In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing.
I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.
I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.
I saw an ad on Facebook. It was talking about making money as an introvert and making money without giving up your inner peace.
I immediately signed up. It was about 20 dollars.
Now I have done a bunch of the exercises for the prework of the challenge and here are my reflections.
Some major questions that I have right now:
What am I willing to give up and how will I go about giving it up?
How do I live my values every day in a way that is in flow and not forced or mechanical?
I have some initial ideas.
First, I was thinking originally about what I wanted to give up in terms of things like YouTube, or socializing. But recently it made a lot more sense for me to think about time. Specifically, I wanted to dedicate my entire morning to succeeding at these goals.
From the time I wake up, I usually am doing what JT Franco calls “buffalo brain” (the idea of being one of the herd that moves without thinking). I listen to audiobooks, and watch YouTube videos. I don’t eat breakfast or drink water. I keep the blinds closed. I feel awful and I don’t feel the feelings.
Someone once said (might be Melinda Gates) that the first few hours of the day are the most important because they set the stage for the entire day to come. If I want to give up anything, I want to give up my mornings to getting up, drinking water, feeling my body, and going downstairs into the lounge to write on my blog and work on achieving my dreams.
Middle of the day has to be reserved for work and for talking to my girlfriend. End of the day has to be reserved for me time. Being alone, taking time, creating art, and letting the magic of nighttime take over.
This is what I’m thinking roughly:
7/8 AM – 9/10 AM: Dedicated to living the magical life
9/10 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to doing the impossible at work
12 PM – 1/2 PM: Lunch, meditation
1/2 PM – 5 PM: Work, performing at the highest levels
5 PM – 7 PM: Misc time
7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play
During the weekend, work will be removed, leaving more time for dedication to my magical life. I think it will look something like this:
7/8 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to living the magical life
12pm – 7 PM: Misc time
7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play
With this balance, it seems that my breakdown is this:
Weekday
1-3 hours per day on living magical life
5-7 hours of work
4 hours of alone-time/play
2 hours of miscellaneous time
Weekend
4-5 hours per day on living magical life
4 hours of alone-time/play
7 hours of miscellaneous time
I suspect, I will have to do careful planning during the weekend, in order to perform at the absolute highest levels of work and potentially spend less time there.
In terms of living out my beliefs of empathy, intuition/following feelings, creativity/imagination, and honesty. I’m not entirely sure what actions I need to take to feel that I am in congruence with my values.
My main thought right now is about taking risks, breathing through difficult emotions and sensations, and following connection theory.
I’m thinking about how women (while often are beautiful and sexy) are not valued for anything beyond their looks or given any affirmation.
For my entire life, I liked having girls as friends, companions, and coworkers because I like being around them (and it has nothing to do with appearance). Here 5 things I like:
I really respect the intelligence and work ethic some women have. They are not arrogant or assume they know everything, which I feel makes someone even smarter since they are faster and better at learning from their mistakes and recognizing that someone is more knowledgable than them (some men are terrible at this to their own downfall).
Women can be easier to connect to on an emotional level. I don’t have to pretend to be strong around women. I can talk about my childhood, when people make me angry, or make me feel embarrassed or sad.
Some women love talking about relationships in an emotionally well-rounded way. I like to talk more about physical attraction or meeting specific criteria. I want to gush about someone I really like.
Some women are really into aesthetics and art. Fashion and beauty isn’t a clinical “I gotta hit the gym to get big” kind of thing. It’s your personal taste and expression of yourself and your feelings.
Some women can be extremely supportive. I like it when you have someone to vent to or recognize when something is making you uncomfortable.
There are many other things as well, women can be down to earth, or wild and adventurous. They can be welcoming and extroverted, or quiet and introspective. But overall, it just feels more balanced being with women. They understand my logic mixed with emotion and feeling. They aren’t as competitive and are more caring.
Here is me rambling about it for 13 minutes straight. Ramble ramble.
I saw this anime recapped last night and I felt it was really inspiring. It was about a guy who needs to create an unprofitable company in order to win money in a game. But in not fearing failure and instead trying to embrace it, he found it hard to not succeed. Obviously this is fiction, and people would find it easy to fail in real life, but there is a part of this that rings true for me.
When you aren’t afraid of failure, it is hard to stave off success. Everything is about having a strong mindset.
Today I want to just focus on the main ideas I said in my previous post:
To summarize my goals in order of how much they resonate with me:
Be able to communicate and connect on a deeper level with my girlfriend, her friends and family
Discover a whole new undiscovered world, the French world
Understand and empathize with others better, understand and empathize with myself better
Challenge myself to do the impossible
Maybe win some cool points in learning French written language
Learn more about French food
Timeline: 31 days (not counting today) from December 15th to January 15th
I’ve always wanted to learn French in a way that isn’t conventional. Not the Duolingo or the Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur way. None of those programs really worked for me. Maybe on the surface level they work…like if I spent enough time learning and studying those programs it would work but the way they were structured was all wrong for me. It just felt so dry and boring and something alive about the language was lost. I love how personal language can be. I want it to be personal for me.
But in order to do so, I’m going to have to rely a huge amount on connection theory because learning a language is incredibly difficult and I will need to really come up with something next level to learn a language without following one of these programs.
So let’s think about it. While I would love to plan out all 31 days of this, I simply cannot. That is too damn hard. Because I don’t have enough experience in learning languages, I need to try to learn it in different ways and understand and feel the feelings.
Some things I want to try:
Write a story in French. Get help from a large language model in doing it.
Write a comic in French, and also get help from AI.
Learn through mimicry. Watch a YouTube video or movie in pure French. No subtitles, no explanation. Just imitate and copy the entire language. Don’t even try to understand what is being said.
This is how babies learn and how large language models learn
This might be my entire strategy in the challenge
What I train on might be important, for example, if I watch a lot of comedy, I might end up being a very jokey person in French
This is probably by far the hardest but most profound way to learn a language, need to be extremely comfortable with feeling the feeling of confusion (one of the most painful feelings for humans)
Leave a message to my girlfriend in French every day. Let go of pronunciation or grammar. Focus only on trying to communicate as much as possible without looking any French up. When I need to look something up, don’t try to memorize it. The point is to communicate a lot, not memorize or get things perfectly right.
This makes a lot of sense because my primary goal is to connect with my girlfriend.
It makes sense to let go of anything that would prevent me from wanting to leave a message, namely
Being afraid to pronounce something wrong
Annoyed at having to look something up
Annoyed at having to memorize words I look up
By talking a lot, expressing a lot every day, and potentially looking up the same words over and over, I will start to absorb them
I’m back from two weeks of traveling and I finally tried it. Movement-based aiming.
It was quite a challenge let me tell you!
Game 1-3: Competitive Games on My Smurf (Comps)
Comp 1: Horrible, terrible no good very bad game. Practiced clutching since the Cypher was completely being annoying, toxic, and throwing (trying to sabotage our team). Was fuming by the end.
Comp 2: Much better team, still missing everything and being horrible.
Comp 3: Finally got a nice team and was able to focus on movement-based aiming.
Comp 4: Bad aiming. Focused on Sova utility. Hit someone with the ult using pure gamesense.
Main Takeaways
I need to follow my previous concept of feeling out the unknown parts of aiming in a controlled setting (deathmatch or shooting range)
I’m much worse than before break, probably Bronze 1-2 level.
Game 1-3: Deathmatch Practice (DM)
DM 1: After practicing in the range, I realize that moving only the movement keys to aim is too hard. I need to do a little micro-adjusting with my mouse. I feel like I need to be looser about my mouse movement, when I intuitively move it in the opposite of my movement, I get some nasty headshots. Mostly I get destroyed.
DM 2: Still getting destroyed. I start to understand that movement-based aiming is basically what the Miyagi Do method is teaching.
DM 3: I realized that I need to make sure it’s not just about the movement and feeling that out. Aiming is about TIMING. I spend the entire deathmatch feeling out timing and it starts to be more clear. I am successfully about to “feel out” the aiming on a deep intuitive level like art or dance.
Main Takeaways
I need to constantly move. Movement is something I will also need to practice getting a feeling for.
The movement of the crosshair should be with movement, smooth and intuitive.
You need to feel the mouse-hand connection, your posture, and your sensitivity. Shift to what feels good, shift to what feels clear and controlled.
Timing is absolutely key. Dying is not a problem. Waiting for the right moment is much more important. If you are getting killed first, that’s to be expected for good timing. Your timing will naturally tighten and your time to kill will go down without feeling rushed, out of control, or unclear.
I’m soooo happy!!!
I’m starting to “feel out” aiming just like I feel out drawings, dance and sales processes.
Here are the main takeways:
The main goal of practice sound is able to “Feel Out” and play with the mouse to crosshair connection, how to smoothly track, strafe your crosshair while moving, and shooting moving things. Play around with it, feel it out.
The Miyagi Do method is the main method you use to practice. However, you don’t just feel out the movement. You also feel out the timing.This is key.
I tend to rush and even if I get a kill, it doesn’t feel natural, in control, and comfortable. Dying is always preferable to bad timing. Since timing will get tighter, spamming will make sure you never improve.
The next things I need to feel out are:
Gun spray control
Gamesense
watching the minimap
understanding timing
guessing what they will do next
Isolating 1v1s, only peeking as much as needed
Switching between primary and sidearms
Movement
How to jiggle and peek safety
How to get on top of things
When to pull out your knife
Agent movement abilities
Ability usage
Lineups
Timing and combos
I’m extremely confident that this method will NOT ONLY make you a monster after warming up, but every warmup will make you internally better at aiming (to the point that you will need to warm up less and less to have insane aim).
I want to learn how to build my own large language model leveraging ChatGPT and my own proprietary data. There seems to be a couple of things that I need to learn before I do that: