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Dance in a Year

danceinayear.com

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Re: Dance in a Year

#61

Post by pbhjpbhj »

karenxcheng wrote: post #46
rfugger wrote: 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.

When you quit, do you have sight of what you're quitting for. "I'll quit baking and try bodyart" or just quit and then search for what to try next?

I get bored. I genuinely feel that there's no activity or occupation I can remain passionate about for more than a couple of years at most.

Re: Dance in a Year

#62

Post by keiferski »

tieTYT wrote: post #59
keiferski wrote: post #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.

That's exactly what I'm doing on my latest side project. I'm the type of guy that keeps attempting side projects. I'm passionate at first and then all at once I lose interest and stop. Or I realize I should rewrite and lose interest in the middle of the rewrite. This time I'm doing it differently. Ever since I've started I try to work on as little as possible but I work on it every day. So far so good. I have the urg…

Maybe try sitting down for X minutes and just brainstorming, or thinking about, your project? I've often found that it's sometimes just keeping the idea in your mind every day is effective in continuing the chain.

Re: Dance in a Year

#63

Post by tieTYT »

keiferski wrote: post #62
tieTYT wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I'm doing on my latest side project. I'm the type of guy that keeps attempting side projects. I'm passionate at first and then all at once I lose interest and stop. Or I realize I should rewrite and lose interest in the middle of the rewrite. This time I'm doing it differently. Ever since I've started I try to work on as little as possible but I work on it every day. So far so good. I have the urg…

Maybe try sitting down for X minutes and just brainstorming, or thinking about, your project? I've often found that it's sometimes just keeping the idea in your mind every day is effective in continuing the chain.

I'll try that. Wish me luck :)

Re: Dance in a Year

#64

Post by dylanz »

karenxcheng wrote: post #41
NirDremer wrote: post #14

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.

OT as well, but I just wanted to let you know that you made awesome progress over the year. Very inspirational. You are dope.

Re: Dance in a Year

#65

Post by keiferski »

tieTYT wrote: post #63
keiferski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try sitting down for X minutes and just brainstorming, or thinking about, your project? I've often found that it's sometimes just keeping the idea in your mind every day is effective in continuing the chain.

I'll try that. Wish me luck :)

Good luck!

Re: Dance in a Year

#66

Post by jgross206 »

mathattack wrote: post #31

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...

In what way does your anecdote support your assertion that "a year is much too long"?

Re: Dance in a Year

#67

Post by anujabro »

karenxcheng wrote: post #43
Roelven wrote: 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.

Hell yeah, I'm a lift user as well. Love it!

Re: Dance in a Year

#68

Post by xiaoma »

js2 wrote: post #39

Dan has been working for 3 years now toward completing 10,000 hours of practice with the goal of getting into the PGA - http://thedanplan.com/about/

It looks like he's been stalled in the 5.5 - 6.0 handicap range for the past year. http://thedanplan.com/statistics-2/

Michael Jordan, on the other hand, reached a 3 handicap in far fewer hours while still playing basketball professionally. Talent matters.

Re: Dance in a Year

#69

Post by arpineh »

I got much inspiration from this. I like the Nietzche quote at the end which is quite different from the usual übermench stuff everybody uses:

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

I found the other part to be equally true:

"And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.""

Our body/brain needs its learning time. You can't rush things. But you can't force things either. If repeating stuff every day feels like a chore, you should try to find other way to do it. Like learning computer stuff: from a book, a blog post, experimenting with random code from Github.

When the thing you are trying to learn becomes something you can't feel like not doing, learning will happen without consious effort. Variety and interest are hard to conjure if you fail all the time or your resistance to change (be it in strength or memory) is great, but finding a different tack on things can make things easy again.

Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing and let things lie for a bit. When you have a goal, you move closer to it just by it being there. Measuring your progress externally (like this video, bugging friends to read your stuff, pull requests to open source projects) helps you learn from mistakes. Mistakes are better way to progress, since I can easily analyze them as opposed to success: what I did do to succeed?

Re: Dance in a Year

#70

Post by mathattack »

rfnslyr wrote: post #56
boothead wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Man I read everything I could possibly read. I read bodybuilding.com for years, reddit.com/r/fitness, t-nation, etc. I realized the following that helped me immensely: - Calories, overall, are mostly the only thing that matters. Lose weight? Less calories than your maintenance calories. Gain? Eat more above maintenance. - Lifting weights is the most efficient way of losing weight or building muscle because you have a…

Absolutely fantastic and inspiring story! I like your point that it's more than lifting. If you don't eat well, and don't get enough sleep, you do all that effort lifting to not get a benefit. Kind of like working for 8 hours and saying, "You only need to pay me for 5."

One question though... Doesn't your theory of "Just add weight" apply to running too? Instead of weight, you add speed. So if 10km over three 25 minute workouts gets too easy, then run 11 in the same time. Then 12... Then 13... Keep the target intensity (heart rate) the same. Similar applies to biking, swimming, incline walking, or any other cardio activity.

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