So today, my girlfriend and I were discussing how to make better decisions in Valorant and it made me think that we are playing low level blunder chess. Blunder chess at 200-800 elo is simply playing chess with these main ideas:
Check for blunders (hanging queen, bishop, knight or rook)
Check for checks on king
Look only one move ahead
If no clear threats, work on positioning
The idea behind blunder chess is simply that people at low elo will make a lot of mistakes and you can simple wait for them to make a mistake.
I strongly believe my elo (below diamond) that “blunder chess” is highly effective since a lot of simple mistakes are made.
I wonder if I can do the same simple ideas in Valorant where I don’t strategize too much, but check for very simple positioning and big mistakes:
I’m stressed out because even though I feel like I’m making progress, I feel that I’m not getting results until I learn specific words
I am doing unorthodox way of learning language but expecting orthodox results
The orthodox was of learning is memorizing words – thus your results will be on how many words you memorize
I feel like I want those results when my methods are completely unorthodox, it makes sense that my results are not going to be the same, at first at least
I worry about forgetting everything after French practice, but nothing in the subconscious is forgotten, my goal is to harness and bring out the subconscious knowledge
If I were to state my goal another way, it could be to learn French subconsciously…which means that forgetting actually makes sense, since I am not consciously learning anything (that would be memorization)
Since I am forging my own path, I want to capture everything I experience and feel because I want to know how this new process works (what should I expect from subconscious learning?)
Overall I feel much more encouraged. This is the right path for me. I feel confident in my methods. I’m forging a path that no one has ever forged before. The point is not to get orthodox results, the point is to capture my progress, my feelings, and my experience. I will continue to use connection theory on French in order to learn more intuitively and use connection theory on myself in order to deal with my feelings of uncertainty and being overwhelmed.
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.
Today is the final day that I can devote a lot of time to the Sova competition. I might have some time tomorrow as well, but I will only have until 11:59 PM GMT which is basically 6:59 PM CST.
I want to create a syllabus just for today because I feel so overwhelmed.
UNIT ONE: Finish drawings that are close
UNIT TWO: Create a unique drawing
UNIT THREE: Pick an old drawing to revitalize
I’m worried about colors so I found this tutorial:
And I also watched a few others for linework and color:
I thinking more about this challenge. I would like to focus on very small goals working through the endgame of the challenge because anything other than very specific goals will overwhelm me.
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