My last post was all about my professional life. There was a lot to share because there was a lot of movement in that area of my life. My personal life didn’t change much.
For what I want to accomplish, I learned to be a creature of habit. It’s a healthy way to live. This doesn’t mean that I follow a schedule down to the second and can’t deviate from it from time to time, but I don’t deviate often because maintaining a routine to maintain good habits is inextricably linked to my identity.
This may sound cheesy or unfamiliar, but it’s something James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, strongly promotes to help people accomplish their goals.
“The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).”
James Clear
Having a routine has helped me maintain a healthy lifestyle. I go to the gym four (4) times a week, only missing a day if I’m not feeling well. Seeing myself as someone who never misses a workout and as someone who loves to be active is how I link the act of going to the gym to my identity. An extension of my healthy lifestyle is the act of meal prepping. Because I refuse to eat fast food and I want to keep living expenses low, I dedicate my Sunday mornings to cooking for the upcoming week. I recently took up baking because it’s healthier for me to eat what I bake than to eat ultra-processed snacks.
The same goes for the time I invest in pursuit of learning new things. I see myself as someone who loves to learn, so I dedicate two (2) hours in the evening to learn a new skill. If I’m not learning something new, I’m maintaining or leveling up an existing skill. Somewhere in there, I squeeze in time to read books and magazines (The Atlantic, Time, and National Geographic).
The amount of time I invest in myself is the “in with the old” part that I don’t want to change because it’s working great.
The part I do need and want to change is the way I approach accomplishing goals.
I realized two things: 1) I want to accomplish too many things all at once; 2) I’ve been learning the wrong way.
Let’s tackle the first issue. I love learning new things. The problem is that I want to do too many things at once, and it’s a problem because I end up only scratching the surface and never gaining a complete understanding of what I’ve touched.
I recently finished reading The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. This book made me realize that I can’t continue down my usual path. I must narrow down my interests and ask myself, “What’s my ONE Thing right now?” It also forced me to ask myself, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
These questions forced me to come to terms with the fact that I can’t dive into everything that piques my interest; I need to dedicate myself to one thing.
Perfect! Now on to the second issue: learning things the wrong way.
You might be asking aloud, “Is there a wrong way to learn?” Yes, according to John Z. Sonmez. In his book, Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual, Sonmez dedicates an entire chapter to learning how to learn. I always assumed that I needed to memorize information, and then put it into practice, but he argues against this traditional learning method.
Instead, he recommends learning enough of the basics to start playing around. “Once you’ve played around and you have all kinds of questions, only then go back and read the text,” he writes.
“If you can gain enough knowledge about a subject to start playing around, you can tap into the powerful creative and curious nature of your own mind.”
John Z. Sonmez
But knowing the basics and playing around isn’t enough. In order to reinforce what you’ve learned, Sonmez recommends teaching what you’ve learned so far. “Teaching might be as simple as writing a blog post,” he writes. “The key is to regurgitate that information in your own words and organize the thought somewhere outside of your head.”
After reading Sonmez’s book, I wondered if my obsession with learning everything about a topic and not practicing enough contributed to my waning interest in certain hobbies.
With a Touch of Something New
I’m all for tweaking what isn’t working properly, and it’s clear to me that the methods I’ve used to accomplish certain goals haven’t worked.
With a little help from these two books, I devised a new plan to accomplish my goals this year.
I had to begin by being honest with myself, so I asked myself, “Are you serious, or is this a fad?” I want to actually learn how to do what I’m interested in, because I want to take it to the next level.
I want to learn two new skills this year, but I can’t learn both simultaneously. I had to choose which one I was going to learn first; otherwise, I’d be back to my old ways.
Having chosen the first skill to learn, I set up a schedule to learn on weekdays and practice on weekends. I will dedicate one calendar quarter (January-March) to learn my first choice, check my progress, and then I’ll move onto my second choice.
My plan is to combine both skills by the third quarter of 2024.
So far, it’s working out great. It feels good to focus on one thing and only one thing.
I found that I don’t need to dedicate a full two hours in the evening to what I’m learning thanks to a TED Talk by Josh Kaufman. In his TED Talk, The First 20 Hours–How to Learn Anything, he starts off by explaining the origins of the 10,000-hour rule and how it has been misconstrued over the years. The 10,000-hour rule refers to elite athletes, musicians, chess players, etc., basically anyone who is at the top of their game after many, many years of practice.
He goes on to argue that you only need 20 hours to learn anything (not to be misconstrued as becoming an expert) through deliberate and focused practice, which amounts to 45 minutes a day for a month. He finishes his TED Talk by playing the ukulele, which he had always wanted to learn.
This TED Talk came at the right time because I don’t want to sit at a computer for another two hours after having spent eight hours on one at work.
Overall, I think my new approach to accomplishing my two goals this year is working and while it’s too early to see results, I can say that I’m on track. I’ve struck a good balance between learning enough of the basics and playing around, and now all I have to do is teach someone or anyone who reads my blog what I’m learning.