rationally speaking.
Yet experienced drivers know the real challenge isn’t understanding this logic—it’s remembering it while driving. Emotions, impatience, or momentary pressure easily override reason and reshape behavior.
So one effective strategy is to shape your external environment for calm: avoid bad weather, pre-plan swap stations, use assisted driving, never drive fatigued, and cap daily mileage.

Spring Festival and the Perception of Time

Because of the pandemic, I hadn’t been home for nearly three years.

The festive atmosphere in my hometown remains intense—traffic jams everywhere, crowds everywhere.

Many people feel it too: time seems to stretch. One day feels several times longer than usual.

Why? Because we’re encountering more novel stimuli—new faces, unfamiliar routines, sensory overload. Novelty slows down our internal clock.

Children experience far more novelty than adults do—so their sense of time moves slower. Their “day” feels longer.

To subjectively lengthen our lives, we can intentionally fill them with novelty: try new things, stay curious, keep learning.

The Essence of Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is fundamentally self-protection.

Life, at its core, is anti-entropy—a constant process of reducing disorder (entropy). Living is disciplining oneself against decay.

Human self-discipline, then, is applying deliberate “external force” to counteract entropy’s pull—keeping our systems coherent, renewed, and resilient.

In practice, discipline means:

Avoiding people with poor character,
Refusing petty gains,
Rejecting actions that harm others and ourselves,
Stepping away from anything that drains us mentally or physically.

Sometimes growth really is simple: gradually remove what makes you worse—and improvement follows.

And the most reliable way to remove those things? Self-discipline.