I jailbroke my Kindle inspired by Damnit Jeff’s video using Winterbreak (at the time the latest jailbreak). It wasn’t very difficult. If you have an old kindle lying around like I did (mine was like ten years old), then I implore you to jailbreak yours as well. My kindle used to be something that sat in my closet for years collecting dust. Jailbreaking it has breathed new life into it. With my new digital setup of no longer having a smartphone and after turning my computer into an actual dumb computer, my jailbroken kindle is something I actually use now! It brings me a lot of joy.

There are many excited things you can do with a jailbroken kindle. Here are some of the things I’ve enjoyed about my new (old) kindle.

KOreader, RSS, and custom screensavers.

By far the best improvement to the kindle is the KOreader. It allows you to easily access all of your files and read any PDFs or EPUBs that you transfer to your Kindle via usb connection from your computer. It also gives you access to a high level of customization when it comes to how you actually read your books! It’s great for being able to read PDFs that wouldn’t otherwise fit nicely on a smaller screen, and I have seen guides for using it to read comic books that would otherwise be difficult to read on a kindle.

I’ve included RSS and custom screensavers here as well because even though these are great features on their own they actually come bundled into KOreader. That being said the screensavers only are active when using KOreader, but KOreader is what I use my jailbroken kindle for 90% of the time anyway, so it works out. I’ve included some pictures of my custom screensavers. I think the the e-ink, all black and white display makes them look really nice. The way they look and the feeling of e-ink screens especially with some nice art looks and feels very satisfying. I made about 40 of these different screensavers and set them up to fit the screensize perfectly. Some have transparent elements as well. If you’d like access, I can share the folder with you. Just email me.

As far as RSS goes, I just discovered this feature today, and I am beyond stoked. I am a HUGE fan of RSS. Now that I’ve gone dumb, RSS feels especially valuable. It allows me to keep up with friends, see what’s going on with the world, and helps me feel less alone. I hope more people ditch their social media and start blogs with RSS feeds instead.

Kwordle

Developers have created a small handful of other fun uses for the kindle. Kindle’s own version of wordle with infinite words for the day is one of them. So far I’ve pulled out my kindle several times on the train or bus to play a game of wordle on my kindle.

Gambatte and Gargoyle

Gambatte and Gargoyle are two game emulators that allow for infinite possibilities when it comes to the kindle. Gambatte for one is a gameboy emulator. With the very low framerate you can’t play any games requiring quick reflexes or moves, but you could use it to play slower paced games like turn based RPGs. I personally haven’t used this much yet, but I would really like to. Thanks to GB Studio, a free game engine, people are now developing new games for the gameboy which really allows for infinite possibilities. Developing gameboy games for a gameboy emulator on a kindle is like a roundabout way of easily creating software to run on the system without needing to be an expert programmer. I’d like to make a gameboy game specifically designed to work well with a low frame rate that would run well on a kindle. Maybe something like a puzzle game. Gargoyle is the other game emulator that’s definitely worth mentioning on the kindle. This one allows you to run interactive fiction. I’ve played around with this some so far, and it’s very exciting. Interactive fiction are also known as text adventures. They’re essentially games with no images (usually). They can be basically like choose your own adventures a lot of the time, but much more complicated. Anyway though, having Gargoyle on your jailbroken kindle is just another great way to make use of these clunky, fun little devices. Just be mindful when installing this (and everything else for that matter) what version of kindle you are on (like 5.16 vs 5.15). Several times when troubleshooting new apps I ran into compatability issues due to trying to run the wrong versions of software.

I clicked on Summer’s Last Resort looking for something chill and funny to have on in the background. Five minutes into the movie though I was shocked to see a photo montage full of AI slop photos. I have nothing against trashy TV or trashy movies existing. I think overall it’s fine for those things to exist, so I don’t mind watching them knowing that my attention will go towards funding more similar content. I do have a problem with AI though and AI slop, so I turned it off. Even ironically or just to see how bad it is, I refuse to consume AI slop content because consuming it, even just to talk about how trash it is, will end up creating more of it. All that to say if you don’t want something to exist in the world then stop giving the people making it money.

I’ve tried and failed to create a card game or any tabletop game for that matter literally dozens of times. My goal was always to create a totally new experience. Something that wasn’t out there already. This was a bad approach. Making games has never been something I do for money, and it probably never will be. It’s something I do because I enjoy it. Games are art. Thinking about how a creation will be received by a general audience is a great way to stop the creative process in its tracks. Additionally, the biggest problem with this approach was the “blank page” syndrome it creates. When trying to create something “totally” different and new than any other experience that exists out there, anytime a mechanic, theme, or idea seems influenced or similar to something from another work of art, or in this case game, it has to be shot down to preserve the unique identity of one’s creation. This kills the creative process.

It is okay to be influenced by another work, and now I actually seek it out and define at the start of my creative process often what other works I’ll be stealing from. My creative voice will always be present in the work. Humans can’t help but imbue their own creative direction into the projects they work on. This approach gives you starting place. Something to riff on which with time will become increasingly your own. The book Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon explores this idea more.

I used to fantasize about being on a spaceship going to Mars- not because I care about space. I don’t, and in fact I think that is one more of the things we should stop doing (burning resources, so that people can leave our fucked planet). I fantasized about the time I’d have. The time to do focus on things and just exist. It feels like modern life isn’t only designed to destroy existence itself, but also to destroy our abilities to just exist. Existence in this moment is all we have. I’m very thankful for it.

A dumb computer is a term I made up for a computer without a browser nor a way to download and install a browser. It has no app store. No social media etc. Basically it is the dumb phone of computers. This isn’t to say there’s nothing to do on my dumb computer. I actually have a lot of software installed on it. I have things like games, email, my RSS reader, online banking, online shopping, and travel booking. This brings me to the why behind my dumb computer.

Why?

I already have a dumb phone, but it is easy to replace scrolling on a phone with scrolling on a computer. The purpose of my dumb computer is to have a device where I can access software that’s useful to me without the infinite, toxic wasteland of having the entire internet at my fingertips. The internet has many great uses. I love a lot of what it allows me to do. What I hate is alogirthimc never ending streams of content desiged to distract, AI slop, ads, and tracking etc. I don’t need or want constant, never ending access to the internet, and I strongly disagree with the idea that people should have that constant access. The internet used to be a place you had to go. It was relegated to the family desktop, a computer lab, library, or internet cafe. Wi-fi wasn’t everywhere. I think things are better that way. My dumb computer still allows me to do useful, fun, and entertaining things while not having any direct access to the world wide web at large. This allows me to be present in my own life, productive, and still enjoy the benefits of having this technology with some internet enabled services.

You might also be wondering, why not just use self control, and/or some internet blocking software like Cold Turkey. Well, believe it or not the setup I have is EASIER. Despite being more work to setup and more planning initially, once it’s setup my life is actually way easier and simpler. Exercising willpower to manage screentime is a losing battle which is exhuasting to manage. Using blockers works great for a little while, but eventually there’s an excuse to turn them off. Then once again it takes willpower to turn them back on. This constant going back and forth creates decision fatigue, guilt, and shame, and most importantly doesn’t ever really solve the problem. Digital minimalist life hacks like leaving your phone in the other room, creating screen time limits, etc. trap you in a never ending and exhuasting cycle of constantly managing your screentime and constantly fighting tech giants who continue to try to design their sites and apps to be as addictive as possible. How many times have I heard, “I am trying to do x with my phone.” (or iPad, or whatever), and how many times do those devices and apps always seem to slowly but surely creep their way back into our lives, distracting us from being present, creating mental fog, and fucking up our sleep schedules. It’s just not worth it and never really solves the problem. This is why I believe having no smart devices at all and getting rid of your smart phone, social media accounts, etc. COMPLETELY is the only real, lasting solution. It takes the decision fatigue out of it and makes your life easier despite culture telling us it makes life easier to have a smart phone and constant internet access. August Lamm, an anti-tech activist, went one step further and in addition to only having a dumb phone, got rid of her laptop completely which I think is an awesome solution as well. Another great solution I think, is just not having any wifi or internet access at home (in addition to of course only having a dumb phone).

How?

So lastly, how did I actually create a dumb computer? What I did will illustrate a little bit more of why I consider my computer to be a dumb computer. To start, I made a list of things I wanted to be able to do on my computer like online banking and online shopping etc. I downloaded and installed software to meet the different uses I wanted my computer to have. For several things I wanted to be able to use my computer for though, I couldn’t find a good piece of software to install directly to accomplish. This is where a GitHub repository called Pake came in handy.

I used Pake to turn useful websites into progressive web apps. This basically just let me install some useful websites as software directly on my computer. Things like ebay.com for ordering things, OpenStreetMaps (an alternative to google maps) for planning routes, and a travel booking site for booking flights are all examples of what I used Pake for. Using Pake I was able to install many things that I would normally require a browser to access, but now I could access directly on my computer. This way I could directly accomplish the different tasks I’d like to with my computer without getting lost browsing the internet. I made sure NOT to install any websites that could be time wasters or distractions like YouTube for example. I didn’t want anything on my computer that gave me the ability to endlessly scroll. Instead for entertainment I installed an app for the streaming service “Tubi”. I also made sure to specifically buy a laptop with a DVD drive in order to watch movies and TV shows I have on DVD. I don’t find movies and TV shows distracting at all. I rarely watch them on my own, so for me this was a good option to still have some entertainment accessible.

Finally, the most important step is to uninstall the ability to get new software and to browse the web. I’m on Windows, and Windows tries to prevent you from doing this. Thankfully, there are several helpful guides that a quick google search show. Essentially it just comes down to typing a command into your Command Prompt terminal. Even if you’re unfamiliar with using the terminal, if you just search online “How do I uninstall Microsoft Edge?”, you’ll find the guides are very easy to follow. You can pretty much copy and paste the commands to accomplish this. So one by one, I uninstalled the Microsoft app store, Microsoft Edge, and finally a command line program called “Winget” which allows you to install apps from the web. After completing this, there’s no way to install apps on the computer directly from the web anymore, and there’s no way to browse the web! Of course, I can still use many of the programs I have installed which might make use of the internet. Some of those programs might contain links to the internet, I’m hapy to say, clicking those links just results in an error window due to not having a browser.

I intentionally chose software which allows me to make use of the internet without being able to endlessly browse or scroll. If I have a question that I don’t know the answer to, I can ask someone around me, just accept not knowing the answer, or walk to the library and use one of their computers to search the internet! It’s a very nice feeling. What’s nice about this setup too is you can use Pake to install whatever you’d like to install and customize the setup. For example you can turn Wikipedia into an installable app on your computer if you’d like to. When creating apps with Pake just remember to NOT check the box which allows the app to open links within it. Doing that would allow you to browse the web using the app if it has any kinds of links that lead off of the site. As long as that box is unchecked it is totally self contained, and you can only use the app to access that one website. If I ever find that my computer is lacking anything that I’d like to have, I can always put additional software on a USB using someone else’s computer or the library computers to install on my computer.

So that’s it. This has been my setup for two weeks. It’s been extremely refreshing to use my computer like this. It feels like being a kid again where I actually have time again to do the things I want and most importantly to me, I’m present in my own life. If you’re wondering how do I publish blog posts with this setup, I have GitHub desktop installed which allows me to push commits to my website! :)

I also have a small TV in my bedroom. It’s not a smart TV, but it did have one of those little smart TV boxes plugged into it. This would be fine if it weren’t for YouTube. YouTube as a platform is one that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with. I have spent literally thousands of hours of my life using it. It has taught me, inspired me, and entertained me, but most of all, distracted me. It’s one of those apps that you delete, but like a cockroach that can’t be squashed always ends up back on your screen. Long story short, I put the smart box thing in my closet and replaced it with my DVD player. That way if I’d like to I can still use the TV in my bedroom to watch movies or TV shows from DVD. It’s just completely free of addictive algorithms and ragebait content. Also full disclosure: I do still have a smart TV in the living room where I do still watch some YouTube. It’s just less accessible and thus less attention grabbing.

The last thing I wanted to mention here is my computer. I haven’t gone full August Lamm or Robin Greenfield yet, and I do still have a computer. This is due to two things:

1. I don’t want to make online purchase like booking flights using my card on public wifi and visible to anyone walking past.
2. I also don’t want to do my banking at the library as well for the same reason.

I know there are other workarounds to this like doing banking in a physical location, and buying airline tickets using a travel agent or by calling the company. I’m just not there yet. I’ve been pretty happy and content with the results so far of dumbing down my life. My computer is also very old and very broken. It only functions right now as a desktop computer, so that’s been nice. I still probably will eventually go completely home computer free though. For now I am experimenting with cold turkey. My idea is to block the entire internet and whitelist only the absolute barebones essentials: banking, email, maps, and travel booking. Essentially turning my computer into an offline device except for extremely minimal usage for these basic websites. I’m thinking of locking this block with only the ability to unlock it at a very inconvenient time, that way if I ever changed my mind about it, I could unlock it by staying up till 2AM or something like that. I haven’t worked out the details yet, but using the computer for just these basic sites makes me feel like I’m living during the time of the old internet when it was really just a tool, and that feels good.

I’ve used three different dumbphones prior to this as an adult, the quality/user experience varied with those. So far the Dumbphone 2 has been extremely solid though. Everything works really well. The buttons are snappy. Texting, calling, Whatsapp, Maps, and 2 factor authentication all work great! The app I was most pleasantly surprised with was the music player app. I bought a 64gb sim card, and put a couple hundred albums from my Bandcamp collection on it. Along with dozens of podcasts episodes downloaded using https://podcasttomp3.com/. The player works really great. It even saves my spot in a podcast episode, so that I can come back to it later. I was prepared to go without good quality for all of these things, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out they all work great. The only app I have had trouble with so far is Uber, but that’s ok.

The worst part about using a dumbphone is not anything about the phone itself. The worst part about switching to a dumbphone is you notice, how alone you are in this pursuit. I don’t mean to say you can’t be social with a dumbphone. A common concern people have about switching is that they will lose touch with friends or won’t be able to socialize as much. I feel like the opposite is really true. I have so much more time to socialize now, and there’s nothing to do on my phone to distract me from calling or texting a friend. I’ve made more phone calls to friends in the past week or so using my dumbphone than I did in several months using my smart phone, so that’s not what I’m referring to. Once, I switched I realized how few of us there were. August Lamm’s work is immensely helpful to feel less alone in this.

I spent the entire day going about the city this past weekend. It felt empowering to know I could travel all over the city and run several errands with just my dumbphone. I live in a big city. I saw hundreds of people throughout the day with hundreds of smartphones. I don’t think I saw a single dumbphone. Even among dumbphone users I feel alone because of how many people use a dumbphone only temporarily while still maintaining a smartphone. I was in this bucket too for many years. Almost no one is taking the plunge and completely selling their smartphone for just a dumbphone. It’s frusterating to see how many people want to, but feel like they can’t. Digital minimalism is really trendy right now. A lot of people are putting screentime blockers on their phones and coming up with strategies like only using certain apps on certain days. A lot of people are frusterated and failing with these half-measures as well. It’s frustrating to watch. The solution feels like it’s right in front of people, and many people even fantasize about it. If you have ever fantasized about getting rid of your smartphone completely, I urge you to just do it. Buy the Dumbphone 2 from dumb.co, and go to your nearest Apple store (if you have iPhone) and trade in your phone for cash. I did, and it feels great.

Other than August Lamm and Robin Greenfield, I have found one other person online who has gone the hardcore, selling their smartphone route. (I’m positive there are others. They are just anomolies.) Here is his video:

If you missed it, I sold my smartphone a few days ago. The only phone I have now is the dumbphone 2 by dumb.co. It’s still setting in that I won’t have a smartphone again. I’m just not the type of person to make a big purchase on a whim, and I don’t like buying things. Switching back to a smartphone just isn’t something I’d ever have a reason to do, and it’s just so weird having to adjust my mindset to the idea that I don’t have a computer in my pocket always. In the past, I would allow myself to keep my smartphone, but that never really made the switch feel real or final. I always knew there was a backdoor, and I feared I’d go back to it. I also always did.

I go on my computer now just for a few minutes a day. Cold Turkey only allows 1 hour a day of internet use. It’s like being a kid again. If I wanted to change this restriction, I’d have to wait till a specific time during the day to change it. When that time comes around, I’m never thinking about it, and I would only change it if there was something absolutely critical I needed to do which there most likely won’t ever be. Almost everything can wait till tomorrow.

Now, I check my email or RSS feeds for a couple minutes, and close my browser. There’s just not really anything to do on it. It feels good and refreshing to engage with the internet in a normal, non addictive nor manic way. I’ll work on a game I’m writing or something like that, and that’s it. There’s nothing on it that is really screaming at me to scroll forever. YouTube shorts are blocked forever thanks to Cold Turkey. They’ve been blocked for years on my computer, and I’ve never felt the difference. They’re blocked with a password, that I don’t know. In other words, I’d have to completely reset Cold Turkey in order to access YouTube shorts. That will never be worth it. I also deleted my social media accounts years ago, and they don’t let you scroll unless you have an account for the most part. So yeah, I feel like I finally just get to exist. To add onto all of that, my laptop has a busted screen and no battery, so I have converted it into a desktop. Using it someplace other than my desk is basically impossible. It only has 2GB of ram, and can handle pretty much just one task at a time. My large goal with digital minimalism is just to go back to the way the internet and technology used to feel, prior to algorithms and companies stealing our attention. I think I’ve gotten there for the most part with my current setup.

One of the changes, I’ve noticed already and pretty instantly, was the pretty much immediate uptick in my creative impulses. There are so many more small moments in my day, where things are just silent.I’m just listening to my thoughts, and I find myself planning out creative projects or coming up with ideas. I have more thoughts in general because of it! I want to write them down or make things like I used to. It’s only been a couple days, but pretty much everyday, I’ve either read or done something creative like write or draw. I haven’t read or engaged with my creative hobbies in what feels like forever, so that’s really nice. I have been craving some substance like that in my life for a long time. With all of my attention being sucked into endless algorithms, it wasn’t an option before. It finally is though. It feels like I’m coming back to who I used to be before smartphones were so addicting.

It’s surreal. I’ve had a smartphone for years. I’ve had various dumbphone phases. I’ve dumbed down smart phones, and owned at least three dumb phones as an adult. I’ve tried lots of different setups. I never took the full plunge though, and ONLY had a dumbphone. There was always a fear. I got the dumbphone 2 from dumb.co yesterday and spent the day getting my contacts imported, switching my whatsapp account over, and letting friends know, I won’t be texting as much anymore. The phone comes with maps, uber, 2FA, whatsapp, and signal. There really was no reason anymore not to switch.

I had several days to wait before the dumbphone arrived. While I waited, I thought about what I’d do once it arrived. Part of me was going back to the old problem solving tactics, “What if I just keep my smartphone in the storage area downstairs? I’ve never had a storage area before, so I could use this!” or “What if I asked a friend to hold on to it?” While excitedly awaiting my dumbphone in the mail, I watched every video I could find about dumbphones, and life with a dumbphone. There was a common trend with what felt like almost all of them. They never fully got rid of their smartphone. The titles of these videos or articles would always be something like “I ditched my smartphone.” Never, “I sold my smartphone.” It was never fully gone. Almost all of them eventually switched back, after 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or even after a 1 year break. It was disheartening how few people actually committed to this lifestyle change. It fed my fears, that it really is “impossible”. Afterall, all of these people had to switch back at some point because eventually they encountered a problem that needed a smartphone to overcome. Until, I heard someone mention August Lamm, and her work inspiring their dumbphone journey. I found her site: https://augustlamm.com, and I read everything and listened to every interview I found.

She had done it. She had no smartphone at all. She moved to a new city with no smartphone, and she even got rid of her computer completely. She continued to work, make friends, navigate, and do all of the things responsible adults need to do. With just a dumbphone. She didn’t even have a computer. There was no crutch anymore. It was just existing. That was it. No alternative, digital reality to dip your head in and out of every few minutes. She was permanantely unplugged. This made me realize several things:

1. There is no reason someone “needs” a smartphone.* Her new book is appropriately titled, You Don’t Need a Smartphone

2. Keeping your smartphone somewhere, anywhere is a crutch. It’s just the addiction talking, telling us we still need to have a “way out”. It’s like we’re scared of reality.

3. Not only is keeping your smartphone a crutch, but I think the addictive design of it always leads people to get back on their devices one day eventually. Otherwise, all of these people who switch to dumbphones and talk about loving the experience and prefering it would never switch back. One day, for one reason or another they start their smartphone again, and they’re back to believing they “need” it.

So that’s it. I have no crutch anymore. It hasn’t fully hit yet. I mostly just feel happy. I’m sure it’ll be painfully boring at times, but I’ll do my best to bring a book or something with me everywhere, and savor the realization and knowledge that I am in fact alive. You really don’t need a smartphone. Most folks want to believe they have a special reason they still need to hang on to their smartphone, but it just isn’t true. The “inconvenient” alternatives aren’t impossible. There’s always a workaround. If your bank requires you to have a smartphone. You can bank elsewhere. There’s no reason we need to unconsciously accept every new “improvement” to our lives companies hand us. You can opt out at anytime.

*The only exception I can think of for this might be for someone with a disability, where a smartphone helps them navigate the world. Everything else is usually just a justification because the person just wants to keep using their smartphone at the end of the day.

• My story of learning hindi
• Where I started
• When I started seriously learning hindi
• What I did to learn
• What I plan on doing going forward

I have been acquiring/learning Hindi off and on for years. Sometimes through more traditional methods, and sometimes through just natural immersion. The traditional methods mixed with reading and speaking too early on, set me back in my language learning journey. There was too much concsious learning and practice early on which fucked up my accent and caused me to not have natural native like grammar. That being said, thanks to the natural immersion and comprehensible input that I did do, I did still acquire a good bit of Hindi.

About 1.5 years ago, I decided I wanted to finally take learning Hindi more seriously and hopefully undo the damage I did as well as see actual growth. I was always familiar with Stepehn Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and liked the idea of learning a language through just comprehensible input. The problem was, I didn’t know if it was actually possible nor did I really know what comprehensible input would actually look like. I only fully understand how this theory could be applied successfully once I discovered Automatic Language Growth (ALG) and Dreaming Spanish. They essentially provided the blueprint for me going forward. The Dreaming Spanish roadmap was the perfect roadmap for me to stay on track.

The Dreaming Spanish Roadmap.

Unfortunately, since I wasn’t using ALG from the beginning, I had no idea how many hours of input I had actually done, so I had to guess based on the different level descriptions. After reading through the full description for Level 5 though which I found in this pdf, it seemed to fit me and the level I felt I was at perfectly.

You can understand people well when they speak directly to you. They won’t need to adapt their speech for you. Understanding a conversation between native speakers is still hard. You’ll almost understand TV programs in the language, because you understand so many of the words, but they are still hard enough to leave you frustrated or bored. Conversation can be tiresome, and if you try to speak you can feel a bit like a child, since it will be hard to express abstract concepts and complex thoughts. You understand most of the words used during daily conversation, but you still can’t use many yourself. If you try to speak the language, it will feel like you are missing many important words. However, you can, often, already speak with the correct intonation patterns of the language, without knowing why, and even make a distinction between similar sounds in the language when you say them out loud.

Next, I needed to figure out how many approximate hours of input this meant I had under my belt. Dreaming Spanish says to take the roadmap estimated hours of input and double them if the language you are learning is quite different from your native language. This meant that I had about 1,200 hours of input done already with 800 hours to get to the next level of 2000 (i.e. level 6 out of 7). I started 2025 off with exactly 300 tracked hours. That meant I had 500 more to go if I wanted to hit level 6 out of 7 on the roadmap. It’s January 1st now, just a few minutes after midnight, and I’m happy to say that I did hit 800 tracked hours before the year ended which should put me at approximately 2,000 hours and level 6 out of 7.

I tracked my stats using the iPhone app Habit, but you can also use Loop Habit Tracker for android which I actually prefer.

So what did my method actually look like? Since, I was already at level 5 out of 6 a lot of easier native content was accessible to me. Even the content that was more difficult I would just listen to anyway. I definitely priortized quantity over quality of input. Which I know doesn’t produce the best results, but the way I chose to look at is any results are better than no results. The reason being if I agonized over getting the perfect CI input, and then made sure I was 100% fully paying attention the whole time while listening, I just never would have done any CI input. So that being said, I put on whatever content I could find in the background while living my life, podcasts, youtube videos, shitty romance audiobooks, classic and popular audiobooks (translated into Hindi of course) like 1984 and The Alechemist. I prioritized just creating the habit of listening as opposed to making sure I was doing things in the ideal way. This meant that I would listen to input while doing house chores, commuting, or even while playing video games that don’t require a lot of focus, games without any text or words like simple platformers. Once again, obviously not ideal input, but it works for me. I was immersing in the language.

The biggest gamechanger for me was turning my daily listening goal into an unskippable habit. It was very inconvenient at times, but I made it my rule for awhile that I simply wouldn’t go to bed if I hadn’t completed my listening for the day. My daily goal started out small with just 20 minutes a day, but then I slowly increased this amount more and more until it was eventually 1 hour a day of daily listening. I found that while my larger goals seemed so distant and far away seeing my daily progress was extremely rewarding. It let me go to sleep everyday with a sense of accomplishment. Even if I had a lazy day or felt I didn’t accomplish much I could always point towards this one tiny step of progress towards my larger goals. Additionally, seeing my streak grow everyday had created a positive feedback loop where I would be more motivated to do it everyday. It naturally provided short term goals to shoot for as well. Ultimately I was able to hit a 365 day streak minus one sad little day in the middle where I essentially slept all day.

My one year streak. Each colored in box represents a day where I met my minimum goal (which slowly increased with time).

With all of that being said and done. I am very proud of myself for the growth and consistency I’ve be able to attain in this hobby. I’ve always wanted to be able to have measurable results and really stay consistent with a habit. I plan on continuing to do projects and goals like this. However, I feel like I certainly need a break from listening. It has been good, but it also feels like I wasn’t able to be as present in my life at times as I would have liked. The larger goal for the year felt like a lot and starting off with a small daily goal meant I had to play catchup during the latter part of the year. Going forward I plan on continuing to listen to Hindi in this upcoming year, but certainly not everyday. I think it will be just whenever I feel like it. My main goal is going to be to shift into reading actually as the DS roadmap and ALG recommend reading at these later stages. My goal for the year will be to read 1 million words in Hindi. It might end up needing to be a two year goal, but I’ll see how it goes! Getting into reading has been something I’ve looked forward to for a long time in Hindi, and while 1 million words certainly seems like a lot, I will most likely read the Harry Potter series in Hindi to attain this (If I’m able to). So that’s it. That’s my year in review for learning Hindi as well as how I got to where I am, and where I plan on going. Happy new year!