Re Human Day 2

The most important part of my “system” I outlined in my intro to Re Human post is undoubtedly:

Continually think how I can improve the system.

I talked with a couple of friends and they gave me an idea of how to improve the system.

At first I thought I would only share things if I think they’re useful. But, now I think it could be useful to document what I’m doing, thinking, learning, every day — regardless of whether I think it’s useful, because someone else might find it useful. I also think there’s other good reasons for documenting & sharing every day, like forcing me to be even more intentional with how I approach my areas.

A drawback I thought of posting things daily on Medium would be that my other types of posts would get buried because of this new overflow of Re Human posts. And I also had thoughts that people would unsubscribe from my Medium because they’re looking for other types of posts (or would just get tired from too many of these posts). So my solution is to create a new, awesome, standalone blog (which I’ve been wanting to do). If you’d like to be updated when I launch that one, sign up for my personal weekly present.

So, here’s what I did today, and why:

Daily Habits

Meditation: I usually meditate in the morning, but I experimented with meditating at night instead.

Writing: I wrote in the morning. I actually wrote two small posts in the morning, and another small one in the afternoon. And I guess also this post counts, which was at night.

Piano: I played a bit of piano in the morning, because I actually forgot to play piano yesterday! This was the only habit I forgot to do yesterday, but that was enough to make me realize that I’d benefit from having a reminder of all the things I want to be doing every day.

So I made this “spreadsheet” (I had already anticipated something like this would be useful so I had gotten this whiteboard). Monday is when I “started” this project.

Then I also played piano in the afternoon. I did a quick search on google for “learn piano” and the number one result was this website called Flowkey.

Seemed pretty promising so I decided to try it out.

For the very limited time I’ve spent learning with Flowkey, I’ve loved it so far because it allows me to do this:

It RECOGNIZES the notes I’m playing through the microphone, so it gives me immediate feedback — which is crucial for efficient & effective learning. I went through their “piano basics” which explained how to sit, what form is good for the hands, what the keys mean, etc. which was kind of boring but useful fundamental info. And then they also have songs that you can learn to play with this immediate feedback and visualization mechanism! So the visual thing even waits for you if you typed the incorrect key and only continues if you press the right key — which is awesome.

Books: I’ve been listening to Genius Foods. Now that I’m living by myself I’m trying to figure out how to approach one of the most important aspects of our lives: food. Will share my notes on the book when I finish.

Media Influencer: Didn’t post anything, mostly just recorded myself doing things. Do you think posting on Instagram stories as I’m doing things be good? Let me know.

Soccer trick juggling: this has been the area I’ve seen the most progress in. It’s taking too long to upload videos to my dropbox to sync to my computer and then I’m assuming it will also be very long to upload to Medium, and then long for you to watch the videos. [actually ended up trying to upload a video to Medium but it doesn’t support uploading videos] So I’m just going to put snippets on my Instagram. Basically, with only 10 minutes both days I’m able to do 2 “tricks” I wasn’t able to do when I started — still working towards being able to get them on every try, but I’m now able to get them pretty consistently.

Fitness: For the past two weeks or so I’ve usually been starting my workouts with “do as many continuous pull ups as I can”. I’ve been able to consistently do 40. My record was 41. Today I did 42. I think this is one of the areas I’m most “advanced”. Will upload videos to my Instagram story. Then I also decided my first “direction” I’m going to work towards will be one-hand pull ups. I somehow can’t do a single one. I can do a couple if the “non-pulling” hand grabs my “pulling” hand but can’t do a single one if my “non-pulling” hand is not holding anything.

Startup: Somehow I feel today was one of the most “time in deep work” days I’ve had in a long time. Which was incredible for productivity. Spent most of the time coding.

Renaissance Human Activity: Tuesdays is Music Production. I got a MIDI keyboard (same object I use as the piano) for this Re Human project, so today I was able to setup the MIDI with Logic Pro (which somehow was a hassle (for me) to actually make the keys “sound”). That took a bit, but then I decided to record what I learned today in Flowkey (piano) and then add stuff over it. I recorded “Ode to Joy” and added some drums and some soft synths and then searched through some apple loops but there I didn’t find anything that fit well. Medium doesn’t allow me to upload mp3 files, but I’m not super proud of what I made either so I guess I’m just not going to fight Medium for this. I mostly just wanted to get acquainted with Logic Pro’s interface (I learned a bit about its interface in some workshop series in a class at Brown that was in another DAW (Reaper) but I experimented with Logic on the side then too — that’s about it of what I know about it). And in terms of music production, I did some projects for that semester class but I’m not super proud of the things I made then (I guess it’s all about closing the gap between your taste and your abilities). I’ve also watched about 5 videos of an online course about music production but that’s all I know about this area — for now.

Connections, takeaways and Ideas for tomorrow

My theory of piano being useful for music production still feels true.

Having a physical whiteboard with the items will be useful as a reminder of what to do — and building “streaks” will also help with consistency.

Experimenting with daily documenting. Did you like this? Let me know by commenting, messaging me, or just clapping — all of them are good signals.

Will try posting to Instagram stories more often (still have to post the videos I recorded today..).

Read the next post. Read the previous post.