Clear the List: February 2016

Hey guys! I’m a little late to the party this month – my apologies, but if you follow me on Twitter and/or Instagram, you may notice that I’ve not actually been in Vienna since last Friday evening! It’s the semester break for two of the states here in Austria (Vienna and Lower Austria) so a friend and I have been off travelling and I’m actually off again tomorrow (to Barcelona, yay!) on the trip I won because I won the FlashSticks challenge.

With any luck I’ll be on a regular blogging schedule after that; having some time off to explore new cities and relax has caused me to come up with a ton of ideas that I want to share on this blog and on other social media platforms – though I know I need to keep up with what I’ve already decided to do first, of course!

So since we’re past the first of this month, it’s time for me to reflect on January and look ahead to February – did I manage to clear that list last month?

Clear the List: February 2016 | 学习Sprachen | Goal Setting for Language Learning

Okay, so first things first, let’s see how well I did on those January goals:

  • Study the language of the day for 20m per day. – I didn’t manage this every day and I think it’s because at the beginning of the month, I was tending to lump Japanese and my language of the day study together into one task. That ends up being a little counter-productive for me because even though my minimum study time goal is only forty minutes, it can be a little daunting to start that. I switched this up around the 19th and saw slightly better results, but still only seemed to hit this goal 7/31 days last month.
  • Complete the uTalk language challenge. – I did this! I ended up finishing it frantically playing the memory game over and over in my hostel in Copenhagen, but I did finish it. I’ve chosen Moroccan Arabic as my language for February (everyone who finished January got to choose a new language for this month), so I’m hoping to finish this one too.
  • Complete the Instagram Language Challenge. – Not quite. I had planned to, but I missed days all over the place – still, I think I finished more than half of the days in the end. I’ll probably finish up January’s prompts this month and then see if I want to join in again in March. I like doing the IGLC but I do struggle to find ideas for the prompts – still, this was useful for Japanese last month because it covered a lot of basic concepts I wanted to know.
  • Blog at least once per week. – Yes! I blogged nine times last month, and there was at least one post every week. I didn’t get as good of a start/continuation on several post series as I wanted to, but I’m hoping to pick those up in February. I need to get into a habit of prepping before I post instead of just trying to type out a whole thing an hour before I should have it up!
  • Write for 15m a day. – No, I didn’t manage this, though I think I might be getting back into it for February. I may end up dropping this goal if I don’t make a lot of progress in February.
  • Workout 30m a day/four times a week. – I have five workout days marked on my tracker, but I walked more than 5,000 steps on 23/31 days (the last few days I’ve walked 20,000+ steps a day, but that’s because I’ve been travelling), so my general fitness level has improved. Still, I’m supposed to be prepping for the half-marathon, so I need to get on that.

Posting-wise, here’s a summary of what went on the blog in January (in order of views 😉 ):

And here are my goals for February (shockingly, there’s not going to be much change from last month…):

Language goals.

  • Study Japanese for 20m a day. – It’s time for another 6WC and I signed up with Japanese, so I need to get on with studying that. (Also, I’m going to be keeping track of that progress in my log on the Language Learner’s Forum here, not on this blog – so if you want to see updates, check in with me there!) In all honesty, I’m not going to begin in earnest until the 8th, when I’m back at school and off the break, but I’ll try and keep track of anything I do in the meantime. My next progress update for Japanese is going to be on the 10th February and I’ll list some shorter-term, specific goals then.
  • Study the language of the day for 20m a day. – This is a secondary priority, though I really want to work on these languages too. I’m hoping I’ll be able to come up with some kind of routine where I study all my languages every day (i.e. I’m looking for somewhere to work that isn’t my room so that I stay focussed) but that’s really a longer-term goal.
  • Keep up my Memrise streak. – I’m on a 35 day streak so far, which is my longest yet! Granted, some of those days I’ve only watered a couple of plants, but there’s only one course I have at the moment I think where I have over 100 plants to water. I’m hoping I can keep this streak up throughout February; it’s really motivating!
  • Make some progress toward my New Year’s Goals. – So I outlined those specific goals in this post, but didn’t make a whole load of progress toward them last month. I think that tracking times for the 6WC will change that – and I’m going to try and stay on track a little more. I’m specifically going to work on the reading/watching/writing aspects, which shouldn’t be super difficult, just a little time-consuming.
  • Complete the #uTalkChallenge for February. – I don’t know if it’s still called that in Feb, but I’m gonna call it that anyway – like I said before, I’ve chosen Moroccan Arabic this time because I’m planning a trip to Spain and Morocco over the Easter break in March! Hopefully I won’t be running through all the recall sections in the last few days this time! 😉

Non-language Goals.

  • Blog at least once a week. – Yes, I managed this last month but I’m still wary about taking this goal off my list. Working with a blog calendar has been such a help – but I guess my general goal for this month is going to be to plan a little more and prep my posts in advance. If I can get half my posts ready to go at least 24 hours before they’re due, that’ll be fantastic.
  • Workout 30m a day/four times a week. – I’m a member of a gym now (until the 16th March, I think) and I need to get on that half marathon training grind, so I have a plan and I have runs to do. I also want to get back into Blogilates; that’s just something that makes me feel so much stronger. I need to find a time of day that works for me (early morning, unfortunately, is not possible because I’m not getting up at 04:30 to workout!) and motivate myself to keep going.
  • Write 500 words a day. – I was thinking of dropping this goal and kind of giving up for a while (I do have a lot of other stuff to do); but then last month I noticed people on Twitter tweeting their word counts with the hashtag #JanWritingChallenge. So I started joining in on the 1st (#FebWritingChallenge) and now I guess I’ve committed to this? I’ve managed 500+ words a day so far – it’s so handy to have Google Docs on my phone – and it’s a nice decompressing kind of activity at the end of my day.

I think that’s it. This one was super long, but I’ve not been around in a few days and I’ve had a lot of chill time to think about what I want to achieve. Let me know what your goals are for February – we have an extra day this month, too, so how are you planning on using that?

(And, as ever, if you fancy joining the Clear the List linkup, here are the rules:

Maximize Your Month

1. Share your goal post whether it includes your aspirations for the month or year. Submissions unrelated to the theme or links to your homepage will be deleted.

2. Link back to this post. You can use our button if you wish.

3. Follow the hosts: Esther from Local Adventurer, Lindsay from Lindsay Does Languages, Mariah from Food, Booze & Baggage, and Shannon from Eurolinguiste.

4. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: Please visit the site of the person who linked up immediately before you and leave them an encouraging comment! By hosting this linkup, we’re hoping to create a positive community where we can all share our goals. If you do not do this, you will be removed from the linkup.

5. Share on social media using #ClearTheList.)

4 Comments

    • Thanks! 🙂 Yeah, January was pretty good but February’s looking that way too.

      Honestly, I only get my steps done when I’m not at home in the UK because I can’t actually drive and have no one to do that out here. I use public transport, but all that walking to/from the bus stops and train station adds up. I think I killed it last week though – I was off on holiday and walked 20,000+ steps most days and now my legs genuinely hurt 🙁 I didn’t really realise you could do that haha!

    • Thanks! Yeah, it can be so hard to get motivated about writing I think, even if I’m enjoying it once I get going! Good luck with your February too! 😀

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