5 Habits I’m Bringing into 2023
The pandemic was the perfect time to maintain a fitness routine, reevaluate career choices, learn new skills, and pick up hobbies. For me, it was one of the laziest times of my life.
I thought that I would finally use the wealth of time the universe gave me to pursue my passions and improve myself. Instead, I gained 15 pounds and spent every waking hour either playing video games or watching anime. My motivation ran dry because the pandemic ended my college career early and I wasn’t able to say my final goodbyes.
Fast forward almost 2 years later and I now find myself 10 pounds lighter (still working on the last 5), switching careers, learning new skills, and practicing multiple hobbies, all while still watching anime (that’s the one thing I will never give up).
This change is a culmination of two years of experimentation and consuming every productivity video under the sun. What really changed my lifestyle though was the idea of Atomic Habits that I touched on in a previous post.
The TL;DR is that making small, consistent changes in our habits will eventually snowball into life-changing improvements within weeks, months, or even years. It’s an excruciatingly slow process, but one that provides the greatest rewards.
1. Learning Japanese
Living in Japan has been a dream of mine since I was 15. While I’m not proud to admit that my fascination with it started with anime, my appreciation for the language grew stronger over the years. Although I learned on and off for about 4 years, I became consistent 7 months ago and have only missed a handful of days since then.
If you know anything about me, you know how much I love language learning. Communicating with people in their native language can instantly create a deeper connection and more fruitful conversations. Beyond the practicality of learning a new language and expanding my linguistic skills, it taught me one thing that I still lack:
Patience.
It’s frustrating not understanding a language you listened to for years. However, I always remind myself that 1) I’m already fortunate enough to speak two languages fluently, and 2) I’m learning one of the most difficult languages in the world. From the endless vocabulary to the mind-bending grammar rules, I find myself babbling like a toddler every time I speak Japanese. That’s not even scratching the surface of the writing system and the Pandora’s Box that is Kanji.
Yet, I find people like Matt vs. Japan and Dogen who immersed themselves in the Japanese language for over a decade and obtained native-level fluency, while I only have 7 months of learning under my belt. Although I thought a lot about quitting, what kept me going was celebrating the small wins I had along the way. Whether it was understanding a sentence in an anime or having a brief conversation with my Japanese friends, my efforts finally started to bear fruit.
That’s why I always take a step back and remember that language acquisition is a life-long process with no end date. So, I try to simply maintain it as a daily habit to improve my skills and eventually travel to Japan.
If nothing else, learning Japanese has made me more gritty. I mess up while talking, I only understand 30% to 40% of what someone is saying, and I can barely tell Kanji apart. As frustrating as it may be, I have accepted all of that as part of the process and will get up the next morning to do it all over again.
2. Exercise, Yoga, & Meditation
Newsflash: I have a dad bod and the mental fortitude of a toddler.
During the pandemic, I never prioritized my physical or mental health since I was too busy wallowing in self-pity. After nearly 2 years of walking from my room to the kitchen and back, my body finally retaliated against me. I couldn’t run for 5 minutes straight without feeling that my lungs would collapse and my arms could barely make it to 20 push-ups. That’s when I decided it was time to change and, in recent weeks, I finally broke out of my couch potato shell.
My new daily routine is as follows:
100 push-ups;
35 minutes on a bike;
10 minutes of shadowboxing;
And 10 minutes of yoga/stretches.
The whole ordeal takes no longer than an hour (aside from the push-ups, which I sprinkle throughout the day), but I’ve already seen its benefits. At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, this routine changed my life in just a few weeks. My sleep quality improved, I’m more energized, my focus is miles better, and my lower back doesn’t feel like that of a 70-year-old.
As a cherry on top, I am trying to meditate daily to improve my mood, focus, and my overall mental well-being. Although I’m not as consistent with meditation as I’d like to be, I can already manage my stress better and sleep more soundly at night. Put it all together, and you have the secret cocktail to not feeling like garbage 24/7, as was my case.
3. Writing
If there is one thing I suck at more than cooking, it’s translating the mess in my mind into words.
It’s hard enough as it is for me to write this post (seriously, you have no idea how many revisions this thing went through). But, if there is one thing I ever wanted to do in my life, it’s to express myself — freely and creatively.
That’s why I started my filmmaking and photography to begin with. I wanted a creative outlet that lets me share my ideas regardless of how elementary they may seem. Along the way, I realized that I needed a quicker way to improve how I convey my thoughts and how I tell stories.
Hence, this blog was born.
This is basically my playground. A public journal if you will. It’s the area where I can experiment with different styles of writing. I can see what I’m most comfortable with, and what challenges me to improve my style. It will include everything from my failed attempts at adulting to my philosophy of life and positive nihilism. I’m pulling no punches.
What I gained from this habit, though, has been pretty remarkable. I now have an archive of my writing that I can use as a benchmark to continuously iterate on and refine. It, just like Japanese, has instilled a strict sense of discipline within me to always write.
Every. Single. Day.
Whether people praise or roast my writing, I couldn’t care less. I just want to contribute to the conversations and leave my print on the world through my words. If there’s one takeaway from this habit, it’s this:
Writing is the most underrated tool for therapy and self-improvement.
The people that connect with you, the discipline it instills in you, and the ways it challenges you to improve your communication makes it one of the most worthwhile time investments you can ever make in your life. Whether you write about your high school crush in your journal or end up publishing a New York Times Best Seller, writing yields the same benefits to all those who indulge in it.
So, pick up that pen or laptop and let your mind run wild.
4. Reading
I’ll be honest, this is one that I never expected to make it on this list.
I was always a much more visual person than anything else. I could watch a 3-hour documentary on the Civil War without missing a beat, but will fight for my life trying to read a 3-page article on the subject.
So how did I start to slowly read more and more until I made it into a habit? Well, it was forced down my throat until I started to actually like it.
I had to read dozens of books starting in high school and into college. Yet, it wasn’t until this year that I started to actually enjoy reading. Admittedly, the majority of the books I read this year were for classes. Some I loved, and others made me prefer walking on broken glass barefoot.
But the first non-class related book that I read this year was a novel written by my friend Emily Perez. Not only is she a fantastic writer, but the story was a literal page-turner. It wasn’t until I mixed up fiction and non-fiction that I realized how enjoyable reading can actually be.
While I’m still slacking and haven’t read as much as I want to, I’m setting up a goal to read at least 10 pages a day of whatever book I have in queue. With some quick math, that leads to 3,650 pages read in a year, or approximately 12 300-page books.
Pray for me 😬.
5. Reducing Social Media Usage
The one change that has transformed me from a doormat to a semi-functional human being is this one.
My routine of doom-scrolling on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook was nothing short of disastrous. My attention span rivaled that of Dory’s and I found it impossible to focus on anything worthwhile. Until I found one stupidly simple, yet insanely effective way to cut my phone usage down from 6 hours to just 3:
Just log out of all social media apps. That’s it.
I got this tip from productivity YouTuber Thomas Frank and I thought it was a dumb idea that wouldn’t amount to much. Until I tried it.
This deceptively simple trick added the extra inconvenience of having to sign back in and go through two-factor authentication (which you should have enabled if you don’t already) just to be able to check notifications and scroll through my feed. Most of the time, I couldn’t be bothered to go through that hassle just to see what was happening in the world, but it still gave me the flexibility to be on social media when I really wanted to.
You don’t need me to tell you, but low social media usage is linked with better focus, lower anxiety, and better mental health overall. My case is no exception to that.
I usually get on social media when I need to share something, respond to messages, or gain inspiration. Otherwise, I try to divide the hours I gained back into my hobbies and my writing (that you’re reading right now!). Just like every other imperfect human being though, I do sometimes end up wasting hours on scrolling and watching aesthetic reels of beautiful Japanese cities. Once I feel horrible enough, I sign right back out and get on with my life.
Bonus: Creative Hobbies
While I love writing and the freedom it bestows upon me to express my thoughts, I love visuals just a little bit more. I picked up photography and filmmaking during the COVID lockdowns to try my hand at something I never dabbled in before.
Well, I fell in love with both crafts.
Capturing the world around me and creating something out of nothing is simply marvelous. Bringing an idea to life with a camera and editing software is the ultimate workout for my creativity.
Not only do they help me express myself, but they also help me learn more about myself. Photography honed my eye and trained it to find the beauty around me. Filmmaking developed my storytelling and visual language skills. Combine those two, and you have the ultimate form of creative expression.
The more one practices these crafts, the more confident they become. That confidence will eventually translate into masterful work that dazzles whoever sees it. The only silver lining is you have to embrace mediocrity to reach that point, so don’t be afraid to fail and make a fool of yourself. It’s the most fun part of the process.
As we embark into the new year, I’d argue it’s more important to build new habits than focus on New Year’s resolutions. Whether you want to learn a new language, finally get in shape, manage your finances a little better, or even knit sweaters for kittens, you need to focus on systems rather than goals. That is the only tried and true way to build long-lasting habits that are automatic. Do so enough times, and you’ll be shocked at how quickly you achieve your goals.
And who knows, maybe 2023 will be the year where change happens, right?
