On the 10th of April 2020, YAB Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin made a nationwide announcement that the country would be placed under Conditional Movement Control Order for another 4 weeks. A few months back,with every announcement of a 2-week MCO extension, Instagram feeds were instantly flooded with stories of "despair and sorrow". However, with the recent extension of a month, everyone seems to being taking the news in relatively well. To be fair, the boredom which was initially intensely frustrating has now morphed into mindnumbing boredom.
Nevertheless, many among us are conflicted between being productive and making the most of this free time, or to vegetate on the couch watching everything Netflix has to offer (with the occasional visit to the kitchen for a junk food raid). Either or, here are a few suggestions that we can do to fill up the time while we countdown the days until we can finally return to KY and hangout with our friends that we have missed so dearly. :)
1. Bullet Journalling
Being a bit of a stationary hoarder myself, there has been numerous occasions where I went in a bookstore and came out with a couple of sleek-looking leather bound journals and made a silent promise to myself that "Yes. This time, I'll definitely keep up my bullet journaling cause these notebooks look AWESOME." And then, I went back to the bookstore to grab a couple dozen of coloured pens, cause who can bullet journal without coloured pens am I right? Right. Now I'm set.
About a couple months later, I stacked new journals (ring-bound this time !) on top of my leather journals which have only collected dust since my purchase.
With the leisure of time we are all "blessed" with, those among us who have always ranted about not having enough time to start journalling can start now. Bullet journals are insanely flexible and they can be just about anything that you want it to be. Most people seem to use it as a Life OS and they include a variety of things such as calendars, to-do-lists, habit trackers, brain dump and of course, a diary. However, it's important to note that these are just suggestions. Don't limit your creativity!
I'm relatively certain most of you have heard about the benefits of journalling prior to this so I will not reiterate on that topic. However, on a random night during MCO, I stumbled upon this video where Jordan Peterson talks about the power of writing. I'll leave it to you to derive value out of the video but this short 4 minute clip reminded me about the importance of eloquency and being articulate with your words. The art of choosing the correct words and structuring your sentences to deliver your message in the most efficient and beautiful way possible is one that take years and years to master. One way to build up our eloquency fast is to write. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to jot down and narrate everything you do in a day. Instead, it could be about your thoughts when a person you've never talked to before hands you a plate while you were waiting in line at the Dining Hall, or the camaraderie of the KYFA team during their daily evening training sessions. Sitting at home binge watching Tiger King on Netflix may not feel like you're doing much, but you're actually living through a major historical event that people will learn and talk about for generations after this is all over. These small things and random musings are the ones that really lets you observe your thought process and you will start to see its effect soon enough in your daily life.
In short, if you have always wanted to give bullet journalling a go but never had the time to, this might just be the chance for you to get all the templates in your bullet journal sorted out for the year so that you can just fill in the details of the day when you return to your hectic college lifestyle.
Here are some sources for design inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/user/amandarachlee
2. Touch Typing
For those among us who still have two index fingers flying frantically around the keyboard and hitting the backspace button a dozen times a minute, it's probably time to pick up touch typing.
Touch typing is the skill of typing based on muscle memory and it can dramatically increase your typing speed. With the "2-finger method", it is highly unlikely that one can achieve a typing speed higher than 60 WPM (words per minute). As students who have just embarked on the road of tertiary education, touch typing is extremely helpful for rushing those last minute assignments and reports. There are loads and loads of websites out there that offer free touch typing courses for everyone and you're more than welcome to try those out. However, I would recommend Keybr for learning how to touch type and as you progress and eventually finish mastering all the keys necessary, you can proceed with 10 Fast Fingers to increase your typing speed.
A word of warning here. Touch typing requires considerable patience and perseverance. Every time we learn a new key, it gets incredibly frustrating as we are not accustomed to typing a particular key with a particular finger. You may make many typing errors and it could take weeks before you can master all the keys. Even then, to increase 10 WPM, it could take hours and hours of practice. Just keep at it. Remember that the learning curve is not a linear one and consistency is key.
Long term consistency trumps short term intensity.
Do 30 minutes a day but do it daily and soon you will be a touch typist. Don't worry, the hours you put into touch typing instead of rewatching Friends for the 3rd time would pay its dividends over time.
3. Stay Active
While MCO seems like the perfect excuse to not exercise and work out because the gym is closed, it is still vital that we keep ourselves accountable for keeping our body fit. Rather than giving in to the immediate gratification of digging into that pack of Ruffles and questioning all our life choices after, it would be a test of discipline to make it a point to ourselves to engage in some form of physical activity everyday. Be it squats, core exercise, HIIT or just some light yoga, they all help us escape this exceptionally sedentary lifestyle that we now have and ensure that we have some physical activities in our life.
The key to staying active is to make it a habit. You can track this using the bullet journal that was recommemded above or using an external application such as Habitica which is available for both Android and IOS. It's cross platform as well so you can download the application on your desktop should you choose to do so. It is also advisable to move the gratification forward by various means to make the act of working out attractive. This includes allowing ourselves to watch 2 episodes of our favourite series if we worked out on that day, or to promise oureselves that we would go out for a short drive if we did some physical activities. We can also reduce the friction of working out by setting out our work out gears and fill in a bottle of water before we turn in at night so that we can work out first thing in the morning when we wake up. This would make us more likely to work out because there is less friction associated with it. At any rate, there would be another blog post about building habits coming up soon but for now, here's a quote by James Clear for you to ponder on (and read back if you feel the urge to skip working out):
"The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff—the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet—but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart.”
That brings us to the end of this considerably lengthy post on things to do during the extended month of CMCO that could potentially bring us great benefits in the years to come. Hope you found this helpful and till then, that's a wrap!
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.