Self Quantified: Mid-year update
For the past few years, I’ve been using this 0–10 scale for a list of various skills that I’ve wanted to develop.
- I categorize them by: Work Skills | Music/Art | Languages | Activities
- Then, I list out 3 numbers based off a 0–10 scale: Lifetime Goal (LG) | Current Level | Goal by ___ (date)
Current example entry: Voice (under Music/Art): 8 | 4.5 | 4.75
So, I’ve been doing this on and off since 2013, but I wrote my first public update at the beginning of the year:
Unfortunately, I didn’t meet many of my goals, but I’m doing this to have some public accountability, so here’s my update on how far I’ve gotten and where I want to be by the end of the year!
Areas of Improvement for the 2nd half of this year:
Programming Proficiency from 2.5 → 4 (LG: 8)
- Goal for Q1/Q2 2018: 0.5 → 3
So, I’ve had a pretty good experience with my coding bootcamp, Lambda School. I’m almost done and I actually feel a bit confident in my skills to build a website. I’m at a point where I’m confident that I can build a simple site and that with enough time, I could build more complex components.
It was maybe like a month or so ago, when I reached an important milestone: I learned enough to understand how little I knew. Hah, that’s always an interesting milestone to reach while skill-building. I remember when I got to that point with singing: it was the point where I could objectively assess my “competition” and understand that I didn’t have what it takes to make it to the next level :).
This isn’t quite ready for public viewing, but if you’re reading this, I’ll let you take a look at a site I’m working on (it might take 30 seconds to view…the free version of the service I’m using takes a little time to start): www.mybudgt.co.
NEW: Producer (Video) from 0 → 1 (LG: 3)
I want to start producing videos about political issues. I’m not sure how much I’ll get to this during the rest of 2018, but I’d like to at least start investigating this skill and start to practice shooting and whatnot… I made some videos last year, but they were pretty bad quality with just a camera on a tripod pointing at me while I talked about legislation (lol, still got 200+ views on them 😆).
Writing Proficiency from 2 → 2.3 (LG: 5)
- Goal for Q1/Q2 2018: 2 → 2.5; 40 posts
So, I started off well, but I got caught up just studying programming and stopped writing…but I’m hoping to start up again now that my coding program is coming to a close. I ended up only writing 12 posts in the first half of this year with a bit over 750 views. So, I’m going to set my goal for the 2nd half of this year to something more doable: 25 posts (so about 1 a week).
I know that at the end of the day, I won’t get better by just writing a lot, but at this point in time, it’s more about establishing a rhythm and about just practicing expressing myself :).
Voice Proficiency from 4.5 → 4.75 (LG: 7)
-Goal for Q1/Q2 2018: 4.5 → 5
Unfortunately, I didn’t choose to spend much time on my voice (and instead focused more on programming). I think I did just enough to maintain. How? Because there were a few songs that I really fell in love with, so I practiced those specific songs, trying to replicate them as much as possible :). But I really need to start actually working on my voice itself. I feel like I’ve reached a ceiling on how much better I can get by just singing, without deliberated practice.
But, here are some of the songs I’ve been learning 😍:
Language Proficiencies in English & Korean from 7.15 → 7.25 (LG: 9) & 4.25 → 4.5 (LG: 8)
-Goals for Q1/Q2: English & Korean from 7 → 7.25 (LG: 9) & 4 → 4.5 (LG: 8)
So, my goal was to reach 2,700 words learned and I was on pace to reach that until about April when I kind of stopped, but still got about 300 words learned during the first half of the year.
I kind of slowed down because at that point I felt like I was just doing rote memorization instead of really learning the words. So I felt like I needed to start doing things like making sentences with the words that I wasn’t as familiar with. But when I decided to do that…it added a barrier, which motivated me to kind of stop 😆. But going to try again…
It’ll take me a while to get through the backlog, but I’ll still make my goal by the end of the year: 2,700 words learned!
Exercise Proficiencies in Running from 0.6 → 1.25 (LG: 4)
- Goal in Q1/Q2 2018: 0.5 → 2.0, 8:30 mile
I couldn’t keep this up consistently. I do think that I ran one mile at around a 9 minute pace, but most of the time, I’m still running at about a 10–11 minute pace (so I got a litttttle bit better from my starting pace of 11-12 minutes). My goal will still be to get to a 8:30 mile time!
DROPPED: Piano Proficiency from 1.8 → 1.8 (LG: 5)
- Goal for Q1/Q2 2018: 2 → 2.5
I still want to invest some time in piano someday, but if I get a job relatively quickly, then I won’t have ready access to a piano/keyboard anymore…so will need to save up for a keyboard one day if I really want to start practicing again. But man…this is one skill that I regret not working on more during this time. Singing + piano is just…so soothing for the soul 😙.
Misc goals:
- started doing some Calisthentics, but got lazy, hah; but still got my pull-up count to about 7/8 at one time. Need to get it up to like 10-ish…takes a long time to get one more, ahahah.
- I should still really do a skin routine for my face more regularly :\.
All right then, next update: January 2019!
