My M2M

Since November last year, I have been following Max Deutsch’s wonderful M2M series, and I have become inspired to embark on my own journey of self-improvement.

For those unfamiliar with the format of the program, as of July 1st 2017, every month I must undertake an ambitious challenge to learn a new skill. Each skill will have an accompanying target, with a clear pass or fail line. In order for the challenge to be considered a “success”, I must achieve this target within the month.

I decided to begin this challenge with the hope of exploring new skills and hobbies, while honing my current ones. As any readers will notice, some challenges are every-day activities, which I’m hoping to greatly improve in, while others are more exotic, and are done only for the sake of learning a new skill.

Part of my reasoning for taking part in the program stems from my desire to consistently leave my comfort zone. My hope is that 1 month is long enough to become mildly proficient in a niche, but never comfortable in my abilities, and unable to rapidly improve significantly. Another part of me is mindful of the constant stream of advice I read about now (as a high school student) being my prime years to expand my skill-set and take advantage of my young brain’s neuro-plasticity and my spare time, before I get a full-time job.

I will be writing about my progress on Medium for 4 reasons. Firstly, because I got the inspiration for this challenge from Medium (the aforementioned M2M series by Max Deutsch) and wanted to attempt to recreate his success. Writing on Medium seemed to work well for him, so I won’t tamper with a successful formula.

Secondly, I will be using Medium as a journal of sorts, to chart my progress, in the form of insights I gain along the way and personal benchmarks I set during practices. I also hope to use this series to remind my future self of the highs and lows of each challenge, and how I planned to overcome each obstacle.

Thirdly, I’m also hoping to use Medium’s community of readers to create a sense of accountability to force me to continue each challenge even when my motivation is at a low.

Finally, I’m also hoping to improve my writing skills, another long-term goal of mine, which will take far longer than a month to reach the level I aspire to achieve (although writing does feature as one of my monthly challenges).

Unlike many in Medium’s community, I am not writing for exposure, or to gain followers, views and recommends. I was considering not even publishing my weekly reports, but rather saving them as drafts. In the end however, I decided against this.

As I will be a Junior student this year, some months may be busier than others, due to different extra-curriculars, events and exams. To accommodate this, I’ve tweaked the calendar so as to have what I perceive to be the toughest challenges during my least demanding months.

Equally some days will be busier than others, due to the above events. As such, I will be blogging my progress weekly, instead of daily like the original M2M. This also allows me to write more concretely about progress over a week, with any insights i’ve gained, rather than bluffing a post about the paltry progress which will occur some days.

Every month will begin with a “challenge outlook” on the first day Here I will detail what my challenge is, how I hope to achieve it, what tools I will be using and how confident I am that I will achieve the month’s goal. Equally, each month will end with a “challenge summary”. Here I will note if I achieved my goal, what benchmarks I set, what insights I gained during the challenge, and what I would do differently if I was to do the challenge again.

Anyway, with no further ado, I present my list of monthly challenges :

July : Typing — Type in Colemak at 60 WPM with 0 errors

August : Science — Create an entry for my local science fair using deep learning or genetic algorithms with the potential to win

September : Intuition — Solve a Rubik’s cube in sub-20 seconds

October : Sales — Start a business and generate $1,000 in revenue in the 1st month

November : Writing — Write a book of 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo

December : Hardware — Build a smart mirror

January : Music — Play Für Elise on the piano once flawlessly

February : Mnemonics — Memorise a deck of cards in under 2 minutes

March : Fintech — Launch a cryptocurrency to the market

April : Golf — Break 90 on an 18-hole golf course

May : Fitness — Run 10km in sub 1 hour

June : Foreign language — Write a 3 A4 page article in Italian without the use of Google Translate/Dictionaries etc.