Tips for improving productivity and focus

While the whole time management and goal/reward system is important, there’s another obstacle that frequently stands in my way: focusing on the scheduled task at hand.

Once I actually sit down at my desk, I often have a hard time actually getting sh*t done. I will do anything to avoid doing work. I’ll clean my desk, browse the New York Times, skim the Twitter headlines, respond to messages on my phone, organize my email, make a to-do list, alphabetize my files… I pretend that I’m being productive, but in reality I’m just avoiding my work.

Inspired by this Reddit post, which I found extremely helpful and highly encourage you to read, I’ve designed my own guide for keeping focus while working:

Before you sit down to work

(I usually do these one day prior before I leave the office for the night):

• Write down your 3 Most Important Tasks (MITs) for the day. As I talked about in my previous post about time management, I keep all of my weekly goals/tasks organized in Google calendar. However, when writing down my MITs, I use my Google calendar as a reference and use an old-fashioned post-it and pen to write down my MITs for the day.
• Break down into manageable tasks. Again using a post-it and pen and making a hierarchy of concrete and manageable tasks. For example:
• Revise urban modernity article
• Read over comments that Sara gave you
• Revise document according to Sara’s comments
• Re-read empirical section and revise focusing on improving thick description
• Revise theory section according to reviewer’s comments
• Write an hour by hour task list for the day and include time for breaks or administrative tasks (e.g., checking your email or getting a flu shot).
• Use Chrome Nanny or other similar apps to block access to Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube (adjust according to your addiction status… these three sites are currently on lock down on my desktop 24/7)

When you sit down to do work:

• Have a pen and blank post-it next to you to write down any other “to-do” tasks that come to your mind. So that when you think, “Oh crap, I gotta call my mom back!” or “I need to write Tim an email!” you write down on your post-it, “email Tim” instead of opening your email and entering the rabbit hole labyrinth of Gmail.
• Chew on gum or suck on a cough drop or other hard candy. I heard once that there was scientific research saying that chewing on gum improves your concentration. It works for me.
• Turn off your phone (or put it on airplane mode or put it in another room or do not disturb mode or completely silent), close your email (yes! close it! no one is going to die if it takes you 2+ hours to respond to their email), and shut down your chat windows (Skype, Facebook, iMessage, Gchat, etc… the messages will still be there when you get back, I promise). It might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s more difficult and also more helpful than you might realize.
• If there’s useless and endless chatter happening in your brain, write it down! Keep a doc on your desktop titled, “distractions.” When you find yourself thinking about your ex-boyfriend, or how much you hate your neighbor, or how much your mom upset you last night, or whatever other drama is happening in your life, open that doc and write down what’s on your mind. Just get it all down and then get back to work.
• Tell yourself, “I’m just going to work for 5 minutes and then I’ll take a break.” Even though I know I’m going to keep working after 5 minutes, this tricks my brain every single time! It reluctantly agrees to work for 5 minutes. Once I get started, it’s easy to keep going.
• Sometimes I find myself frozen because I have so many things on my to-do list and I don’t know where to start. I have 4 urgent things that need to get done right then, so I just sit there not doing anything. When this happens, I usually get out a pen and paper and write down a list of “what I would do right now if I had all the time in the world.” After I write down everything I can think of that I need to do, I pick the three most important things on that list and write them on a post-it, ranking them in order of importance from 1-3. I start with number one and work from there. If I finish what’s on that post-it, I go back to the master list, pick out another 3 things and write them on a new post-it. You should have done this already with the 3 MITs, but sometimes I get overwhelmed and need to start over from a master list.
• I love this video by Matthew Hussey on how to handle stress like a Spartan: take out each soldier one at a time; don’t think about the whole army.  
• Turn on your Toggl timer.

While you’re working:

• Break up your work into 25 minute chunks with 5 minute breaks or 50 minute chunks with 10-minute breaks (pomodoro technique).
• Get your music on. I listen to classical or white noise.
• If you find yourself in the middle of a work session, and you get writer’s block, or your mind wanders, or you get distracted, or you want to put your head down and go to sleep, or you just don’t want to work, take a few deep breaths, and:
• Tell yourself some motivational phrases, such as "you got this," or "this will all be over soon," or like that below:

• Focus your mind on a motivational image or think about obtaining something you desire: imagine yourself on the day you graduate with your PhD, or the day you pass your comps, a stack of money, your proud parents, a car… anything that will motivate you to get back to work.
  
• I often close my eyes and imagine myself succeeding in what I’m doing.
• I often tell myself I only have to work for 5 more minutes.
• I'll tell myself, “If I finish this task, I get to watch one episode of New Girl, or treat myself to a Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks" (or something like that).

GO FORTH AND BE PRODUCTIVE AND REWARD YOURSELF FOR HARD WORK!

Time Management for PhD Students

Why do we care about time management as PhD students?

Time management is one of the hardest, least obvious, most elusive, and most important things to practice as a PhD student, IMO! I think it is key to productivity, but more importantly, good time management is key to maintaining your sanity in grad school. It’s extremely difficult because there is not time card to punch in and out of work, and there is a feeling of guilt that follows us everywhere when we’re not working. So maintaining good time management habits are key for keeping the work/life balance in check.

At the beginning of the week:

• Make concrete, reasonable goals for each week. I try to stick to making 3 or 4 goals each week.
• After you write down your goals, it’s all about the TIME CHUNKING, baby! Time chunking means breaking down larger tasks into smaller tasks that can be accomplished in 30-60 minutes or less. The credit for this goes to Dr. Glenda Russell with CAPS. She is amazing. When she first told me about it, I tried it and my life changed forever. Here is how I do it; adjust accordingly to your needs and personality type:
• First I make around 4 concrete goals per week. As an example, let’s say one of those goals is to “Organize field research from last semester.”
• Then I use the “Tasks” function in Google calendar, but you can use a pen and paper or any other cool app you might have found.
• Underneath the main task I write all of the little subtasks that this one goal is made up of. So it will look like this:
• Organize field research from last semester
• Sort pictures into topical folders
• Translate pictures of propaganda posters
• Code field notes from September
• Read and summarize one journal article
• Time chunking does two crucial things: first, it breaks up one, big formidable task into smaller, more manageable tasks. It plays tricks on your brain so something that seemed insurmountable, and thus an easy target for procrastination, becomes less intimidating. Second, chunking creates multiple tasks that you can check off your list, which feels good in and of itself, but also the act of checking things off a list catalyzes more productivity. Motivation breeds motivation, productivity breeds productivity.
• In addition to having weekly goals, I recommend the following pyramid scheme: Have a 5-year plan, 1-year plan, semester plan, monthly plan, and weekly plan with concrete goals and clear deadlines. They should be detailed accordingly. Edit them regularly.
• Make sure you have someone to hold you accountable for said deadlines. Nothing concentrates the mind like an impending execution, as my adviser is so fond of saying.
• Using the above yearly/monthly/weekly plans as a guideline, keep a really organized calendar with appointments, meetings, and deadlines. Google calendar is the best IMO.

During the week:

• Keep track of the time when you’re actually working. This is so key, my number one piece of advice for productivity, accountability, and stress relief. “Stress relief??” you might be thinking, “Keeping track of my time sounds like stressful way to add another app to my phone.” But YES, STRESS RELIEF. Because sometimes we stress ourselves out thinking, “OMG I didn’t work enough this week!” when in actuality we did 60 hours of work and it’s time for a break. Or sometimes we end the week exhausted, thinking to ourselves, “OMG I’m soooo over-worked!” when in reality we only did 30 hours of work, and we didn’t even realize it but we spent 20 hours organizing and reorganizing our inbox, reading BuzzFeed and stalking our ex on facebook. Time tracking is a fantastic reality check that makes sure you’re actually doing work and makes sure you're not over-working yourself either. Kind of like calorie counting your food. I use the software called Toggl. It is amazing. You can choose projects. If you are TAing or teaching, you should include the hours you spend teaching on here as well, that certainly counts as work! This will divide the time you spend working into different categories. I only have the clock running when I’m actually doing work-- not when I’m walking through campus, getting a cup of coffee, eating lunch, going to the bathroom, or talking with friends. Only when I’m actually doing work is the clock running.  I usually shoot for 40 hours of real work a week, and it will get to up to 60 hours a week during midterms and finals time, or during grant writing and publication deadlines time. For me, 40 hours of real work time usually translated into more than 60 hours in the office a week, but I only have the clock running while I’m actually working. Because I take regular breaks (plus usually have to run around campus for something), I’ll usually get 8 hours of work done for every 10 hours I spend at the office. After you do this for 1 week, you might be surprised by how much or by how little work you actually do during the week.

Here's what the app looks like on your phone:

• Keep track in writing of all your accomplishments during the week. Met with your adviser? Wrote a blog post? Organized your calendar? Read the introduction and conclusion a book (because let’s be real...who has time to read the whole book these days?) Wrote a chapter in your dissertation? Did your laundry? Write it down! I keep track of all my accomplishments for the week on a post-it note and then pin it to the bulletin board behind my computer at the end of the week. It feels good to look back at the end of the week/month/semester on what that I’ve accomplished. Sometimes at the end of the week there is a dreaded feeling: “Ugh, I did NOTHING this week.” But I always have at least one thing written on the post-it (but more often than not I have at least 10 things written down…)
• Keep a research journal where you write down everything that you’ve accomplished, but also are writing summaries of what you’re reading, and any other random thoughts and brilliant insights you have regarding your research topic or what you’ve been reading or thinking about.  
• Wake up at approximately the same time every day. I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But it helps. I don’t know if it’s psychological or physiological, but my brain likes waking up at the same time every morning. I’m not saying you have to wake up early and immediately do work or go to the office. I’ll wake up early on the weekend to read (sometimes even, dare I say it, FICTION! *gasp*), watch TV, or make breakfast. It’s nice having a slow morning to do whatever you want and enjoy yourself. You might feel better than if you sleep until noon. Sometimes I like being productive, and I might clean the house. Sometimes I like being active, and I’ll go exercise. Sometimes I like getting stuff done so I can enjoy the rest of my Saturday, and I’ll go into the office early in the morning on Saturday and do work, which allows me to enjoy a guilt-free afternoon in the sunshine.
• Turn off your phone! Sometimes I find myself getting really anxious and/or going slightly insane with the constant obsession to check my phone and urgent need to respond immediately to messages and email. I’ve noticed that it has helped my mental health and productivity to only check my phone and email 3 times a day: once in the morning, afternoon, and night. Yes, that’s right. Only check your phone 3 times a day. Don’t panic. You might be surprised by how much more productive and relaxed you find yourself to be. And turn off your “read receipts.” Talk about the most anxiety provoking technology ever invented for both parties involved!

At the end of the week:

• REWARD YOURSELF! This is so key. Do not deny pleasure! Rather, delay the pleasure until after you’ve accomplished one of your goals. This can include, depending on the size of the goal accomplished:
• Checking email (my friends laugh at me when I tell them I use checking email as a reward, but this actually works! I don’t let myself open my email until I’ve done 2 hours of writing in the morning, and this actually concentrates my mind and gets me motivated to write because I know I need to check my email ASAP)
• Social media-ing- I don’t let myself Facebook until I’ve accomplished something. I also have Chrome Nanny on my internet browser that won’t let me Facebook for more than 10-minutes a day.
• Playing on your phone- whether it’s playing games or chatting with friends, I use checking my phone or sending a friend a message as motivation to get work done
• Taking the day off
• Watching TV or a movie
• Sleeping in or taking a nap
• Hanging out with a friend
• Throwing a party
• Going hiking
• Taking yourself out to brunch
• Getting a manicure and/or pedicure
• Buying an expensive drink at Starbucks
• Taking your friend out for happy hour

TL;DR: So, to conclude, my formula for smart productivity and time management as a PhD student (aka how to get your work done while not going crazy and actually maybe even getting to enjoy your weekends):

1. Keep track of the time you actually spend working! Keep your time labeled and organized according to each project and what you’ve worked on each week: Toggl is a good tool for this. This will give you a reality check for how much time you’ve actually spent working and will give you a good excuse for some guilt-free relaxation time when you’ve hit your hourly goal for the week.
2. Set clear and attainable weekly goals and employ time chunking: write down concrete, manageable tasks for the week and employ time chunking to break up big tasks into smaller, more manageable and less intimidating tasks.
3. Turn off distractions, especially your phone, email, Facebook, and all other social media.
4. Reward yourself! This one is my favorites! Do this as often as you can.

A day in the life of a PhD student: Part 1, China version

I think the most common question I get from family, friends, and random people I meet at cocktail parties (not that I really go to those) is some version of “what do you do???” and/or “what have you been busy with?” and/or “what does a typical day look like for you?”

Since I just got back from doing field research abroad, I figured I’d answer this question in a two-part series. Since my life looks different when I’m in China versus when I’m in Colorado, I’ll do a post about PhD student life in the US next week. For now, I’ll share with you what I’ve been up to during the past 6 months I’ve been living in China.

My life in China is both incredibly exciting and incredibly boring in different ways at various times. As I mentioned in the previous post, the projects I focused on this summer were my publications, comprehensive exams, field research, language learning, and jiujitsu. So here was a typical day for me this past summer and fall (results varied):

I wake up to the sound of my alarm at 7 am with the full intention of doing some posture-correcting exercises, but decide to go back to sleep for the next 30 minutes instead. When I do finally convince myself to get out of bed, I turn on the radio and listen to the weather, international, and provincial news in Uy while I make oatmeal for breakfast. I brush my teeth, run my fingers through my hair, and get dressed, running out the door at the last possible minute. I apply lipstick as I glance in the reflection of the fire extinguisher case while I wait for the elevator. I practically run to school while listening to a friend’s voice recording of a short story in Uy on my iPhone. 10 minutes later, I’m at the front gate of the XJ Art’s Institute.

I run up the four flights of stairs to my classroom, where my Uy teacher and 5 classmates are waiting. It’s 8:05 am and I’m five minutes late, as per usual. Out of breath, I apologize to my teacher and classmates, and greet them with the typical, “Are you at peace? Have you eaten breakfast? How is your situation? Are you living well?” in Uy We spend the next 2 hours together dissecting magazine articles or reading our own essays we’ve written out loud, as the teacher prompts us with questions about the articles and how it relates to our lives. We talk about a variety of subjects, from love and loneliness, to the importance of money, to the rapid changes of modern society, to technology, to the wealth and education inequality gap. We get out of class at 10 am and I head to the library, where I work on my publications for one hour.

The two main articles I’ve been working on are both about the research I conducted while on the Fulbright from 2011-2012 in Old Nanjing. Many of you are familiar with that if you followed my blog then. One of the articles is about rural migrant workers and the other is about urban modernity and development in Old Nanjing. I submitted both of them to journals over the summer, and both were sent back with substantial revisions, so I’ve been spending a lot of time writing and revising those articles.

At 11, I switch tasks, spending another hour reading a book chapter or article about one of three subjects: urban development, political geography or China. I summarize what I read in an ever-growing document in preparation for the PhD comprehensive exam in February.

At noon, I call a couple local friends and ask if they’d like to eat lunch together. One of them is free and agrees to meet me at the front school gate. We meet and go to a local noodle shop, and have homemade noodles with tomato meat sauce (not unlike spaghetti) and kabob. We chat about life and boys and the future and our dreams and disappointments. As we walk back to school, I ask if they’d like to participate in the survey I’m conducting, so we sit on a bench on the sidewalk and I ask them the 10 questions I’ve been asking everybody- why did you move to the city? Do you plan to return to your hometown eventually? What do you like about the city? What do you like about the countryside?

We return to school around 1:30 and I go back for another 2 hours of Uyghur language instruction until 3:30. If I don’t have class, I work on my publications or study for comps at the library or a coffee shop. When we get out of class, I go back to the library and study Uyghur. I do homework, review the new grammar, and review flashcards, or read some of the short story I’m working through, or prepare for my next meeting with my language tutor.

At 5 pm, I go home and change into my workout clothes for kickboxing or jiujitsu. I settle my red duffel onto my shoulders and grab my bike and head downstairs. I ride through the rush hour traffic across town to the gym. It’s slightly downhill, so I speed through the city streets, weaving in and out of traffic and dodging buses, and arrive at the gym in 20 minutes. I change into my clothes and spend the next 1.5 hours either punching and kicking things or teaching jiujitsu techniques and sparring.

At the end of class, I’m exhausted but happy. I stay afterwards to stretch and talk with friends, practicing my Chinese. At around 8 pm, I change and get my bag and my bike. I head outside and stop at my local rice pilaf restaurant to talk with the owner and the employees, three very kind gentlemen, two young, one old. We talk about their lives in the countryside, and they tell me they greatly prefer working in the city to the countryside but will return to their hometowns when it’s time to get married in a few years (they’re 20 and 21 years old). They too participate in my survey. 

I leave the restaurant around 9:30 and I ride my bike through the upward sloping quiet streets glowing with city lights and the wind whistling in my ears and whipping against my face. I reflect about life, and my research, and the future and the past, the mistakes I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned. My mind is buzzing with thoughts about life, the universe and everything, but riding my bike calms me. I get home around 10, throw in the laundry, jump in the shower, brush my teeth and climb into bed, exhausted but happy. I watch a TV sitcom about a Uy family until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore and fall asleep, waiting to see what the next day will bring.  

This was a “typical” day. Sometimes I didn’t do any work in the library and spent the whole day with friends practicing language. Sometimes I spent the whole day exploring the city and doing field work and conducting the survey. Sometimes I spent the whole day in a coffee shop working on my publications. Sometimes I spent hours in my room reading for comps. Sometimes I took the day off and went biking through the city. Sometimes I went hiking in the mountains just outside the city. Sometimes I stayed at home and worked on my blogs. Sometimes I spent the day cooking and cleaning the house while listening to the radio. Sometimes I spent the whole day just walking around shopping and exploring the market and the neighborhoods around mine. Sometimes I hosted parties at my house that lasted until 5 am. Sometimes I traveled to other parts of the autonomous region. Once I went to Thailand to train jiujitsu for a week.

That’s what I’ve been up to in China for the past 6 months. That’s a typical day in the life of a PhD student doing field research abroad. At least for me anyway.

Language Pledge

I must first apologize for my long absence from the blog. I set out at the beginning of the summer with the clear intention of posting every Friday, but life didn’t turn out the way I expected (what else is new, right? haha!).

I wish I had kept up the blog; looking back on it now, I am only now realizing how important writing is to me in my life. Writing helps me feel like I have a purpose in life, makes me feel productive, and helps me express my emotions and share my thoughts with an understanding and supportive audience (thank you so much to everyone for your support- I love getting emails and comments from you telling me that you’ve enjoyed a post). Blogging helps keep me connected with family and friends who are interested in my work and in what I have to say. Perhaps I needed this break just to realize how important writing and this blog really is to me and my life.

There are three reasons I took a break from blogging the past 3 months. First, most of the stuff I was encountering on a daily basis is too politically sensitive to write about on here. I do have some posts I've been working on waiting on the back burner, so you'll see a lot of posts in the next couple weeks. But they will be about life as a PhD student and about the books I'm reading. I can't really talk about my life in China here since it is so intimately connected to my research, which can be very political. 

Second, I was completely overwhelmed with other more important and urgent priorities. I was working on three articles and one book chapter for publication, conducting a survey, learning Uy [abbreviated from its full name in this post to avoid political sensitivity issues], practicing Chinese, conducting fieldwork (meeting with informants and writing field notes), studying for my comprehensive exams, teaching jiujitsu, and training kickboxing, as well as maintaining a social life with people in the city, and maintaining friendships with people in inner-China and the US. I was pretty busy.

The third reason was that while I was training jiujitsu and Muay Thai boxing in Thailand, I decided to do an 6-week language pledge in Uy when I got back to the city (from August 18-October 1). I made the conscious decision that this would mean no more writing in this blog until October. Perhaps I should have made an announcement on the blog that writing would cease for 6-weeks, but I consciously made the decision not to announce it. I wanted to wait until after it was done before I told people (I only told the people the pledge directly affected) because otherwise I knew it would be more likely that I would break it: psychological research reports that you are more likely to complete a goal if you don’t tell people about it until after you actually complete it, keeping the motivation of completing it alive.  

Here is the story of the language pledge:

Rules of the language pledge: only speak, listen to, read, and write in Uy from Monday to Saturday. I made three exceptions for myself: studying for comps, working on my publications, and training in kickboxing and jiujitsu (where I speak Chinese). Sunday was also an exception. The hardest thing to give up were my podcasts... I still watched YouTube, but I only watched Uy language TV and comedy. I still listened to the radio (one of my favorite things to do) but it was all Uy language radio programs. I still hung out with friends, but we only spoke in Uy. I still wrote letters, diary entries, and read short stories, but it was all in Uy. The point is to be fully immersed.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. In order to succeed, you first must fail. No pains, no gains. It is from these principles on which I have built my life. It was in thinking about these principles from which I draw much of my motivation for getting my PhD and training jiujitsu that I decided to do the language pledge.

I was a little too comfortable in the city this summer. Don’t get me wrong; I had the time of my life traveling, studying Uy, hanging out with friends, doing research, writing articles, reading for comps, meeting new people, partying...just doing stupid and crazy things while enjoying being young and living in the moment. 

My friends in the city willingly and actively spoke to me almost exclusively in Uy during the summer, especially when we were hanging out in a group, because they knew I was working really hard to learn the language and wanted to support me. Since listening is the best way to get a good foundation in the language, that gave me a great opportunity to practice my listening comprehension. Talking in groups is also one of the hardest things for a language learner to do, especially for me--though I can hold a conversation with someone one-on-one without much difficulty, I find it really difficult to participate in group conversations. So hanging out with them was a good challenge for me and I enjoyed it very much.

But I was lazy and let myself slip back into English a lot, especially if I was tired (their English is really good). They would still respond in Uy, but I got frustrated with myself for letting myself fall back into my comfort zone of English when there was something I didn’t know how to say. 

My research was also stagnating because I was becoming more reluctant to talk to local people. I was getting lazy. I had my friends and family in America to email and text, and my English-language support network here in the city. I didn’t have the need or motivation to talk to new people I met on the street--and meeting new people is crucial for my research, where I need to talk to and meet people who might be able to help with my research. Furthermore, there were a few very vivid incidences where I couldn’t understand what people were telling me, but I knew it was important for my research. For example, a woman was talking to me about her headscarf and her feelings about wearing one, but I couldn’t really understand her. Frustrated by my progress, I decided to try the language pledge.

The pledge was taxing emotionally, mentally, and socially. First of all, I felt horrible about asking my English-language speaking Uy friends to do this for me--I felt like a huge burden and was extremely embarrassed to ask them to hang out with me. 

I felt incredibly lonely and isolated. But the feeling of isolation pushed me to get out and meet people who were willing to speak to me in Uy. I needed human contact with anyone who was willing to talk to me. So I would leave the house and talk to anyone I could on the street, in the park, at the market, and in restaurants. Instead of playing on Facebook or writing emails back home or talking in English with my friends, I was meeting new people, exploring the city, and also asking my friends who were willing to be patient enough to listen to my broken Uy to hang out. 

So I was doing research, but also talking to new and old friends and improving my Uy. I was happier and more productive. I was also lonely and tired and isolated and exhausted and wanting to give up and leave it all behind and go home, but, in a strange way, happy. It was nice to work so hard towards completing a goal. Slowly but surely, I could feel my brain adjusting to the challenge and my words started to become more fluid and natural. I didn’t have to think about stuff so much any more, words just came out without me even realizing it. I started thinking and dreaming in Uy. And that’s exactly what I wanted from this language pledge: to begin to think in Uy, and to be able to talk more fluidly without it being incredibly awkward and embarrassing every time.

It’s not that the language pledge itself automatically made me improve my Uy skills. It’s that the language pledge gave me the motivation I needed to practice with anyone who would listen. In my experience, and according to the research, the most crucial aspect of language learning is to have personal motivation to be able to communicate with people in the target language on an emotional and deep level. Perhaps this is why the research suggests that people who fall in love with locals make the most language progress. 

Regardless, having an emotional or personal connection to the host culture and motivation to significantly invest in the culture and the inter-personal relationships of the local setting is a key component to language learning. And when you’re on a language pledge, you have no choice but to invest emotionally in your local relationships on a deeper and more emotional level than you would otherwise because you have no other outlet for your thoughts and emotions. You need to speak your heart, but can’t email your mom back home so you turn to your local friends for support in the target language. At least that’s how I felt. The language pledge was exactly the motivation I needed to get outside my comfort zone and invest emotionally to cultivating my relationships and my language skills.

To be immersed completely in a foreign language was a pretty awesome feeling and I’m glad I did it. It was certainly challenging, and I’m not going to pretend like I didn’t have some missteps. Sometimes I listened to English music, or watched English-language YouTube, or slipped into English a couple times with friends (I made them make me pay them 5 kuai for every time I spoke English). And I had Sundays off. 

But for the most part, I immersed myself as much as possible. And I can’t really say objectively whether or not my language skills actually improved. There is no way I could judge that. But I can say that I stepped outside of my comfort zone and communicated things to people in Uy that I normally would not have had to courage to do because I forced myself to do it. My brain adjusted to the challenge. 

I thought of those 6-weeks as a hard cardio work out session--miserable in the moment but necessary for conditioning the brain and worth it in the long run. “It’s not forever, it’s only temporary,” I kept telling myself. The Uy phrase, “Chidap turay,” meaning “I got this, just keep going” was constantly running through my head as I pushed through the days. It was a kind of intentional self-torture for the purpose of self-improvement in the long run. It was difficult but worth it, like most things in life worth having.

I think this kind of experience is important in understanding the experience of refugees and immigrants in the US or other places who find themselves completely immersed in another language and can’t communicate intelligently the way they could in their own country. It takes away a part of your human dignity. And when you are treated as less than intelligent by those around you because of your poor language skills, it compounds that feeling so much more. So the next time you are confronted by someone who doesn’t speak your language but needs to communicate with you, take a second to think about how they must feel, and please, if you do nothing else, treat them with patience and kindness, and understand that they are struggling in a huge emotional and intellectual way in that moment.

I also learned some important things about myself and about life in general along the way:

• There is a fine line between setting out to accomplish something and sacrificing your humanity: these were the words my roommate said to me when he warned me that the language pledge was going to be really difficult. And he was right. This is something important to keep in mind when aiming for a goal.

• I need to learn how to set better boundaries with people for the sake of self-compassion and compassion towards those I care about. One of the reasons I did the language pledge was because I hadn’t set clear boundaries with my friends who spoke English in saying, “hey I really need to be speaking Uy most of the time.” So I decided to use this as a convenient excuse to either not hang out with them or to force them to speak Uy even if they didn’t really want to. A better alternative might have been a conversation with them that went something along the lines of, “hey, I really need to improve my Uy, do you think you could support me in that goal by speaking Uy with me when we hang out? Or maybe every other time we hang out?”

• I really need my friends, family, and support system around me. Saying “fuck y’all” to all the English-language support systems in my life was a kind of stupid idea when looking back on it. Three of my main coping outlets while living abroad are listening to podcasts, talking to friends and family online, or watching YouTube videos. But I couldn’t do any of those things anymore. I was basically like, “oh hey I’m going to try and go six weeks with very little emotional outlet for any of my feelings, NBD.” But realizing that it was indeed a big deal made me realize how much I love and appreciate all of the wonderful people in my life who support me and care about me. I realized how crucial having and reaching out for their support is for my daily life, for my sanity, and for my long-term success in the future. Having people around you who you can call for emotional support is so crucial to my mental health and I know I couldn’t live without all of those wonderful people in my life, the people whose relationships have expanded me, the people I have learn and grown from, the people who have added so much color and meaning in my life. I realized that it is for these people and this love and friendship that I live for, and so without those people in my life I felt like I didn’t have anything to live for. As a result, I felt less than human in so many ways during those six weeks. Though I originally planned to do the language pledge for eight-weeks, I decided to stop after six-weeks because I started to go a little crazy feeling less than human.

• At the end of the language pledge, I was like, "I am NEVER doing that again..." But now I'm already thinking about how I can do another language immersion experience when I return to China in the spring...