People born in the 80s have spiritual idols, as does Hao Jingfang, who was influenced by Faulkner and Camus when she was studying, and felt the social and human complexity in their novels, which influenced her later creations, and she also observed more dimensions of the world.
Author 丨 Xie Xia
Editor 丨 and Yi Rong
Source 丨Indigents, entrepreneurial states
It is well known to the public that hao Jingfang's novel "Beijing Folding" won the 74th Hugo Award in 2016, in fact, she also had a period of award experience in high school, that is, she won the first prize of the fourth new concept essay competition, and there was a person named Guo Jingming among the winners of the same year. Unlike the latter, Hao Jingfang did not publish a book immediately, but chose to continue her studies and do research, and finished her master's degree in astrophysics and a doctorate in economics at Tsinghua University.
Soon after winning the Hugo Award, Hao Jingfang immersed herself in entrepreneurship and founded the Children's Travel Academy in 2017. This institution focuses on the general education of children aged 3-12, covering four fields of science, humanities, art and society, and the core team comes from Tsinghua, Peking University and other universities and front-line educational institutions.
"Does winning an award mean that you must publish a book and become a well-known writer?" I don't think so. Hao Jingfang believes that winning the award is only a plus and will not bring major changes to her life, she is very clear about what she wants to do at each stage of her life, "only by doing what she wants to do, she is really herself."
Entrepreneurs must have the determination to "do it first"
Before starting a business, Hao Jingfang tried to communicate with her parents, but the elderly did not support it, so that in the first two years of entrepreneurship, Hao Jingfang did not tell her parents what she was doing.
"It's the same as guo fan (the director of "The Wandering Earth") going to college, he secretly transferred to study directing, and he didn't dare to tell his family that his parents were against it." Hao Jingfang said to Chuang Chuang Bang.
Parents' perceptions changed when the Children's Row Academy made some achievements, but only to a higher tolerance. Her parents still advised her not to do anything too risky, and even now, she has a lot of things she hasn't told her parents — because when she says it, her parents will stop her.
Entrepreneurs' judgment of risk is different from ordinary people, in Hao Jingfang's view, it is normal to have risks in entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurial failure is not a risk, the real risk comes from the legal level, and entrepreneurship must abide by discipline and law.
"Ordinary people may lose their jobs and think it is a big deal, if entrepreneurs do not have this mentality, don't start a business." Hao Jingfang feels that many people have rich experience and knowledge reserves, and they are timid psychologically, always thinking about whether they are suitable for starting a business, whether they can succeed, looking ahead and looking ahead, and finally failing to take the first step of entrepreneurship.
Hao Jingfang does not have these concerns, she believes that entrepreneurs must have the determination to "leave it alone, I will do it first", and only after doing it will we know what is going on.
Since starting her business, busyness has been her norm, and she has become accustomed to working overtime in the middle of the night.
Hao Jingfang is with the team
"I got up at 3 o'clock this morning, and last night I went to bed at 10 o'clock." Hao Jingfang said that the current routine is basically to go home at 7 o'clock at night, play with the two children for a while after arriving home, or write homework, read books, and when the children go to bed, they will start working in the middle of the night.
This habit of work and rest has been formed since the beginning of the business and has lasted for nearly 20 years. When she was a student, she went to bed at 12 or 1 a.m. every day, got up at 6 a.m., and slept for just over 5 hours, but now, it is enough to ensure more than 4 hours of sleep a day. "It's a very natural habit, as long as the biological clock remains stable."
Hao Jingfang has abundant physical strength, and she also admits that good physical strength is an important prerequisite for starting a business, but she has almost no time to exercise, and it is a luxury to dance or run every two weekends.
Daughter is the "Chief Product Testing Officer"
In fact, since 2014, Hao Jingfang has the idea of doing tongxing college, when she was in the Development Research Center of the State Council, doing research on urban development, macroeconomics, people's livelihood, education and other aspects, including many child-related projects, and wrote some reform proposal reports. Having children later prompted her to focus on a deeper exploration of children's education.
Hao Jingfang's daughter is not yet 7 years old, but has played more than 50 children's mobile games, watched a large number of cartoons, and is a "deep surfer in the Internet age".
For the question of whether the child is addicted to the Internet, Hao Jingfang is not worried, "Children are tired of seeing more, as if eating cake, now a lot of cakes are in front of them, do not eat a bite, almost immune." ”
Of course, she will also do some guidance to her daughter, such as controlling the time to play games and watch cartoons, watching one or two hours at a time, and in most cases, when the time comes, she will turn off her mobile phone to write homework. This process has gone through a long run-in, and good habits need to be learned and cultivated.
Her daughter is Hao Jingfang's "chief product testing officer", and when she first made audio, Hao Jingfang often consulted her daughter's opinions, such as whether she liked to listen to it or not, and whether she could listen to it.
Later, Tongxing Academy began to have its own app, becoming one of more than 30 games in her daughter's mobile phone, and Hao Jingfang would observe whether her daughter would open her own app to play.
"My daughter is a user who plays more games, she is very picky, the product is slightly less interesting, she does not like to play, if she can play, most children will also like." Sometimes our products are not done well enough and the daughter will not open. For Hao Jingfang, this is a very harsh user test, but it is good for entrepreneurship, she can observe the user's reaction at any time, and quickly adjust the product."
"My daughter had her own ideas when she was very young, and she knew from the bottom of her heart what she wanted to do." In her daughter, Hao Jingfang also learned a lot, a person will have great initiative for the things that he really likes and loves, which is the innate nature of human beings.
Hao Jingfang poured her love into Tongxing College, at the 2021 Women's Leadership Summit of Chuangbang, Hao Jingfang mentioned that Chinese education lacks general education, and children should have half the time to learn things that can broaden their horizons, rather than the cultivation of skills such as Language, Mathematics and English.
Through the study of children's cognition, characteristics and growth changes, Hao Jingfang found that children's imagination can be cultivated, and there is a thinking method behind it as the basis, which she boils down to divergent thinking, sensory aesthetics and counterfactual reasoning.
She shared at the Entrepreneurship Summit that children's creativity can only be exercised through creation, and it is impossible to exercise through imitation. Creativity must be improved through a hundred times, more than a thousand times of creation process, just like it is impossible to exercise running ability by watching TV, you have to run a thousand laps, running ability can improve, and creativity is the same.
"Many children may have a lot of ideas in their heads, but because there is no process of realization and implementation, they slowly throw away their own ideas, and they feel that if they forget it, they are just imagination anyway, so he does not think that he has the ability to turn many ideas into reality, and he has no confidence."
Hao Jingfang told Chuangbang that if you let your children do experiments and crafts by themselves from an early age, and turn their ideas into reality, when the children grow up, they will be more psychologically peaceful in the face of complex situations, and they will feel that this matter is not so difficult.
Create to satisfy yourself, start a business to serve others
After starting her business, Hao Jingfang focused on the Tongxing Academy, and the time for creation was very small.
Hao Jingfang said to Chuangbang that writing is not to eat youth, and many people may be influenced by the phrase "fame should be early" and respect young writers, but the good writers written in human history are middle-aged and elderly people with experience and thoughts, compared with their works when they were young, their works after middle age have a leap forward.
Hao Jingfang advocates natural state writing, rather than writing hard, for example, she recently wrote some children's stories, very smooth, but the previous long novel was stuck, she put it aside, "As her experience grows, it is not too much of a problem to pick it up later."
As both an entrepreneur and a writer, she clearly recognizes the difference between entrepreneurship and creation.
"Creation is to satisfy oneself, while entrepreneurship is to serve users." Hao Jingfang said that entrepreneurial achievements are success, failure is failure, but creation has never failed, novels are works, not products, products are to bring value to others, to sell to others, if people do not buy, you have failed, "creation as long as you like it, I write my own psychology, the same as writing a diary, writing a diary where there is such a thing as failure."
So far, Hao Jingfang has been in the business for 4 years, but the whole plan is only about 5% to 10% completed in her mind.
"I want to do a lot of things, take the money is not piled up, it is to stay up for a long time, just like playing a game, even if you recharge, buy equipment, but the level that should be passed has to be passed one level at a time, it is impossible to jump directly over." 」
Hao Jingfang said that entrepreneurship is also like this, not a pile of money people can solve at once, but to repeatedly and meticulously polish the course and product, it takes a long enough time.
Policy help may accelerate her process, but Hao Jingfang insists that it is unrealistic to pin success or failure on changes in the general environment, and only by moving forward at her own pace can it be longer.
"How things should be done and whether they can be done are completely different things, and education reform is not entirely driven by policies." Hao Jingfang believes that many things in our country are crossing the river by feeling the stones, many times entrepreneurs are the first to make this thing can be done, the result is placed here, if everyone feels very good, you can do a lot of policy adjustments, in this case, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs themselves also shoulder the responsibility of social reform.
What Hao Jingfang is doing today is basically the same as what she thought when she founded the Children's Travel Academy 4 years ago, and this path will not change much in 10 years. However, she still enjoys the creative process, "If I really have time and energy, I am still willing to devote myself to writing." ”