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In October, I was a robot.
I was focused on building two new habits: training BJJ, and studying Mandarin Chinese. While continuing to read everyday.
I did all three of them… almost everyday in October.
I was settled in Taipei, and I was grinding. Day in. Day out. The same thing.
Every day is the same day
Then, November came and everything changed.
November started off with a visa run out of Taipei: one week in Bangkok and one week in Manila.
Quick backstory on Bangkok, because I think it’s funny:
In November 2012, I was in Malaysia with plans to head up to Bangkok by train. I paid for an apartment in Bangkok for two weeks and had everything planned. Then, at the last minute, I cancelled the trip, saying “two weeks in Bangkok isn’t enough. I’ll have to go back there early next year when I can spend more time there.” And, I flew straight to Tokyo. Of course… I never made it to Bangkok in early 2013. Actually, it took a whole year before I finally made it there: November again. 2013. This time, I only spent one week there.
Funny how things change.
Bangkok, November 2013
Anyway, back on topic.
In addition to the two-week trip to start off November, work picked up, and I started an online course at HarvardX on the history of China.
Now, plenty of more things occupied my time.
Needless to say, in the first two weeks of November, I didn’t study Chinese or make it to BJJ at all. (I did still read everyday though – that’s easy to do while traveling)
I even took my gi with me, with plans to hit a BJJ gym in Manila. But, I never made it out there. Too busy.
Funny how things change.
Now, I’ve been back in Taipei for about a month, and I’ve been trying to get back to habits of Mandarin and BJJ daily. The Mandarin I’ve done well with. BJJ has been more difficult, with both the additional work schedule and I’ve encountered a nagging shoulder injury all month. It’s been annoying.
Because, of the shoulder injury, I’ve added a new daily habit into the mix: 10 minutes of Yoga every morning. It’s actually really helped my nagging shoulder and neck problems. But, I’m still not 100%.
Actually, the Yoga habit was one I started in Tokyo, but fell out of touch with once I moved back to Taipei.
I think its a good one to have, so it’s back in the mix.
Also, I’ve decided to drop reading as a daily habit in favor of studying more Chinese. (i.e.: read Chinese textbooks on the MRT to practice reading Chinese characters, rather than reading books in English).
So, I definitely won’t hit the 30 books in 6 months target.
So, right now the three habits I’m trying to do daily are: Yoga, BJJ, and studying Mandarin.
Add in work and social activities, and my time is well accounted for.
Yet, I’m still trying to do more.
There’s a couple more habits on my radar:
- I want to beef up my consulting grind a bit, so I need to get on that, and I think the first step to get back into consulting mode is to get back to practicing case interviews: hypothesizing, synthesizing and drilling down on client’s issues in a very timely manner. Therefore, I want to get into the habit of practicing case interviews on a daily basis again. This was a habit I had over a year ago: when I lived in Singapore I would practice cases on Skype everyday until I was good enough to run rings around the Ivy league students, but now, I’m rusty again. So, I need to get back into this habit. I think it’s just something that will help me overall in my business career.
- In order to take steps to get to the next level in Mandarin, I need to really start doing language exchanges daily. These are troublesome, because they take so much time: generally two hours. One hour to speak English, one hour to speak your target language. But, I did this in Japan and it did wonders for my Japanese conversational ability – a mark I’m still fairly far off in Mandarin. Also, I’ve had more trouble finding good language exchange partners in Taipei, I tend to run into two kinds of language exchange partners: the ones who just want to just teach you random vocabulary words in Mandarin (which is not helpful at all, because a language is so much more than vocabulary) or girls who are just looking for foreign boyfriends and use language exchange as a means to find one. In this respect, I really miss Tokyo – the Japanese took their language exchange efforts seriously.
- Also, I want to beef up the work out regimen. I would like to get back into the weight room and start to slowly pick up Muy Thai. My ideas for this are to basically start off with a training split of BJJ 6 days a week, Muy Thai 1 (yeah, I said, slowly – and my focus is still much more leaned to BJJ). Also, my goals for the weight room would to just get back to building strength: I wouldn’t do too much here, just a Starting Strength sort of program, focused really around bench press, dead lifts, and squats – maybe 3 days a week.
These habits are just goals right now, and nothing I’m putting much effort to building right away, but rather I’d like to add them in slowly. Maybe, one habit a month? Or something along those lines.
No New Year’s Resolutions or anything like that, because I don’t do such things. I’m more focused on building habits slowly, and changing things and adjusting always and as needed.
Cheers!
Have a good 2014 folks.
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