Impossible List (updated on 2017)

Guilherme's Impossible List

Started on September 18^th, 2015

Last updated on January 9^th, 2017

Current focuses

• Write a good quality essay in Japanese
• Read Japanese faster
• Start going to gym
• Publish a translation
• Write an essay in English

Last 5 Completed Goals

• Read the Power of the Habit [January, 2016]
• Live in Japan [April, 2016]
• Write an essay in Japanese [July, 2016]
• Enjoy a good time speaking to a native in Spanish [July, 2016]
• Deliver a 15-minutes presentation in Japanese [October, 2016]

Fitness and Health Goals

Jogging

• Run 10 km
• Run a half marathon
• Run a marathon

Yoga

• Do a full split
• Do a handstand
• Do the crow pose

Work out

• Complete a 30-day plank challenge
• Complete One Hundred Pushups 
• Start going to gym

Professional Goals

• Publish a translation
• Translate an entire book
• Publish an essay

Creative Goals

• Write a novel in Portuguese
• Publish a novel or a short story
• Write a short story in English
• Write a novel in English

Language Goals

Japanese

• Deliver a 15-minutes presentation in Japanese [October, 2016]
• Write an essay in Japanese [July, 2016]
• Write a good quality essay in Japanese
• Deliver an eloquent presentation in Japanese
• Read Japanese faster

English

• Write an essay in English

Spanish

• Enjoy a good time speaking to a native in Spanish [July, 2016]
• Read a novel in Spanish
• Write an article in Spanish

French

• Read a book in French
• Understand a book in French
• Enjoy a good time speaking to a native in French

German

• Start studying

Russian

• Start studying

Arabic

• Start studying

Skill Goals

• Read the Power of the Habit [January, 2016]
• Learn to sing well (as much as possible)
• Improve my rhetoric

Events to attend

• Polyglot Gathering Berlin
• The Polyglot Conference
• New Years Eve in NYC
• San Francisco Pride
• Tokyo Pride

Travel Goals

• Visit more than 10 cities in Japan [November, 2015]
• Visit Japan's 4 biggest islands
• Live in Japan [April, 2016]
• Visit Argentina
• Visit Chile
• Visit Peru
• Visit Canada
• Visit the USA
• Visit France
• Visit Germany
• Visit the UK
• Visit Ireland
• Visit Spain
• Visit Singapore
• Visit Taiwan
• Visit Australia
• Visit New Zealand
• Tour to Tallinn; St. Petersburg and Helsinki
• Travel alone to place where I don’t know anyone

Blogging

• Write every week during a month
• Start a YouTube Channel

Random

• Listen to at least 1 song from each country of the World

SWY related

#The Ship for World Youth Leaders (SWY) was a life-changing program that I participated. It was sponsored and organized by the Cabinet Office of Japan.

• Go to a SWYAA Global Assembly
• Be Brazil National Leader (NL) in SWY Program
• Work as administrative staff (ADM) in SWY Program

Results of the 60-days challenge on Japanese: was it worth it?

     It's been a week and a half since I came back from Japan. I spent 27 days there visiting a variety of cities all around the country, from Tokyo to Kanazawa, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima, Sapporo and more. I enjoyed an adorable trip and was able to meet old friends, make new friends and spent pleasant days discovering that beautiful land. But concerning to language learning, the most interesting part of everything was that I was able to enjoy the trip entirely in Japanese. Like really! For the first minute until the last one I was just using Japanese.

     Since I reached Japan on November 1st and talked to the first person I met there I started speaking Japanese and then never stopped. I talked in Japanese with people at the airport, with my beloved friends that went there to see me, with every shop attendant of convenience stores and so forth. After some days, I was convinced that I could live my entire life speaking in Japanese with no need to rely on English anymore. Since then, I was finally convinced that I was fluent in my forth language (if I count somehow my poor Spanish as the third one :p).

     I graduated college with a focus on translation, so I was way better at reading than at speaking. But then, 60 days before departing to Japan I decided to start this challenge focused on listening and speaking. And it was TOTALLY worth it! I was so confident and comfortable speaking in Japanese, like I could finally say to myself that I was fluent in this language I've been dedicating my life to. Of course I'm sure I still have a lot to learn, but I was so happy to recognize that I was in the country, living the language and having the best time with native speakers (and even with other foreigners that speak Japanese). There were some moments when I used English in Japan, but those were mainly with friends that didn't speak Japanese, or in moments when I really wasn't being able to convey some information properly. 

     I'm sure that the concentrated effort that I put onto my studies during the last months were crucial to this success. Obviously that my knowledge acquired in the last 4 years had a fundamental role in everything, but those 60 days were the key stone for my incredible experience in Japan. So after 60 days studying and 27 practicing in Japan the result was better than I'd though. I feel confident and prepare to live my life there! What's the best!

     Also, an important news from that is that now that I am not feeling guilt for don't being as good as I wanted in Japanese I am finally free to step towards my fifth language: French! And I'm already focusing on it, so let's see where does it go :)

#Day 50: meet the "I'll let it for tomorrow", the mother of the failure

     It's been a month since I wrote my last post here. Ever since it, I've been over-struggling to just sit down and write a new one. And all of that is completely ruining my plans, because my initial goal for the 60-Day Challenge included a series of posts for every 10 days of project. It was an easy-to-achieve measurable goal that was supposed to be overcome  with no struggle.
     But then, somehow I ended up failing, and the reason is simple and predictable. My fail was triggered by the first "I'll let it for tomorrow" that I said to myself. It was on the 20th day of the 60-Day Challenge. That day I was supposed to write something down about my results, which were quite well by the way. And then it came the tragic moment when I decided that I was too busy to write a blog post that day and for that reason I let it for the next day. Huge mistake. Skipping one single time is enough to ruin everything.
     This kind of mistake is very common to people that are trying to start a new routine, but I thought I wouldn't fall into that trap. The first time that our lazy brains notice that we can avoid doing something, they will learn that we can avoid it always. That is why skipping is so dangerous.

     But now, I want to put this subject away for a minute and focus on the results themselves. And they are also not so good. I'm listening to Japanese as much as I can, but I am not really putting the effort into it. The cause? My trip to Japan is near, really near. So I am spending most of my free time planning everything that isn't ready yet. During this trip, I plan to exercise my Japanese a lot, so it will  be worth.
     From now on, during the last 10 days of the Challenge, I'll try to do my best and focus on oral comprehension, the most needed for someone visiting different cities around the country. So I hope to get success now, which I think I can achieve if I avoid letting things for my "future self" to deal with.

My Impossible List

I want to present today my own Impossible List. I heard about it for the first time at Thomas Frank's amazing blog, the College Info Geek. It is supposed to be a list in which you place every little thing you want to do in your life, every little goal you want to accomplish, even though sometimes some of them would sound crazy. Frank explains:

"The impossible list is an ever-evolving list of experiences that build upon each other, help others as well as yourself, and implore you to take action."

I think the impossible list is important to keep us reminding our goals, so I decided to start one. I used Frank's impossible list structure as a basis for mine, but in the future I want to improve my list with more items. Since I am starting my list today, I have no completed goals yet. 

From now on, the only thing I have to do is to do my best! :)

Guilherme's Impossible List (Started in September 18th, 2015)

Current focuses

• Run 10 km
• Complete One Hundred Pushups 
• Publish a translation
• Write an essay in English
• Watch a daily video in French for 50 days in a row

Last 5 Completed Goals

• Visit more than 10 cities in Japan (Tokyo, Otsu, Naha, Ofunato, Saitama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, Hiroshima, Sapporo etc.) [2015, November]
• 
  

Fitness Health Goals

Jogging

• Run 10 km
• Run a half marathon
• Run a marathon

Yoga

• Do a full split
• Do a handstand
• Do the crow pose

Work out

• Complete a 30-day plank challenge
• Complete One Hundred Pushups 

Professional Goals

• Publish a translation
• Translate an entire book
• Publish an essay

Creative Goals

• Write a novel in Portuguese
• Publish a novel (can be a short story)
• Write a short story in English
• Write a novel in English
• Write a short story in Japanese

Language Goals

Japanese

• Deliver a 15-minutes presentation in Japanese
• Write an essay in Japanese

English

• Write an essay in English

Spanish

• Enjoy a good time speaking to a native in Spanish

French

• Read a book in French
• Understand a book in French
• Enjoy a good time speaking to a native in French

German

• Start studying

Russian

• Start studying

Arabic

• Start studying

Habit Goals

# Measured by habitica.com (also known as HabitRPG)

• Watch a daily video in French for 50 days in a row
• Listen to one hour of Japanese for 50 days in a row

Skill Goals

• Study all College Info Geek videos
• Read the Power of the Habit
• Learn to sing well (as much as possible)

Events to attend

• Polyglot Gathering Berlin
• The Polyglot Conference
• New Years Eve in NYC
• San Francisco Pride

Travel Goals

• Visit more than 10 cities in Japan (Tokyo, Otsu, Naha, Ofunato, Saitama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, Hiroshima, Sapporo etc.) [2015, November]
• Visit Japan's 4 biggest islands
• Live in Japan
• Visit Argentina
• Visit Chile
• Visit Peru
• Visit Canada
• Visit the USA
• Visit France
• Visit Germany
• Visit the UK
• Visit Ireland
• Visit Spain
• Visit Singapore
• Visit Taiwan
• Visit Australia
• Visit New Zealand
• Tour to Tallinn; St. Petersburg and Helsinki

Blogging

• Write every week during a month
• Start a YouTube Channel

Random

• Listen to at least 1 song from each country of the World

SWY related

#The Ship for World Youth Leaders (SWY) was a life-changing program that I participated. It was sponsored and organized by the Cabinet Office of Japan. You can see more details on their site, or asking me about it :)

• Go to a Global Assembly
• Be Brazil National Leader (NL)
• Work as administrative staff (ADM)

#Day 10: listening patterns and my first week of the 60-days Challenge

Since last week I have been increasing my studies on Japanese a great deal. I keep focusing on it more than on any other daily activity, so I can say that one of my main goals is just one step from being accomplished: and it is to study Japanese every single day. What I want the most from this challenge is to keep in mind that I must study Japanese every day. I want that to be natural to me, like it is to eat and to breathe. My main focus is improving my listening comprehension, because that skill is a must for someone that is going to visit the country in less than two months and that is planning to live there soon. And in order to improve a lot my comprehension, I need to study every single day. No exception. I need to surround myself with Japanese like I was in Japan, and I definitely want the Challenge to work for this cause. Therefore I will keep doing my best from now on and try to keep studying Japanese in a daily basis.

My results until now are being quite good, even though they are still far away from perfection. However, one thing that I am proud about is my new listening patters. They consist from watching 20 minutes of Japanese grammar videos, 20 minutes of random Youtube videos and 20 minutes (one episode) of the anime Death Note. That combination is not casual, and has a reason to exist. I will explain what those activities represent:

• Grammar videos: through them I can listen to a more foreign-friendly Japanese while learning new grammar structures and vocabulary;
• Youtube random videos: those videos are in general made for native speakers to native speakers, so they consist of natural Japanese. Also sometimes they are so fast spoken that they stay far away from my comprehension (especially the ones from Ari Keita). That difficulty is good and productive in language learning because through them I can exercise my brain to comprehend the language in its most complex form. That is the part of the studies that I like the most, even though it is the part I understand the least.
• Death Note: that is also Japanese for native speaker, but because it is a fiction it is frequently easier to understand than normal Youtube videos. Also I have already watched Death Note more than 5 times so I already know the story, which can be incredibly useful to help me grasp the context of sentences I am not familiar with.

            That listening studies’ pattern seems to be working for me, so I want to keep it for a while during the 60-days Challenge.

To talk about my results in details, it was all working well from the first day of the Challenge (August 31) until September 3rd. I was struggling to complete the goals (one hour of listening, reading some grammar notes and reading a chapter of manga), but I was overcoming this. The problem was that September 4th it was Graduation Ceremony day, so I was busy from morning to night and was unable to complete any of the tasks. I tried to chase the game during the weekend, but I was just able to complete the one hour of listening task. However, this Monday everything was bring back to normality, so I am looking forward to my results this week!

New project: 60-days challenge on Japanese

I have a long story with the Japanese language. Recently I finished college with a major in Japanese Language and its Literature, which means that I have been studying this language for more than 4 years. Also, this year I went to Japan for the first time and there I was able to put into practice part of the knowledge I have been gathering all those years. However since I was participating in a program whose official language was English, I was not able to use Japanese as much as I wanted to. Therefore I decided to go to Japan again this year to spend an entire month there just practicing the language. This will happen from November 1^st to November 27^th (ok it is not an entire month, but we almost hit there).

Even though I spent a huge amount of time studying Japanese in the past 4 years, I still don’t feel confident about my general knowledge in the language, mainly concerning to speaking. So in order to break this lack of confidence and enjoy my trip to Japan at its best, I decided to start a 60-days challenge on Japanese, beginning next Monday (August 31, 2015) and ending in October 29, precisely one day before my departure to Japan (yes, it’s necessary to depart from Brazil on October 30^th to arrive in Japan in November 1^st).

My past project which was focused on learning French is working kind of bad, but it does not mean I want to stop it. I am still trying to watch at least one video in French every day, even though I keep forgetting to read Baudelaire’s poems in a daily basis. French and English will still be present on my daily activities, but I will turn my attention into Japanese for a while.

My goals are:

• Listening to Japanese at least one hour a day;
• Reading at least one chapter of a Manga in Japanese every day;
• Having a 30-minutes class on Italki every week;
• Keeping on studying my daily grammars for JLPT N2.

I am really excited about this challenge, so I truly want to make real records about my progress here. I hope I have the strong will to do this and complete a good challenge. I will try to apply some of the techniques I have been using and researching about for the last 4 years.

Let’s work on!

1 week of success, 1 week of failure. What does building a routine mean?

Although I'd like to have written this blogpost at least one week ago, I was just able to do it today. And the reason for this is strictly connected to today's post topic: the difficulties of building a routine.

In my case, it is not like I am an irresponsible completely-out-of-any-routine person. I studied early in the morning for four years and a half during college. It has 6 years that I've been trying to take care of my meals to make them healthy for my body and my mind. I currently have a full time job and I am committed to it, waking up early in the morning to avoid being late. But even though I am/was engaged in those situations, I ended up experiencing a giant failure during my second building-habits week. We could simply say that this failure showed me that habits are difficult to build, but in my case it has shown even more. It made clear to myself that habits can't be broken. They simply can't! Let's see why:

The first week I started my routine, I was very committed to it. I woke up every morning at least two hours before my usual time, so I was able to watch some of my language learning videos during early morning. Then I went to my job, came back home in the evening and started studying some of the reading materials included in my study routine. I set to myself that only after completing every item of my daily routine I would be able to take a rest and do whatever I wanted (which was btw watching Netflix). It worked well from Monday until Saturday. Most of my routine activities were planned to be held during weekdays, but there are just two items that was supposed to be studied during weekends: studying some lessons of two Japanese grammar books, which takes about 30 minutes a day. Saturday everything went OK, but then Sunday came. I went to my parents house and took my grammar books with me. I am sure I had a lot of opportunities to read them, but I kind of deceived myself saying that I had no time and then I skipped that simple, single routine activity planned for that day. It was like a bomb. Breaking the rule just one single day, even though it was a simple duty, threw my successful week away, and also turned out to be the trigger for an entire week of complete failure. I studied nothing during the second week. Like nothing. In one week I was really successful and was able to complete everything, but then the next week was crazily unproductive.

This week I'll be waiting for the better, hoping to have a more positive post next time. For today, what we have is a learning from a mistake.