thinking again
I’m Live! And Doing Project 50!
Hello! I launched the site and I’m super excited! I’ve been inspired recently, so I’ve decided to start project 50 starting tomorrow. Though I may not always document my results on this website, I’m excited to take on this challenge and share my journey with you!
If you don’t know what Project 50 is, it involves 7 steps about bettering yourself, which I list here below, along with the ways I plan to implement them in my own life, but keep in mind everyone is different!
01
Wake up before 8:00 AM
So, this one is pretty self-explanatory. As I’m writing this (on day 1), it is 11:41 PM, so I’m not doing too hot. But I hope to try to get my night routine done most days by 11:30 at the latest so I can get to bed at midnight, since I do not do well with less than eight hours. Tonight, I think I’ll probably sleep around 12:30. This will definitely also help me get to work on time in the morning! 😀
02
One Hour Morning Routine – No Distractions
This will definitely be the worst part of project 50. I am a chronic goer-on-phone in the morning, and I definitely won’t be able to fully implement this the first few days since I need it as an alarm, to listen to music (which I’ll definitely need if I don’t have YouTube), to pull up any educational videos I might need (I’m guessing I’ll need one for stretches), and to track progress. And I’m also not the best with routines, but I hope to mostly make it, especially because I’m going to make it fun! Currently, my planned morning routine is to
- Take 5 minutes to give thanks to the day and to my life
- Brush teeth and get physically ready
- Stretch for 10 minutes
- Take some time to write down things I want to get done and my mood for the day
- Do 10 pgs reading/language learning
- Walk to work
- Eat breakfast
I know that walking to work and eating breakfast should take around 20-25 minutes, so hopefully the entire thing should take around an hour. I definitely should incorporate stretching into my days, so why not here.
03
Exercise for one hour a day
This is likely the easiest one. I already exercise for an hour a day between walking to the gym, lifting, and walking back. But I think a good goal to incorporate would be to stretch for at least 5 minutes after working out so as not to injure my muscles. I need to find a good stretching area and I’ve been too intimidated to do that. And the stretching in the morning will help.
04
Read 10 pages a day
Again, I already do this. But I think my goal will be to read 10 pages of nonfiction a day, since sometimes I don’t really do that outside of work, and that’s the point of this anyways (official rules do state that this can’t be news or fiction). I actually did this while I was at home since I was reading some habits books, but I’ve had a couple of books at my internship that I haven’t been able to make as much progress on, whether it be in computer science (but unrelated to my job), or outside of it.
07
Track it!
I’m obviously doing that right now, but I also plan to track it in my journal (and that’s where I’ll do most of my daily tracking). I may also make a notion template.
05
Dedicate one hour towards a new skill.
This challenge has me focusing on a single skill rather than a bunch of them, but due to the inconsistent nature of my schedule and my time, I’m going to list five that I’m going to try to improve.
- practicing piano – this is technically an old skill, but since I’m learning mostly new pieces, this will be my new skill. I’m hoping to be able to play Liebestraum by the end of the summer. Since there are pianos available to me, I’ll be able to use those with the sheet music already printed.
- Learning Chinese + Japanese – again, these are technically skills I’ve already started but I’d like to get better at, and if I force myself to dedicate time to them, I think it will help. I haven’t practiced Chinese in years and Japanese I started just six months ago, so I think they still count. For this, I plan to use Duolingo and maybe Babel, as well as books I can check out from the library
- Learn how to ink with pen/draw with colored pencil/calligraphy – This is self explanatory and I already have an art journal that I use for colored pencil drawings which I just started, but I think it would be so cool to also put in pen and also to learn how to do effective calligraphy, especially in Chinese, which is so cool.
- Writing songs – this one might be hard because I’m a little embarrassed about singing, but I’m going to try this one! I only really need my own writing and a piano, which I have.
- Learning how to make my website/manage online performance and organization – that’s what I’m doing right now! I also have a YouTube channel where I post similar content (may merge them, but for now I’m keeping the two separate). I want to learn how to write blog posts, and how to put my poetry on here in a flattering way, even though it’s probably so 2010 or whatever. I dunno, I’ve always thought of blogging as outdated but I guess it’s probably not. I want to manage this Website, and a youtube channel, and learn how to effectively use notion and spreadsheets. But we’ll see how that goes.
06
Follow A Healthy Diet
I already eat pretty healthy, I drink majority water, I tend not to eat sugary things and I have a protein-dense breakfast and get in lots of vegetables. Currently, I think the only thing that I want to additionally implement would be to try to cut out any drinks other than milk and water for good. I would restrict farther, but going vegan/vegetarian isn’t an option with my budget, and cutting sweets entirely would be not good. I think I might also try to keep my sugar under the daily recommended every day, but that might be hard as I’m not cooking my own food.