Re Human — Week 6 Reflections — Day 42
Re-inventing ourselves is the most important skill nowadays. I’m reinventing myself by improving in 15 areas at a time. This post is part of my Re Human project.
Grateful I’ve been able to do all the habits in my system every day.
For the past few weeks I’ve written “hypotheses” in my weekly reflections. My first few weekly reflections were about the areas — either lessons in them or how I was doing / what things I was doing. In this reflection I’m going to go back to writing about the areas.
Daily Habits
Writing
Still one of the habits I’m most surprised by. A bigger focus has been on writing a longer-form article instead of smaller daily thoughts — but some days I’ve still written smaller daily thoughts. I’ve just combined it so some days they’re independent, small daily thoughts and other days they’re “tidbits of longer writing”.
I’ve also used a couple of days to write the “descriptions” of some Instagram posts I’ve been making about each of the areas.
Piano
Still loving Flowkey. I had been focusing on theory/general piano lessons but this week I focused on a specific song — La La Land’s Sebastian and Mia’s theme. Currently trying to be able to play it without looking at the notes.
Meditation
Some time ago my mom had gifted me the Muse Headband. I hadn’t used it much, but this week I decided to give it a try again and I’ve been really liking it! It’s supposed to record your EEG signals and through that tell you whether you’re in an active, neutral, or calm state. There’s a rain forest sound, and if you move to an active state, it starts raining louder. The calmer your mind is, the softer the rain is. If you stay in the calm state for a while, birds start to sing. I’ve found this to be a cool challenge because it’s about also not getting distracted by the birds and maintaining that calm state. I feel it actually works. It’s fun.
Books
This week I finished The Selfish Gene, listened to like 6 podcasts, and I’m currently listening to Finite and Infinite Games.
My notes on The Selfish Gene and a couple of more here.
A friend not too long ago asked me about my process for taking notes. I think it’s useful to share it here too: as I’m listening to a book, if something resonates / I think is important or insightful, I open Apple Notes and jot down the phrase I thought was good or a personal paraphrase. I usually pause the book while I’m writing the note or rewind if I want to get the wording right. I’ve found Apple Notes to be better at this than Notion because it loads faster and because I open directly to the “note” of the book I’m currently reading. Then in my weekly reflection I copy the note from Apple Notes to my Notion.
Also, been loving that Audible introduced a 3.5x speed. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.
Media Influencer
I’ve been posting stories and actual posts on Instagram!
I designed some icons for each of the areas as part of my graphic design area, and then I’ve been writing thoughts about each area as part of my writing area, so I’ve been combining these two and posting the result on my Instagram! Also updated my profile icon with the new “Re Human” logo (just the Re).
Soccer trick juggling
Been able to do the “around the world” every day this week! A couple of days I’ve been able to do it twice without the ball falling in between. Once I’m able to do the around the world consistently and comfortably I feel there’s exponential growth in terms of tricks I’m going to be able todo.
Fitness
Been getting pretty close to the Human Flag and holding handstands! Today I held a handstand for 5 seconds, which is probably my record and already feels like a legit handstand. But I want to be able to hold it for as long as I want, just when I get tired is when I would stop. The human flag is also pretty close: today I held one of the sides for around 4 seconds and the other one (harder side for me) for 2 seconds.
Building and Running a Startup
We’re getting very close to launching v1 — probably this coming week.
Weekly Habits
Music Production
I feel more comfortable moving myself around Logic Pro and finding good sounds that fit whatever I want to create. Something I think that’s very important is creating folders of genres/vibes and putting collecting your favorite sounds for each. I haven’t seen many people say this is valuable but I know for a fact this is huge. It’s just like knowledge/notes — if you want to write a blog post about a certain topic, how much time do you think you’ll save and how much higher quality your post will be if you had compiled notes for years about a certain topic?
Digital Drawing & Painting
Been using the Procreate app on iPad and it’s great. Also been watching several courses on Illustration in Skillshare and they’re great too. Recommend both.
Something I’ve found is that this Area is very easy to switch in and out. I think I’m going to make it a daily habit instead.
V.R. Artist and Architect
Did some broader planning of my Library this week. I’m very excited about VR as a medium.
Graphic Design
Been using both Figma and Sketch (still in my free trial). This week I found out that Figma has a Mac app, which is great because I prefer standalone apps (even really being webapps) instead of something being a tab in my million chrome tabs.
Salsa Dancing
This week I was very lucky. I decided I was going to give the Intermediate class a try. When I arrived, no one else was there. After a while, it started to become clear that I was the only person who showed up for the Intermediate class. So the professors basically gave me private lessons, for the price of a group class.
Different & Positive Social Interaction Systems
My weekly “present” personal newsletter is still one of my highlights of the week — I enjoy putting it together and I feel like I’m providing a lot of value to people.
Something I’ve also found useful: I don’t have much time during the week, so I’ve been scheduling catch ups/coffee chats/facetimes with friends on the weekends — usually one after the other so I don’t have to context-switch from “work/flow” state to “talking/interacting” state many times.
Topics Deep Dives
Here is my current Systems over goals deep dive. But a lot of the information has gone directly to my draft of my systems over goals article.
A great resource I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere else is this Book PDF about The Emergence of Complexity.
New Experiments
This week I’m going to experiment with switching “Digital Drawing” from an extended twice-a-week habit into a shorter daily habit. Going to start with at least 5minutes, up to 10minutes. I found that I can very easily go into drawing mode and get out of drawing mode. Also, something that has felt odd is most days having one extended re human activity and then some days having two extended re human activities. This way, I’ll make sure only Sundays have two extended re human activities, one being “topics deep dives”, which is something I do all the time anyways.
Will report how this experiment goes next week :).
More detailed thoughts, tips, and takeaways about each area, organized by day in my Re Human publication.
Read the next post. Read the previous day’s post.
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Enjoy stories on my my instagram (@re.human).
Thank You :).
