2010 Focus
I have waited to write this extensive blog post for several weeks, but now I have ultimately finalized its content and I am ready to publish it. Last year, I have made a similar 2009 focus but have never finished writing a post about it which I could publish. Last year, my primary focus was to improve my relationships with other people by decreasing my initial judgment and letting go of some barricades I build around myself. The goal was to establish a wider web of friends from all around the world and to engage in mutually developing relationships as well as some relationships I used to consider a waste of my time. My secondary goal was to develop a level of English I would be comfortable with assuming my need for perfectionism and inner writer in me. Today, I do not want to go back and describe the progress I made on these two major goals as well as my little, month-to-moth challenges; instead I’d like to blog about my focus for 2010.
The Need for Such Focus
For several days, I tried to get hold of everything I was thinking as a focus or mission for this upcoming year, but I found out that I was unable to remember and concentrate on all the challenges I wanted to create for myself, thus missing on the ‘big picture’ and its purpose. Last year, I have started reading several blogs with thousands of articles about conscious development, life strategy, getting the most out of your life, learning tendencies and strategies, and constant personal development in many aspects of life. I cannot say that these articles have changed my life, or even opened my eyes, because I have been practicing similar methods in my every day decision making process without a thought about it and without the need to blog about it.
The little information I posted on my progress especially in the schooling area is insufficient in reflecting the mind process that went to the evolution of my thoughts on that subject and the final development of a decision in that matter. However, the methods I used enabled me to come to realization and later acknowledgement of my demand for essentially more sophisticated and superior education and with that in mind, skipping two years of high school and getting accepted to a university was only a paperwork. This year, I want to make a clear focus for the upcoming months that will create certain challenges or missions (I don’t like to use the word ‘resolution’) which I will be constantly conscious of and ready to fulfill them. I believe that such focus will help me, well, focus on the tasks ahead and won’t let me slip from the path I crave for myself.
How Many Missions Will Create a Sufficient Challenge for Me?
Last year, I have not truly worked on details for the missions I set up for 2009 and even though I ended up growing in the areas I outlined in my head in the beginning of the year, the progress was so intangible that I have often thought of it as a natural process of growing up and not anything I have consciously decided on improving and then did. Actually, I am not even exactly sure how many missions I have thought of at the beginning of the year; it seems they came along as the environment around me changed and I reacted to it.
This year, however, I have gained more clarity in this area because I have spent much more time sincerely thinking about the outcome and the challenges I want to experience in 2010. I have a precise idea of what I want to achieve this year and in what ways I want to develop myself and the number of different missions is trivial to me because the number itself does not possess substantial challenge for me. The objective of this 2010 focus is not to create a to-do list with an oppressive number of entries but to utilize my needs into a highly demanding design for my mind. The destination will always lead to a fundamental development even if I did not intentionally intend it, so the fear of failing or beating procrastination are not problems to be taken care of before one challenges himself in this matter. I thus feel that the program I am trying to create has a great element of approachability thanks to its universal use. This itself creates the true challenge I want to face: designing myself, creating the person I want to be.
Improving Study Habits
First aspect I wanted to turn to was definitely my study habits. I have experienced many different schools on various levels from a Czech country school where I was a total freak to an American private college preparatory school with study hours (where I was a freak as well). A lot of people already know about my learning philosophy which I have developed over the years and have successfully implemented in my study process. This is however not the right place to go in details on my self-study methods; instead, I’d like to say that I want to master some other elements of studying such as speed reading, recalling methods, and research.
In the area of research, I have come quite far to this day. Doing research is one of my favorite free time activities and in 2010 I would like to implement research into my daily schedule and make it a bit more formal. This means, in the next few days I will decide on some topics I would like to explore more in 2010 and I will approach the research with a clear schedule that will allow me not only conduct the research for my own pleasure but to share or essentially use the information gained. I can imagine this as doing a research for a book. Let’s say I was about to implement in a story something about unusual sleep patterns. I would conduct the research my usual way and then write about the issue with perfect clarity. What I am lacking at this moment is the initial cause. As you have noticed, I started by mentioning I intend to write a story where unusual sleep patterns would be featured. This is then my cause, the ‘why’ behind the research and it eventually leads to the act of writing thus using the gained information. In 2010, I want to establish more creative whys and share the research in some aspect will it be publishing an article about it, writing a longer research report or working with the knowledge and ensuring it’s a live knowledge. I want to avoid my current stereotypical cycle of ‘I want to know more about subject A’–’I read subject A related material’–’I know more about subject A’–’I don’t really use or practice my knowledge of subject A’–’I forget most of the gained knowledge of subject A’.
I already use some recalling methods for efficient learning of new material. I have a method for preparing for multiple choice tests as well as method for preparing for in class essays. I use a special strategy for remembering complex topics as in physics or biology. One of my all time favorite methods is the ‘knowledge has no departments’ method. However, I still want to get better at perfectly recalling long lists of words, grasping abstract mathematical concepts faster, and partial cross referencing. I will be writing more about each method I already use and the new ones I will master throughout the year in a separate article because for the 2010 focus purpose, it is adequate to outline the method I want to learn and implement to my study habits.
As with recalling, one of the most important skills for every student is reading. I knew a long time that I am a slow reader. I have actually measured my reading rate just a week ago and it is, surprisingly, average. I thought that I was a below average reader when it comes to the speed of reading but that I compensated it with the level of comprehension and ability to remember the details. I have however found out that my speed can be more than doubled without any cost in the comprehension of the text. The comprehension level can be even doubled as well with a good practice in speed reading techniques. I mainly need to focus on being able to read without sub-vocalizating which i find rather annoying and limiting. The idea of concentrating to the middle of the page and grasping the content on the whole page at the same time is quite astounding to me and beyond my understanding at this time. However, by the end of 2010 I want to be so used to speed reading that I will not be able to remember how I read without the techniques of speed reading.
Focusing on Health
Another area I would like to concentrate on in 2010 is my health. I do not intend on trying any special diet, going vegan or raw, nor do I intend on creating a profound exercise plan for the whole year that I will truly stick to. For 2010 I just want to be more aware of my health which means becoming fit, getting into a more active lifestyle, start drinking the recommended amount of water per day, and be conscious about my food choices. This area is however quite open to me because the only thing I set to do in 2010 is to become aware of the health element. I do not want to necessarily lose weight, it is not my primary goal, but I do hope my body will relax a bit after I adopt a better routine and my weight stops fluctuating.
Nevertheless, I have set up a lot more comprehensive goal in running. I have a love-hate relationship with running because although I do enjoy running and I am very attracted to the idea that one does not need any expensive equipment or gym membership (I believe these to materially represent our mental excuses when our only goal is to ‘lose weight’), I have a problem with breathing. Even though I have never been officially diagnosed as having asthma, I am certain I do have some kind of problem with my breathing process due to my panic attacks in higher levels above the sea and my recovery time after a simple run. In two weeks I am moving to Santa Fe, which officially has an elevation of 2,134 km, so I can only roughly estimate the affect it will have on me, but I do not want to stop running because of that. I am not interested in any exact number be it my time, pace, or calories burn even though I am usually the first one who advocates clear and very specific goals. However, as I said earlier this whole health challenge is more about getting myself more aware since I do not want to focus on it in its entirety. Thus, my main mission in running contains an aspect of continuity–so no excuses–and an aspect of improvement–I only want to feel like I am improving (being able to run faster, further, easier) without setting a specific number I want to reach.
These two challenges will be especially hard for me since I have not set a clear mission. I have only stated that I want to ‘become aware’ and ‘improve’ but I have not pondered in detail on what these two phrases mean. A conscious development cannot occur without a clear start point, end point and the critical analysis of the difference between these two so by the end, I will be forced to compare two numbers and two different lifestyles anyway. Nevertheless, the fact that I am not creating a definite goal I want to reach and explicit steps how to reach it is a theory of mine, a little challenge within a challenge, if this approach can work well. So far, I have been skeptical about vague ideas, equivocal goals, and undetermined missions, but this experiment might prove me wrong.
Conquer the World
Another indistinct mission which appeals more like a long-term goal is to conquer the world in both of its meanings: one, as the author of a highly popular website Study Hacks Cal Newport said, ‘become so good they can’t ignore you’ and two, travel and explore as much as possible.
The first part is something a typical American student at a private college preparatory high school never hears. Instead, the motto at such schools is often ‘do as much as possible to equal out your mediocre results in everything’ which basically translates to joining at least five different clubs (because it looks good on your Harvard application), becoming at least a secretary in three of them, join a sport team (that you don’t really enjoy, but hey, it looks good on your Harvard application), do community service (because it’s the right thing to do, right?) and join some AP classes even when you are not interested in the subject because your schedule will look more rigorous (like I did when I joined AP Biology). This is an atmosphere I was caught into as well when I felt it was an absolute must to follow this traditional scenario in order to get into one of the top universities in the United States. However, when it comes to the real thing, a student with similar background is lacking vitality and enthusiasm. There are still many students like the example above who get their acceptance to first tier universities but they are always accepted after the students who are just too good in one or few areas to be ignored by the world.
The second part of this goal might seem remotely different from the first one but it’s not as so. Traveling has always been a continual part of my life I loved. With the moving globalization and present claims we live in a world ‘without borders’ or that we are all ‘citizens of the world,’ I embraced this feeling of connection especially since I moved to the United States. My first year, I have been sitting at the same table very day with the same three people: Marja was from Wyoming, USA; Nicky was from Dalian, China; Danni was from Ciudad de Coquimbo, Chile; and then me from Prague, Czech Republic. This year, my best friends are one from Romania, one from Pakistan and the other from Malaysia, both living in Saudi Arabia. In 2010, I not only want to travel a bit more, but I also want to establish close friendships with people from all around the world because in 2010, more than ever, we can. The traveling part is still in a process of recreating and establishing some specific goals. So far, I have been looking at Round World Tickets and hundreds different timetables for flights and I have been calculating best routes and distances.
Chris Guillebeau, the author of a mind-blowing website The Art of Non-Conformity, has set a goal for himself to visit all countries in the world (192 as in the United Nations member states list) by his thirtieth birthday. I feel this goal just goes beyond my imagination at this moment especially since I have to worry about college and financing my education. I do have quite a few break, however, when I have to leave the campus but it becomes very inefficient to travel to a one place for two weeks and then return back as opposed to travel to East Asia and visit multiple countries over a one month period for example. At this moment, I am creating a itinerary for most of the Latin American countries since I am closer to South and Central America being in the United States. My plan for 2010 is mainly to decrease the price I would have to pay for travel. There are many routes I can take from this point, from finding a sponsor to recreating my profile on CouchSurfing and HospitalityClub and I am going to take all these steps.
One of the major changes I want to make in my traveling pattern is to find similarly focused people to travel with. I do enjoy every aspect of traveling by myself because it reduces any more dependence one has to face while in foreign country and I do not like relying on other people nor do I want people to rely on me; ideally, we would even part for some parts of the trip. With this said, I am more inclined toward opening up myself a bit more and meeting people in the country I travel to alone. This seems to be a good compromise for me since I can get by without detailed itinerary and make connections rather than friendships. This leads me, however, to a communication problem since I do not expect people everywhere to speak English. So I have decided to follow Benny Lewis, the author of FluentIn3Months, and correct my education in languages.
Fluent in 3 Months?
Well not exactly. At least not in my case since Benny has proved this to be true, but for another three and half years (and maybe more if I consider doing my PhD right after college), I won’t have a three month long break to travel to another country and immerse myself in the language completely. However, I am still going to devote a substantial part of my life to languages in 2010.
As some of you might know, I have started learning Ancient Greek. Don’t worry, this is not one of my crazy ideas (as you might think so after reading this article) but it actually is a required class at my college. I certainly do not want this language experiment to end up the same way as my German did a few years ago. I have had German as my third language for four years and then haven’t practiced it for another two years which practically erased any possible German knowledge I might have possessed. Now, it seems as I just completely waisted many hours doing something that doesn’t bring any results in the end and this makes me utterly frustrated with my overall experience in languages.
So this time, I am not willing to let these hours slip by applying inefficient learning methods or simply not putting enough effort towards the final goal which is, in this case, fluency in Ancient and Modern Greek by the end of my two years long required study of Greek. However, fluency is a word to be yet defined because it encompasses many different levels one can achieve in language learning. So to be more specific, I want to be able to read and communicate on every day level and to know enough vocabulary and grammar to get by in every day situations. I want to be able to understand newspapers and to understand the way how the language works. I do not focus on perfect pronunciation or complete understanding native speakers, but I do want to be able to communicate on a simple level and carry on a dialog.
I have also discovered that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was translated into Ancient Greek and I have decided to define one of my steps to the fluency described above will be reading and understanding the novel. I am going to attempt to read the novel after my first year of Greek and see how it goes. By the end of the year, I am supposed to be able to read Plato and Socrates based on the college’s curriculum, so I should be able to understand Harry Potter with a occasional help of dictionary.
I am, of course, still working on my English proficiency and as many of you know, improvement in English was one of my 2009 focuses. In the beginning of 2009, I designed and started my own independent study with Mark, my history and philosophy teacher. This study was focused on the history of philosophy (it seems, I always go to philosophy when trying to master the language :)) and it involved writing 2,000 to 4,000 words long essays every week. I am certain that Mark’s attitude towards my writing has helped me the most in improving my sentence structure and the overall formatting of my thoughts in English. Since Mark was not especially thrilled with my writing and rather criticize it in depth, I could measure my improvement quite obviously and by the end of the year, my essays proved to be not only the quality of a native speaker but a college level quality.
Because I am mainly focusing on the reading and writing part of Greek, I want to approach this learning experiment in a similar way as I approached my attempts on improving English. I will try to emerge myself as best as I can in a Greek environment meaning that I will switch to Greek while reading fanfiction (since it is quite easy level of language in some cases) and try to switch to Greek when it comes to short news articles and such.
This is definitely a big challenge for me because I don’t consider myself especially talented at languages. I believe my huge improvement in English came because of the initial challenge that Mark made me face. I will never forget how hard I cry when he sarcastically noted that he would not give me an ‘A’ for my essay as long as my English level keeps holding me back. The fact that my teacher refused to give me a perfect grade in spite of his comments about my excellent critical thinking made me realize that the way we present our thoughts might be even more important than the content. In the world we live in and more so than ever, it is extremely important to define our words and be very specific in our ideas. There is no time to be wasted over vague statements and our poor misinterpretation of them. Nevertheless, this is not the level of proficiency I want to be able to be at by the end of my two year long study of Greek. At this point, I will be satisfied with the initial steps, which I have already described, that lead to the proficiency of this form, when I need to be constantly aware of the sublime changes in meanings of the words we use.
Words Create Words
With the passion I have for words and language itself, I find it rather disturbing that I was not able to write as much as I wanted to in 2009. In January 2009, my focus was extremely vague: I remember saying just by the way that I want to concentrate on my writing and not only write more but play with my style and experiment mainly. I did achieve some of the experimenting since I was forced to write a fairy tale as my final English project, I wrote a play stylized to Ancient Greek environment, and I joined the literary magazine at my new school. I definitely feel more aware of the possibilities out there and the places one can get inspiration. Joining the literary magazine helped me a lot in realizing in what areas I lack the most and what I need to improve on my writing. So in 2010 I want to do just that.
One of my main problems is my lack of discipline. Many writers and artists confuse their lack of discipline as an absence of inspiration. I excused myself for not writing more often with a traditional statement: I don’t feel inspired and I don’t feel like I want to write about anything. Of course, there are times when one gets literally stuck in writing and his muse and motivation are lost. However, I soon discovered that even though I kept misleading myself, I could write when I had a specific assignment. This includes my critical essays as well since my writing style has always drifted from a direct, critical manner to a more creative, artistic fashion. However, I was able to write fiction and poetry as well when I had an immediate challenge in front of me like in the literary magazine. Every week, we would focus on some interesting style in writing such as starting your free verse poem saying “Perhaps I forgot…” and then continue on or repeating second line of a one verse as a fourth line of the next one and so forth. The fact that these writers had immediately possessed a challenge for me made me want to write and truly think critically about my writing. In my focus for 2010, I want to find and define these challenges for me that will keep me writing more often and with a more conscious mind.
I almost wrote and entire paragraph on how I want to write more in 2010, which I do, but I omitted the essential factor for me in this whole 2010 Focus: development. So I want to restate the paragraph I just wrote, read, and deleted, and state that my main goal in writing for 2010 is to keep providing a challenge and inspiration for myself. This will naturally reflect on the quantitative part and help me to write more often.
Besides continuing in experimenting with different styles and ideas, I want to truly “put on paper” what I have been thinking about for the past year. I have started writing two pieces that I tend to work on in much more depth than ever in 2010. One of the works I want to develop is a fictional novel remotely inspired by Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, the Anonymous movement, and D/s subculture. I am still working with the two characters who have grown in my mind to their full potential–Albino and Lucifer. I want to capture the struggle between an individual and society and focus on the Anonymous phenomenon and terrorism. In my head, there will be a clash of civilizations, a continuing request by the young generation for the world to be more black and white so everybody has to choose a side, and some elements of existentialism and individualism as a ultimate life philosophy.
So far, I have worked on the psychological profiles of the two main characters and how they both change under the circumstances throughout the plot. Albino is a self-destructive, hypocritical, and extremely arrogant character who judges everything, does nothing, and wants anything that will wake him up. Lucifer studies art history because you don’t have to know anything in order to study art history and because he still lives his dream of becoming an artist in spite of his complete lack of any artistic talent. He doesn’t know what he wants, he’s not a man of action, he simply wants to live his life and die without any particular contribution to anything. He knows life’s a bitch, but he doesn’t want to fight because there’s not much for him to win anyway. He doesn’t have any control of himself, he doesn’t analyze anything, he just is and that has been good enough so far. There is more complexity behind both of them especially because of the deep changes that will affect their characters as the plot unwinds itself and the great spiritual war starts because our generation becomes bored. I didn’t actual intend to write so much background on this but I do hope that some of you may post a bit of critique so I can absorb as much critical overview as I can before I truly dedicate myself to writing this because at this time, I want this very much. I feel like I need to write this piece for myself because it has been developing in my mind for quite some time and now I just want to see it written.
The second work I have been constantly thinking about is a set of critical essays about the United States. I have written many of those but never got back to them to edit them or even re-read them. I noticed how much the European Union tries to catch up to or even surpass the United States when at the same time the United States starts to censor itself and limit itself. We see the great capitalism explicate in most of western Europe while the US tries to promote more social awareness be it the Democrats or the Republicans. What is freedom in the United States and how does it differ from freedom in Europe? I saw such a big political struggle of a big country and I got so inspired the first few months in Wisconsin that I had to write. However, these first few months I had a colossal problem with both Czech and English and my writing was a weird mixture of both without any cohesive connections in my thoughts and ideas. I am going to focus nevertheless not really on what I have written so far but on collecting a bit more material and educating myself in the explicit American and European history I can then relate my writing to to actually design a more complete background for writing these essays. This will actually be one of my major researches in the upcoming year.
Establishing a Business
Not really. Or not yet. With becoming more conscious of my self development process, I have started looking into the future as I always do. This time, I am however being very rational and the major point for creating my future is to truly live it one day. This process goes on on so many different degrees that I cannot and do not want to portray all of them in this 2010 Focus. I have refused many years ago to work a standard ‘eight-to-five’ kind of job but it was only this past year that let me explore the excessive number of other possibilities and confront my fear of a regular job at its depth.
When I got back from Conserve last year and talked with Nat for the first time in a year, we got to this discussion how we do not want to suddenly after school join this world of briefcases, work hours, and limited free time. First I though of an easy solution, to do what I enjoy doing, whatever that might be, but after a careful evaluation of this idea, I realized that anything I might enjoy doing just does not involve a traditional work pattern or even regular working hours. At that time I searched the internet for hours on speculating on the stock-exchange, becoming your own boss, jobs with random working hours and lots of travel, and how to be an entrepreneurial.
For this year, my focus is to get to know some people who have already done it and continue in my research especially when it comes to the entrepreneurial business. The blogs and articles I found made me look on writing in a completely different kind of light and so even this article is an experiment in finding my limits in writing and trying a different style of approach to the written word. Initially, I wanted to talk much more about getting out there a blog focused on personal development, study hacks, language learning, and traveling that would be designed to establish a significant income for me. However, at this point I do not feel thoroughly ready for launching such a big project while I want to fully concentrate on the other challenges I have described before. The final establishment of a profit business, such as blog in this case, is however an ultimate challenge for me as moths pass by and I might decide in the middle of the year that the time has come but for now, I do not feel educated enough in every matter that might be involved.
So in 2010, I will definitely focus more on the future which for me now means finishing college, getting my dual Masters/PhD degree in four years, and working towards a Green Card. The fact that I have not finished high school and I am officially not going to is another problem I need to deal with should I be unable for whatever reason to finish college in the United States. However, I do not feel limited in any way by not having a High School Diploma and I am very certain that it will not limit me in the job market or school choices for my graduate work. With this focus on the future, which is quite familiar to me as you all know, I have recently changed my position on the famous philosophy of ‘live now; today is the first day of the rest of your life’. I feel like I need to change my attitude towards the present and my actual enjoyment in order to be a happier person in 2010. The first step out of the box I made was to transfer to college instead of finishing my junior year of high school with which I have also destroyed any future I vaguely created for myself in the back of my head. However, I do not feel any remorse because I regard it as one of the best decision in my life and as one of the explicit examples of how I have personally developed over the past year.
Feedback and Inspiration for the Inner Explorer
I have decided to post this article on my blog which mainly focuses on my everyday life and thoughts with a little writing on how to gain an acceptance and a prestigious scholarship from a private school in the United States because at this time, I do not have nor do I intend on having another website with life hacking strategies. The feedback on this article is thus extremely important to me. Realistically, there are three options that can happen:
First, I will receive a mostly positive feedback, which suggests that my readers are not only willing to but are excited to read about this part of my life. In this scenario, I will transform Luminiscene.net into a more formal and better developed blog. I will still be writing occasional posts about what’s happening in my life and how I feel about it, but it will have a special category next to some others that I will introduce later on.
Second, I will receive a rather uncertain feedback when some of my readers would like to read similar posts like this one and others will be against it. I will probably establish a new website beside Luminiscene that will separate my personal blog from a more professional approach to writing and my self development articles where I would share my know-how. I have thought about this option most extensively for its clear excitement for me from the act of creating something new. This very closely relates to my thoughts on establishing a business I have outlined a couple paragraphs earlier.
Third, there will be a very interesting gallimaufry of opinions and ideas or I will not receive any feedback. In this case, I will most likely discuss this issue with some other people who either don’t read my blog or do not regularly comment and I will be posting more on the topic of transformation or more precisely re-creation of my blog.
As most of you might have already guessed, the articles on the new section (or potential new blog) would be for the dominant part written in English. However, as I would like to transfer some of my articles on StudujemevUSA.com which are closely related to people outside of the United States, some of the articles, especially those concerned with the process of applying to high schools and universities in the United States, would be in Czech.
I have already outlined a few of the life hack strategies I use but since this article is a broad overview of some of my life philosophy and the changes I am going to make in this year, I did not go in depth on many of the strategies and methods I mentioned. However, if the feedback is positive, I will certainly go back and write more about research, how to skip two years of high school, how to finish four years long university program in three semesters, how to boost productivity and accept your procrastination, and many more I have slightly got into in this long report on my 2010 focus.
In the end of this 6,000 words long statement, I want to remind myself and my readers of what I had written every single year as one of my first thoughts and that is that I want to be an inspiration for others more so than ever. I want to see other people getting inspired by what I have achieved or even by my failures to go out there, explore this sublime world and push a little bit further, dare to be innovative, follow their creativity, and just get the most out of your life. There are worse things than being obnoxiously ambitious. Namely, being obnoxiously boring.
