New Year Resolutions

While New Year resolutions are a tired old tradition, there is still sometime exciting and motivational about the start of a new year. Looking back over what was for many a traumatic 2020, I can count myself as being very lucky to be largely unaffected. In the coming year, I'd like to focus on improving:

• my guitar skills
• my Indonesian language competency
• my exercise regime

In all three desired areas of improvement, the key factor is to make practice a daily habit. I already have some well established habits such as walking the dog at around 6am and 4pm. I never miss doing this and the same level of discipline needs to be applied to those activities in which I desire improvement.

In guitar playing, I play most days but mostly I'm just playing songs that I already know how to play using techniques that I've already mastered. I don't progress and remain plateaued for long periods. What stimulates progress most is watching YouTube tutorials and practising what's shown in them. This is key. I already have some guitar playing channels that I've subscribed to and that I watch in a rather desultory fashion. Given how many YouTube videos that I watch on any given day, it's not unreasonable to include a single video on guitar technique. My guitar time that day will then be spent on practising what is described in the video. 

My Indonesian language skills have also tended to plateau because I have no practice regime at all. Any activities are desultory and disorganised. I especially lack the competency is understanding Indonesian when it's spoken to me. There are plenty of videos involving spoken Indonesian on YouTube and once again I should aim to listen to one video a day and writing down any words that I'm not familiar with. It may take a little while to settle on favourite channels because I will have to test several out. 

My exercise regime has some regularity to it. Lately I've taken to walking at a brisk pace for about 3 kilometres at least every second day. As always I need to careful because I tend to get overly enthusiastic and push myself too hard, resulting in fatigue and cessation of any activity. I practise a limited range of exercises and once again it's always useful to watch instructional videos but not necessarily on a daily basis as this would be too confusing.