Fading interest is natural In the summer 2018, inspired by my recent trip to Russia, I set out to learn the Russian language as quickly as possible. I completed all 7 levels of Memrise within a couple of months and then jumped up to Russian TV shows soon afterwards. I was studying 3–6 hours…

In 2017, I embarked on a once in a lifetime journey to climb the highest mountain in North America. Denali stands at 20,310 ft. (6,190 m) only 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Alaska. Due to the heavy pack weight and terrible weather, Denali is considered one of…

From an objective standpoint, I had a great life before I took mushrooms in Mexico. I was a newly minted digital nomad and high on life. The Mexican food, people, expat circles, and lifestyle had me in a trance. Even though I only had one architecture client (my previous boss)…

Single People Do Not Buy Tiny Homes I designed 30+ custom tiny homes, which were shipped all over the U.S. Not one client was a single person. The reasoning behind this I can only speculate, but it has to do with where you can legally park them. Single people want to live in urban centers and get…

My perfect hypothetical scenario — This is a 100% hypothetical scenario if I had $20,000 free and clear and no other obligations. Right now, I’m learning Finnish and am currently halfway from A2 to B1. I thought long and hard about how I would structure my life if I had all the time and resources…

In September 2022, I finally got serious about the Finnish language once and for all, putting in an average of 2–3 hours per day for a whole year. The road to get to this level of seriousness was rocky. I started and quit Finnish several times before this point. …

When context wins over subtitles — When reading subtitles, our brain tends to focus on the reading and not the listening part. Reading subtitles works, but doing so all the time is very inefficient. The workaround for this is watching high-context videos, where the vocabulary can be intuited by the scene itself. Dramas typically have little…

Skip the writing system / written standard You are under no obligation to learn any characters or separate written standard. Your decision to learn to read and write all depends on your language goals. Speaking and listening are the number 1 signs of language competence. If you can understand fast spoken speech, you’ll know what your coworkers…

At the beginning of a language journey, learners typically have a lot of enthusiasm. They imagine their idealized self speaking the language and the benefits that come with fluency. Every little break-through reinforces this future self as their vision becomes closer to reality. The gap widens Over time, the gap between the obligatory…