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Dance in a Year

danceinayear.com

41–50 of 78 posts

Re: Dance in a Year

#41

Looking backwards the motivation to capture the process makes sense. I wonder what was the motivation in the early days?

Hi, I'm the dancer in the video. Minikomi is right, I wanted to check my progress. Because I started out awkwardly though, I didn't take many videos in the beginning. I wish I had taken more.

Re: Dance in a Year

#42
One of my favorite books is The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, and one of my favorite quotes from it is:

  The secret of success is to complete a single simple task on a daily basis.
It really is about making slow, meaningful progress. No one wakes up a prodigy.

Re: Dance in a Year

#43
post #28

Is this a Lift.do viral?

Hi, I'm in the dancer in the video. I don't work for Lift, I'm a user. I found that once I started using it, I really didn't want to miss a day of dance. Something about having a 90+ day streak that other people are holding you accountable to makes you want to keep it up.

Re: Dance in a Year

#44
post #32

A year is much too long. I wanted to learn to swing dance, coming from a starting point of absolute incompetence. I took lessons once a week for about 20 weeks, and practiced 3 nights a week. Halfway through I was very comfortable, and could have continued without the lessons. By the end I was very good. It's not that hard. And if I knew it was that easy...

Same thing with lifting, I dropped over 100 lb and got crazy strong in just under a year. 315lb squat, 450 deadlift, 225 bench and I shed all the fat. Anything you dedicate around a year on, you'll get good at.

Thing is though that with diet and exercise it can be really easy being very dedicated to not doing the right thing! It's also very easy to get side tracked into being too dedicated to gathering information and not dedicated enough to doing something :-) I'd be interested to know what your methodology was?

Re: Dance in a Year

#45
post #38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with lifting, I dropped over 100 lb and got crazy strong in just under a year. 315lb squat, 450 deadlift, 225 bench and I shed all the fat. Anything you dedicate around a year on, you'll get good at.

At what age?

20 years old, 6'4, 220lb.

Re: Dance in a Year

#46
post #40

The key part of the article for me is this: I don't practice every day because I'm disciplined. I practice every day because I'm obsessed. I love dancing and my body craves it. If I didn't have this raw hunger, there's no way I would've had the discipline to practice every day. This raw hunger is the part you can't fake. You might think you want something, but once you take a few steps toward it, you lose your drive.…

Hey, I'm the dancer in the video. Totally agree with connecting with that deep-down hunger. I've tried many things - and quit many things. It's okay to quit. Quitting gives you the freedom to find the thing that you are truly passionate about.

Re: Dance in a Year

#48
post #40

The key part of the article for me is this: I don't practice every day because I'm disciplined. I practice every day because I'm obsessed. I love dancing and my body craves it. If I didn't have this raw hunger, there's no way I would've had the discipline to practice every day. This raw hunger is the part you can't fake. You might think you want something, but once you take a few steps toward it, you lose your drive.…

This one thing is why I'm a programmer by profession. I still code almost everyday. Lots of it is just playing around and will never actually be published to the world. It's practice. I've never gone to school for it. It's just something I couldn't stop doing. I'm obsessed. Now I work for google.

People assume I must be epic smart when they hear I work for google. The reality is I'm just obsessed.

Re: Dance in a Year

#49
post #40

The key part of the article for me is this: I don't practice every day because I'm disciplined. I practice every day because I'm obsessed. I love dancing and my body craves it. If I didn't have this raw hunger, there's no way I would've had the discipline to practice every day. This raw hunger is the part you can't fake. You might think you want something, but once you take a few steps toward it, you lose your drive.…

Start by eating right, exercising, and forcing yourself. pick a small goal and achieve it. These things can help you establish a pattern of self discipline. Part of it can be fake it till you make it. But getting yourself moving, and the exercise part, can help get yourself into the right frame of mind and help defeat certain kinds of problems that can interfere with finding your drive.

Re: Dance in a Year

#50

Looking backwards the motivation to capture the process makes sense. I wonder what was the motivation in the early days?

Hi, I'm the dancer in the video. Minikomi is right, I wanted to check my progress. Because I started out awkwardly though, I didn't take many videos in the beginning. I wish I had taken more.

Slightly O.T. but seeing as you're here and the youtube comments are unsurprisingly full of bile, props for not only 'dancing like no-one's watching' but going out and doing it in an out of context place where everybody definitely will be.
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