Make 2020 Your Year: Sharing My 5 Practical Lessons from 2019
The lessons we learn are the most important thing we can bring with us into the New Year. I think it’s always a good idea to reflect but more importantly - to share what we learn. In this blog article, I get a little more personal and share the 5 most valuable and practical tips that I learnt this year. I’ve also included some recommendations for Podcasts, Documentaries, Books and even Online Courses. Perhaps you might even like to adopt one of these tips for your New Year’s Resolution?
My hope is that by sharing, it also encourages you guys to reflect upon what you’ve learnt this year and it would be so cool to hear your top lessons, tips or recommendations in the comments below! Without further ado… here are the top 5 lessons I learned in 2019:
1. Listening to Podcasts
Podcasts are an amazing source of learning material and inspiration, it’s also a great way to pass time without wasting time! This might not be new to some people, but I only started listening to podcasts regularly since September 2019, so it’s still a cool new concept for me!
I love the fact that I can be learning whilst cycling to work, on public transport, travelling between places, cooking and even shopping. There’s a difference between wasting time and resting - and I’m someone who really dislikes wasting time, so podcasts are a great way to make those menial tasks much more purposeful because now I ‘get to’ learn while riding my bike or sitting on public transport :)
There is a wealth of information on there in almost every niche. However, I don’t listen to every episode of every podcast. I have a few that I rotate around and others, which I only listen to if I’m really interested in the specific topic or guest speaker. I tend to select the ones that give me most value (in terms of wisdom and knowledge) and I download them (on Spotify) so that I can listen to it later on, wherever I am.
Here are some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to and that have helped shape my year :)
Creative and Entrepreneur:
The Yellow Podcast // inspiring stories about travel, photography and freelancing.
The Ikonns // on life, purpose, entrepreneurship, and spirituality.
The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show // insights into the world of creative entrepreneurs and artists.
LIfe & Purpose:
On Purpose with Jay Shetty // sharing wisdom and inspiration from successful people.
Health:
The Plant Proof Podcast // everything you need to know about a plant-based diet.
Languages:
Coffee Break Spanish // mixed English and Spanish - more lesson style
Italiano Automatico Podcast // all in Italian - very conversational style
Hoy Hablamos (Spanish) // all in Spanish - conversational and educational
If you have any awesome podcast recommendations, please leave your suggestions in the comments below! I would love to see what Podcasts you guys listen to! :)
2. Creating Routines and Habits
Creating routines and good habits are the key to getting more stuff done. As someone who has a pretty volatile lifestyle, I always scoffed at the idea of having routines. But now, I now can’t get enough of it!
I realised that routine doesn’t have to mean boring, it simply takes out the decision-making brain stress out of every day, so that I can spend more time and brain power on my creative work and learning new things. Another thing I learnt whilst creating my routines is that every day can be different but it’s important to designate a particular day or period for specific things. I learned not to wait for inspiration or motivation to strike, but to create them by doing.
eg. Monday - Learn Spanish for 1hr // Tuesday - Write 1x Blog Post // Wednesday - Edit Photos for Project X // etc.
I used to wake up feeling overwhelmed every day with my ever growing to-do list and often jumped between tasks - partially finishing everything but never actually finishing anything. Cherry picking the ones that were easy to do whilst procrastinating on the more important tasks, definitely did not do me any favours. Nowadays, I have a habit of writing down my tasks in order of priority the night before and this really helps to start my day more productively.
routine doesn’t have to mean boring, it simply takes out the decision-making brain stress out of every day, so that you can spend more time and energy on more important and creative tasks
Since I still move around a lot, I get to constantly create new routines and new habits. I’m always learning what works for me and what doesn’t. Here are a few things that really helped me with creating good habits and increasing my productivity this year:
Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear
This book completely changed my perspective on Habits and it’s the reason why I was able to be so much more productive this year than I have ever been! I also subscribe to his weekly newsletters, which are super motivational. Highly highly recommend - he’s such an awesome writer!
You can find the book here: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Productivity Planner by Intelligent Change
Very excited to have received my Productivity Planner recently and I love the concept. No, you don’t necessarily need this to be productive, but it’s definitely helped me prioritise my tasks better and break larger abstract projects into more actionable steps. So for me, it has increased my productivity. And yes, I can totally recommend it! Love the high-quality feel and design.
You can find the Planner here: Productivity Planner by Intelligent Change
3. Taking learning into my own hands
In recent years, I’ve discovered that School and University don’t exactly provide the education needed to tackle life. They teach you how to follow rules and instructions, how to not make mistakes and avoid failure - basically how to work for other people. But they don’t really teach you how to think for yourself, how to discipline yourself or work for yourself.
What blew my mind, was when I realised that we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on school and University … yet when it comes to investing in ourselves and our own skills or passions, we tend to shy away from that opportunity. I became aware of doing this myself, often making the excuse that I don’t have the money to splurge on these courses that I knew would help me so much.
Now that I’ve graduated from Uni, I feel like I have even more of a responsibility to myself and I finally took education into my own hands. Instead of letting other people dictate and test me on what I should be learning - I get to choose what I learn and I decide which is more beneficial for me and which inspiring people I want to learn from.
Never let school stand in the way of your education.
— Jim Kwik
Here are a few things I’ve spent money on this year to invest in my own learning:
Reading more Books - not academic textbooks or fictional romances. But non-fiction, practical books (preferably backed by science) that I can learn from and implement in my life. Occasionally, I also love reading beautiful prose.
SEO and Blogging Course - I always wanted to learn more about SEO and how to optimise a website to derive more traffic, so I decided to invest in the No BS Online Blogging Course by Wander in Two and I’ve learnt so much from them already! The amount of time, stress and research it’s saved me has been worth 10x the money I actually invested. Thank you for sharing your knowledge wonderful humans!
Photoshop Course - since I started playing around with Lightroom, I was always curious to venture into Photoshop. As if the Universe heard and responded, I found this awesome course by Visuals of Julius called Photoshop for Photographers. He is an absolute genius creator and wastes no time in getting straight to the point. I’m learning so much every lesson and applying that to enhance my photography even more.
E-Commerce - despite having graduated with a Commerce degree and studied at various Business Schools, my knowledge about e-Commerce is close to zero. Since I’m curious as to the opportunities in this field, I decided to learn a bit more and found some super informative videos on e-Commerce by Brock Johnson on his Amazon Course.
4. Switching to a Plant-Based Diet
Switching to a Plant-Based Diet was the best decision I ever made for my health. It has done wonders for my body, my creativity and productivity and also to an extent… my mental health.
There were various factors contributing to my decision to go Plant-Based. I was already a vegetarian (95% of the time) for a few years and was always ignorant of the argument that dairy and eggs weren’t all that good for you. I loved butter and cream, I loved my morning omelettes … there was no way I was ever going to give those up!
But as I spent more time with my vegan friends, I wanted to know why they were so adamant that we didn’t need animal products - because I still thought we needed dairy and eggs for B12 to be healthy. A few documentaries and vegan potlucks later… I finally understood and my perspective on food completely changed.
If you’re interested, here are some documentaries on Netflix that I found super insightful and can highly recommend:
The Game Changers // how a Plant-Based diet can optimise your performance
What the Health // what the meat and dairy industry doesn’t want you to know
Cowspiracy // the Destructive reality of the meat and dairy industry
Forks over Knives // Meat vs Plant-Based diet and its correlation with Diseases
Okja // Fictional movie with deep and important underlying messages
A Scientific and Educational Podcast about Plant-Based Diet:
The Plant Proof Podcast
I was curious to experiment on myself and so I adopted a 95% Plant-Based Diet in October this year and weaned myself out of milk, cheese and eggs - it was surprisingly easy. I just stopped buying it and I stopped eating it, which led me to stop craving it out of habit. Surprisingly, going plant-based was cheaper than I thought!
It’s so easy to find new substitutes (Cashew nut milk is the bomb!) and you can make your own ‘scrambled tofu egg’ or ‘vegan fried eggs’. There is literally an alternative to everything, which makes consuming animal products completely unnecessary (for your own health, for the environment and for the animals). Going plant-based almost forces you to be creative and colourful with your food and I love it!
Personally, I’ve never felt more vibrant or healthy. It’s improved my mental clarity and now my creativity sessions last longer. I no longer feel bloated, lethargic or sluggish after my meals. I can be more productive for longer and I just feel light and happy… like every day! On the odd occasion (5% of the time), I may consume something with a little bit of cheese, egg or dairy… I’m not perfect, but hey 95% is better than 50%, which is better than consuming animal products every meal of every day :)
5. Start Before You Are Ready
There is a difference between not doing something because it’s inherently not the right time (or because your gut feeling is telling you not to), compared to giving up your goals and opportunities because of self-doubt, fear of failure or laziness.
The thought of letting amazing opportunities slide (out of self-doubt, fear or laziness) is seemingly unbearable for me. I think back to the time I decided to become a Kayak Guide, run my photography workshops and even start this blog… those have very arbitrary levels of ‘readiness’, therefore I could have easily talked myself out of it because, to be honest… I didn’t feel 100% competent or ready. In fact, it took a lot of convincing (my own self-doubt and fear) that yes, I should just go and do it because I would regret it much more if I didn’t.
Start before you’re ready because there will always be a million excuses for why you’re not ready.
When I made those decisions to follow through and start before I was ready, beautiful things started to happen. Amazing people came into my life and offered me support and guidance. Up to you, whether or not you believe in the Law of Attraction, but the Universe has certainly helped me in my pursuit of trying to be better this year.
What are some of your top lessons from this year? Do you have any cool recommendations on Podcast, Books, Courses or Documentaries? I would love to hear what you guys tune into, so please leave your suggestion in the comments below!
