Author: radish

It’s the last day of April. This month was a busy one. I traveled more than usual, made some big life decisions, and started gearing up for the coming months, which are going to be pretty hectic as well.

It’s been an interesting exercise in life management. For the past two years, I’ve had the luxury of a slower paced life. I’ve had plenty of time to make decisions. These days, I’m juggling 5+ upcoming life events and making major decisions nearly every day. As part of managing all of this, I’ve had to pull back on certain things, hence why I’m cobbling together a rushed post for the month of April.

I’ve always wanted to try an exciting, whirlwind lifestyle and the next few months are definitely going to be my chance to experience that. I have places to visit, events to attend, and new projects to work on. I’m looking forward to living life a bit differently for a while.

I am a serial hobby starter. I’ve done it all: swim team, knitting, boutique workout classes, calligraphy, etc. Unfortunately, I’m also a serial hobby half-ass-er. This has been an ongoing theme since I was a kid. I’d pick up hobbies and intensely apply myself for a few months, after which my motivation would dwindle to the point where I’d spend time on them every single day, but only for a few minutes.

There are two current glaring examples of this: chess and Spanish. I have a 50+ day streak on the chess.com app and a 250+ day streak in Duolingo. Part of me thinks this is impressive (I committed myself to these things for so many days! I am so dedicated!), but another part of me wonders if it’s even worth it. After all, solving chess puzzles for a few minutes a day isn’t the same as playing a game of chess. A quick Duolingo lesson is no substitute for focused language learning. What have I really learned besides seeing my streak count go up?

And then of course I’m doing this while also reading and writing and doing a million other things. Am I giving any of them the time they deserve? What if instead of spending 15 minutes each on a plethora of things, I dedicated a single hour to just one of them? My daily to-do lists are usually very long, but when everything’s crossed off at the end of the day, I still feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. Maybe that would change if I spent more time doing deep work, and less crossing small items off checklists.

Deep work isn’t a new concept. Cal Newport has a whole book on it. There are so many blogs and podcasts and YouTube videos about it. The tldr is that focusing on one thing for extended periods of time without distraction helps get big things done and is more efficient than breaking time up into short bursts. It prevents having to deal with the drag from context switching.

But in a world where we’re always only a few clicks away from any dopamine hit we’d like, it’s hard to work up the willpower to dedicate a large chunk of time to a single thing. Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube all offer quick bursts of media in a matter of seconds, making it scarily easy to end up doomscrolling for hours. There’s the dreaded email inbox, where bills and other adult things endlessly pile up. On top of all this, I definitely struggle to muster the mental energy for deep work after spending 9 hours doing work for my actual job. The one that, you know, pays me. The one that allows me the luxury of spending time on hobbies.

This is one thing I do actually like about having a hobby streak. No matter how busy life gets, having a streak to keep alive forces me to do something, and gives me the satisfaction of having made that bit of effort. Any effort is better than no effort. But if I want to be serious about it; if I want to master any of my hobbies, 15 minutes a day won’t cut it.

To be honest, before writing this, I was convinced I’d get to my streak goals and then drop them entirely. But now I’m not so sure. These daily tasks keep me going. They keep me making progress when I wouldn’t otherwise. What I previously thought didn’t have much value now seems valuable.

I’ll likely try to incorporate more deep work into my life, like spending several hours reading a book instead of just finishing a chapter a day. And if I get into the zone while working on something, I’ll try to be better about following through with it rather than switching tasks just to check something else off my list. Like this post for example. I sat down to make a few notes. Which turned into an outline. Which turned into an almost complete first draft. All far quicker than I’ve ever written one of these before. I’ll save any edits and rewrites for later though. I have other things to cross off my to-do list today.

After years of putting off upgrading my phone, I recently got a Pixel 6 Pro, and its adaptive charging feature is my new favorite thing.

Adaptive charging has been around since the Pixel 4 (though I didn’t know about it). Basically, at night, instead of charging straight to 100% battery, adaptive charging charges the phone normally up to a certain percentage and then slowly afterwards until it reaches 100% in the morning. Charging at this slower rate is easier on the battery, which can improve battery longevity.

There are a lot of opinions and Reddit posts about adaptive charging and Pixel charging rates but I don’t really care about the technical details right now. What I’m more interested in is how it’s changing the way I use my phone. Adaptive charging only works between certain late night hours, which means to take advantage of it, I generally need to be phone-free during that time. And lately, I have been.

This is a big deal. There are a lot of benefits to being phone-free when going to sleep — reduced screen time, improved sleep, etc. Unfortunately I have a tendency to stay up late, reading under the covers until my eyes burn. Not anymore though. Having the external motivator that adaptive charging offers — improved battery longevity — has worked wonders for me.

These kinds of side effects of software are interesting. It’s unlikely that Google developed adaptive charging with the intention of helping people go phone-free at night. Yet this feature is what stops me from scrolling endlessly when I should be sleeping. It’s a cool example of how technology designed to improve a product can also improve a person’s life.

In a world where we are increasingly glued to our phones and plugged into the internet, it’s refreshing to see software features that quietly encourage us to disconnect, even if it wasn’t intentional in the first place.

I’ve been learning Spanish on Duolingo on and off for years. In June 2021, in a pandemic-induced fit of boredom, I opened the app with a renewed sense of determination. Since then, I’ve accumulated a hefty 200+ day streak and have nearly reached the halfway point of the Spanish course. It’s been a long and sometimes discouraging journey. So this month, to shake things up, I decided to do something I hadn’t planned on: earn the Duolingo Legendary achievement.

How it works: Every week, you’re randomly assigned to a league with 29 other people where you compete by earning points through language learning. At the end of the week, those at the top of the leaderboard advance to the next league. You have to climb the ranks through nine leagues in order to reach the Diamond league. Come in first place in the Diamond league and you earn the coveted Legendary achievement.

Naturally, pressure is high in the Diamond league. It seems like everyone is glued to the app, racking up points faster than you can keep up. There even are strategies online for how to best position yourself to win. It’s hyper-competitive to say the least.

I still wanted that pesky Legendary achievement, so I did what I had to do. 5000+ points. Over 7.5 hours of Spanish (and a little Hindi and Korean). Practice before work, and after work, and in every spare minute of time that I could find. Also a lot of counting down to Sunday night when I would finally be able to relax. And now that it’s over, I have some thoughts on the experience.

The good:

1. Because the XP Ramp Up Challenge rounds are timed, I got to see how fast my translating and problem solving skills had gotten.
2. The XP Ramp Up Challenge covered material I’d learned months ago, so it was a good refresher on concepts that I hadn’t been tested on in a while.
3. I realised how much more effective sustained practice is. I was actively practicing for over an hour a day. This was a lot in comparison to my previous hour per week. I absorbed material more quickly and took less time to feel immersed in the language.

The bad:

1. Unsurprisingly, it was stressful. I was obsessively practicing and checking the rankings to make sure I was still in first place.
2. I was more focused on the points than on the learning. I was mostly practicing using the XP Ramp Up Challenge to maximize the amount of points I could earn. Not a big deal for a week or two, but not great in the long run.
3. I was lucky and ended up in a league where I only needed around 5000 points to win. The next week, in the league I was in, the person in first place won with an insane 20000 points. The effort it takes to earn the Legendary achievement varies wildly depending on the people you’re competing against.

Now that I’ve earned this achievement, I’m never going to think about points ever again. Here’s what I plan to do instead.

1. Spend more time when learning. In the two weeks since I earned the Legendary achievement, I’ve upped my practice time to around 45 minutes daily.
2. I’m going to switch to a spaced repetition system, splitting my time between completing new lessons and reviewing old ones.
3. Duolingo Stories is a surprisingly rich feature (at least for Spanish) that I want to make more use of.

There’s a lot more to do. I’ve been watching Spanish content creators as well taking every opportunity to practice conversing with native speakers. Learning a language really is a journey without a destination. And earning the Legendary achievement was a fun side quest along the way to fluency.

It’s the end of another year and oh what a year it has been. 2020 was about throwing myself into hobbies to distract from pandemic woes. 2021 was about something completely different.

Job hunting.

I started a new job! I now work in a new industry as well as a new city — two things that both excite and terrify me. It’s been tough and it’s been good for me. And it’s definitely fun being the person who knows the least in any meeting; there’s so much to learn.

A quick review of the past year — interviewing while working full-time wasn’t very pleasant, and left me with little time or energy for anything else. My main accomplishment was getting my new job. Here are some other things I did:

1. Wrote a short story
2. Completed Luigi’s Mansion 3
3. Completed the Privacy Law & Data Protection course on Coursera
4. Started and maintained a compost pile
5. Read 26 books

There were other exciting things that happened in 2021 — traveling, new friends, new experiences. Definitely a rewarding year.

And now for 2022. I’m not a fan of the whole resolutions thing so here are the themes that I’m focusing on in the upcoming year.

1. Maintain a balanced lifestyle — Health and happiness. Family and friends.
2. Career — New job, new learning opportunity.
3. Read 50 books — It’s good to get perspective through stories.
4. Write — Journaling. Creative writing. Blog posts.
5. Hobbies — Roller skating, roller blading, chess, Valorant, composting, Spanish, etc.

I’m excited for 2022. I think it’s going to be a good one.

I thought it would be fun to put together a report on everything I accomplished this year. I love that it turned out bright and bold and cheerful; pretty much the opposite of the mood in 2020. Here’s the end result.