Category: Uncategorized

I write (well, not frequently) at both this blog and a substack. I’ve struggled to stay consistent with writing, because I feel a pressure to have my writing stay on one theme. The advice that’s often given to people trying to build an online following is that you should have an idea of the readers you want to reach, and try to keep your content relevant to them.

However, that’s been a challenge for me because I have a wide variety of interests. I’m a curious person, and I just like learning about things. So, today, I’m going to write about a few of the things that have been capturing my interest recently:

French-language YouTube

I have been learning French for a few years. As part of that, I’ve sought out French language media (including videos, podcasts and music) to give me exposure to the language.

A few months ago, I bought a domain name called TeluguNotes.com. The vision behind this purchase was that I wanted to create high-quality resources for learning the Telugu language, geared towards heritage language learners. That is, people who might have a passive understanding of Telugu, or may be conversational in it, and want to improve their own understanding of the language.

I love reading about ways to be more productive. Here are a bunch I read from the Cut that I think others would find interesting:

• Everything Always Takes Longer Than You Think
  • Humans are really really bad at planning. Like, we exceed our worst case expectations bad
  • This is called the planning fallacy. One solution is to use a “pre-mortem”, detailed in the next article
• To Reach Your Goals, Imagine You Already Tried and Failed
  • One way to get around that is to do a “pre-mortem”, pretend its some point in the future and the plan you put in place went horribly wrong – and write a retrospective detailing what happened and why
• How Exercise Shapes You, Far Beyond the Gym
  • Exercise is really good for you for reasons other than physical health. It can increase your ability to handle discomfort, and improve your ability to self-regulate
  • Also see this podcast about dopamine, and how pain is necessary to feel pleasure
• You Need a Schedule
  • You need structure – a schedule gives you peace of mind through order and predictability
  • People who use to-do lists get more things done, organized paper lists are better than digital or unorganized lists

In my previous post, I outlined a new set of language goals. In this post, I’ll outline my plan to reach them.

My plan was to spend 30 hours on French, Telugu, and Hindi, and 15 hours each studying Bengali and Punjabi. That totals 120 hours of studying by the end of the year.