Month #3: Writing 250 words every day
A Year of Monthly Challenges
Starting this challenge, I didn’t really know what kind of writing to expect from myself. Reviewing my entries, I’ve sorted them into three groups based on three shared purposes: extracting thoughts, exploring concepts, and digesting information.
Extracting thoughts
Day 11: This is the worst post ever. I’ve been up for almost 24 hours and just need to sleep…but I’m going to finish this challenge at 100%, even if I’m just writing words to fill up space. Salamander.
In essence, these entries resembled what I expect most people would write in their diaries: stream-of-consciousness reviews of daily interactions and thoughts. I typically wrote these when I didn’t have much time, and borrowed a friend’s technique of not letting my fingers leave the keyboard until I’d reached 250 words. Typing at ~80 words per minute this only took 3–4 minutes. It didn’t really matter if the entries were completely shitty. This technique forced me to put down the first things that came to mind, and was a nice way to collect my thoughts at the end of a day. I found this process meditative and satisfying (except for when I really wanted to go to bed…then it was just annoying).
Exploring concepts
Day 4: I think that a lot of people (myself included) tend to push things that belong in the “Probably Great Idea” quadrant into the “Either Stupid or Great Idea” quadrant because we overemphasize super terrible, super low-probability hypothetical outcomes.
A little more ambitious. In these mini-essays, which got a lot longer than 250 words, I would explore a concept I wanted to set aside time to think about. I picked subjects like the dichotomy of control, reading articles and forming opinions. I only managed three of these, although I have a list of a bunch more topics I’m interested in writing about. If I’d actually blocked off time on my calendar to write, I think I would’ve been able to pull off a few more.
Digesting information
Day 18: You can opt to dedicate some of your own computer’s processing power to validating others’ transactions. This requires energy, which costs money, so people who do this are rewarded with small amounts of cryptocurrency. This process is called “mining” and is the only way that new currency can be added to the system.
These entries were my attempts to reinforce new knowledge. I wrote a“book report” about Radical Candor. I pretended to teach a non-technical person about Bitcoin, just to see if I had really grasped the basics myself. I get stressed about retaining information, so this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and something I’m going to make an effort to keep doing in the future.
Takeaways
I still have yet to complete a monthly challenge to 100%. I missed four days scattered throughout the middle of this month because I kept just forgetting. I think that actually putting a block of time on my calendar would’ve helped me not just forget. I also didn’t keep up with the printout calendar I mentioned last month, because I left it at work. Next month that shit’s going on the fridge.
Writing daily has been really productive and enjoyable. I’m going to block off time every weekend to keep doing it going forward, and probably do some quick entries during the week as well. It would also be really cool to look way back and see what I was thinking about on any given week.
Month #4: Stretch every day
When I do the dishes, my back gets sore. I can’t sit cross-legged and upright without my knees aching and my legs falling asleep. Every time I try yoga, my whole body falls apart.
I’m in pretty good shape; I play soccer twice a week and go to the gym almost every day, but I feel encumbered by my lack of flexibility. I know that without it, staying in great shape in the long-term isn’t really sustainable.
This month, I’m going to make sure to take some time to stretch every day. I’m hoping this will make me feel more agile on the soccer field, less fidgety and achy when doing regular things like sitting and doing dishes, and less sore when I wake up the day after an intense workout. Here we go!
Next blog entry to be posted on February 1st.
