Project 365 — Day 50: Learn Something New… or Old
The big 50 today! Perhaps it is fate that the day I hit a half century of writing everyday is the day I decide to go back to learning something I’ve wanted to get back to in the last 10 years — French. I studied French in junior college and I really loved how lovely the language was.
Today I decided that I’d set myself a personal goal of 2 years to get to at least an intermediate level. I didn’t know how I’d go about it. I thought I’d probably dig out my old college books (about the only college books I’ve preserved). What I didn’t realize is that my wish would manifest itself sooner than expected. Actually, let me rephrase that — my wish compelled the force (the great force or God as most people call it) to present me with my long forgotten bookmarked folder in my Chrome browser called ‘Readings’ (I don’t know why I labelled it in plural but turns out even my Gmail Inbox label reads in plural).
I happened to open the folder to do a bit of reading — links I usually happen to come across that are generally interesting and not always related to my work, that I end up saving in this folder. I happened to tap on this nifty little list of the 37 best websites to learn something new. And boom! I happened to click on the part about learning a new language and was led to this website. And now, aside from devoting some time to writing on Medium everyday, I’m also spending 10 minutes daily, learning French. I hope I make progress at least weekly, if not daily.
My point in writing this is not about fate bringing it all together — it’s not like I would have learned if I didn’t have the will to. One of the things I like about myself is that continuous learning is fundamental to my existence. Those close to me know that I constantly question things I don’t know much about to know more. It is a habit I hope to never give up. Life is never about doing just the things you need to put bread on the table. It’s about building skills that don’t always make money but teach you something and enrich your life in some way — well, let’s just say that’s my life motto. And I’m alright with unlearning it all and learning it piece by piece all over again.
I hope to really keep this habit up. I intend on learning Spanish and Italian once I finish or am at a decent level with French. It is great to be learning again. And guess what? I’m not restricting myself to languages. I’m going to learn about data visualization next. Let’s see how far that goes — and I say that with complete optimism.
Remember, you won’t achieve anything unless you set your heart on it and set goals. They don’t need to be lofty. Heck, lofty ones are the ones that fall flat first! In my experience, the incremental, bite-sized ones are the ones that work best. Like my daily writing gig, here on Medium. Remember, it won’t happen unless you take those little steps to make it happen. That’s how babies discover they can walk anyway.
Do you have short term goals you’ve set for yourself and are following-up with fair consistency? I’d love to hear about it. Thanks for reading this! If you like what you read, tap the green heart at the bottom of this article.
