Category: Natsuko’s Blog

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Let’s Play Habitica #1 – Using a Role Playing Game (RPG) App to Track Habits

I have been looking into a method to maintain and build good habits more fun for a while because it can be tedious. I made more time available than usual over the last couple of weeks, and I used my free time mainly looking at apps on my mobile phone to track my habits. I found Habitica, a phone app to track habits in the form of a role-playing game (RPG). It is an online task management tool while playing an RPG game, which can be a fun way to gain good habits for people like me who like RPG games.

Anyone who tries to develop new habits will find that acquiring a completely new habit is quite challenging. Getting a new habit involves stepping out of one’s comfort zone; therefore, it is natural to feel discomfort. For example, I found acquiring meditation practice to be challenging despite understanding how beneficial meditation will be. It is natural for people to stay in their comfort zone as part of their survival instinct. So, it is vital to develop new habits slowly. Taking little steps outside of your comfort zone will eventually convince your brain to see the new zone as a part of your comfort zone.

Determine which habits you want to keep requires careful evaluation since not all habits are good for you. In some way, habits are like a double-edged sword- they can be good, bad, or both. It is because a habit works for others. It does not necessarily have the same positive effect on you. Therefore, you should customize your habits to your needs and for yourself.

It is critical to evaluate, so you acquire and keep only habits that are good for you. In many cases, you may not even know whether a habit is good for you until you try it out. For example, it is difficult for a night owl to create a task to run at 5 a.m. So, it is essential to develop our habits slowly. It is a slow and tedious process, which makes the process challenging for many people. Therefore, many end up giving up on acquiring the habits.  

It is possible to make the tedious process more enjoyable by applying gamification theory, game design elements in non-game contexts. My elementary teacher used to give us a sticker for attending school. Periodically, students who accumulated the most stickers got a small reward. The competition and the rewards motivate students to attend school. So, I was looking for a way to make this process more fun by using gamification.

Gamification is a robust process to encourage people to engage in certain activities. The method is so powerful that some scholars even claim it is used as a tool to manipulate people to engage in radicalization – although both the theoretical and empirical basis of the theory does not support it well (Schlegel, 2021). Gamification is still an effective way to motivate people for a higher likelihood of prolonged engagement.

Gamification has been getting a lot of attention as it is powerfully manipulative by nature. By observing games on social media platforms, gaming platforms, and private chats, Marczewski developed a framework to analyze the user types in the gamification setting. According to Maczewski (cited in Schlegel, 2021), there are six categories of users:

  • Socializer, motivated by connecting to others
  • Free spirits, inspired by expressing themselves or creativities
  • Achiever, motivated by acquiring new skills or knowledge
  • Philanthropists, motivated by a feeling of purpose or meaning by helping others 
  • disruptor, motivated by trolling and upsetting others in the game
  • Players, motivating by getting extrinsic rewards

Schlegel investigated the user types identified by Maczewski and summarized them into five user types.

User TypeDriver of RadicalizationMotivational DriverGame Elements
SocializerIdentify SeekerRelatednessGilds, team,
CompetitorStatus SeekerExtrinsic rewardspoints, leaderboard, achievements
AchieverNeed for certainty about the worldExploration, masteryquests, certification, progress bar
Meaning SeekerNeed of meaning or purposePurpose, meaningEpic story, sharing items
DisruptorThrill SeekerChallenging OthersRewards for disruption

Maczewski’s Five User Framework

Of course, it is nearly impossible to tailor all game features to appeal to all people. Many people will enjoy the components of the same game to some extent; although, we must keep in mind that the effect of the gamified results will differ for everyone. Therefore, a good game contains all of those elements to appeal to many users.

Habitica seems to contain game elements that provide some fun components such as positive reinforcement and opportunities for collaboration or competition, which will lead to a higher likelihood of prolonged engagement. I think it may spice up my reasonable habit-building efforts in a good way. So, I decided to download the app to try it out.

First, I listed the critical daily tasks I wanted to track. Then, I allocated points according to the difficulty of completing the tasks. 

  1. Sleep by 10:00 p.m. This will be a challenging task since I often pass my bedtime by preventing sleep. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign. This task will be moderately challenging. 
  2. Wake up by 5:30 a.m. Waking up by 5:30 a.m. gets more challenging if I go to sleep later than 10:00 p.m. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign. This task will be moderately strenuous. 
  3. Drink more than 80 oz water. Most days, I drink more than 80oz of water. It is a critical task to be acquired, just like sleeping. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign.
  4. Enter a food Journal on Fitbits. This task will be easy, but it is essential. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign. 
  5. Do A 2-minute meditation before going to bed. This task will be a challenging task. 
  6. Weigh first thing in the morning. Challenging. This task should have both a plus and a minus sign. I put this task as difficult because I often forget weight in the morning since I changed my phone. This task is critical for my goals. So, I decided to assign a more considerable negative consequence for not doing.
Daily HabitsRate” + “” – “
Sleep by 10:00 p.m.Moderate2-2
Wake up by 5:30 a.m.Moderate2-2
Drink more than 80 ozEasy1-1
Enter food JournalEasy11
Do a 2-minute meditation before going to bedDifficult3-3
Weigh first thing in the morningModerate2-3
My Six Tasks in Habitica

I am considering the above six tasks that I cared about the most for two weeks starting this Monday.  After two weeks, I plan to add challenges. Challenge is a series of tasks set up by another player or officials. You will be doing the challenge with another player. If you achieve higher points in the challenge, you may end up with germs by completing the tasks assigned by a challenge. Once you have some gems, you can spend them on getting some quests and equipment. Some challenges are created monthly, so I may need to wait until the start of next month.

I am starting this little sprint for pure curiosity. Gamification is an effective way to motivate people, and this is a fun approach to deal with my habit building. If this works well, I will use the app for future kaizen projects.

Reference

Schlegel, L. (2021). Connecting, Competing, and Trolling: “User Types” in Digital Gamified Radicalization Processes. Perspectives on Terrorism, 15(4), 54–64.

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How I Faught With Endometriosis Problem.

For the past week or so, I have been dealing with an endometriosis pain attack. The last time I had a severe pain attack was last November. So, I do not get a bad one like this every month.

I suspect the cause is my stress. Recently, I was extremely busy at work. I am also preparing for PMP (Project management professional exam) exam. As I tried to maintain a healthy lifestyle with adequate exercise, I thought I would not get endometriosis pain again. Although, I was aware that I was under a lot of stress. Despite exercise and meditation, I experienced some difficulty falling asleep the last few weeks.

The only thing I can do now is to ease the pain. I can take pain killers such as Naproxen Sodium or Ibuprofen since they suppress inflammation. I try not to use them as much as I can. The best treatment is to relax as much as possible.

It will not be a good idea to continue stressing myself since this pain can last two weeks. Besides, it is not productive. So, I decided to take it easy and take a break from studying. I requested to take two days off this week. Then, I spent my free time enjoying things I read and played the piano. I even managed to watch a movie. I drink herbal tea made from turmeric. Turmeric is a natural anti-inflammatory agent for pain relief since it helps fight inflammatory effects (Maroon, J. & Maroon, A, 2015).  

Many females have endometriosis. My doctor once told me that females in modern eras suffer because few females have children at a younger age. Despite research efforts, the cause is yet unknown. What I understand is there is no cure for this problem. Although, there are many ways to manage inflammation to mitigate the pain. Today, I decided to share how I deal with endometriosis pain.

Background

I have suffered from endometriosis since my teenage years. It was not uncommon for me to have bad menstrual cramps. When I was 19 years old, I could not get out of bed due to massive pain. After I went to the emergency room, I was diagnosed with ovarian endometriosis. So, I had an operation to remove cysts at Montreal Jewish Hospital year.

None of my doctors could tell me the root cause of endometriosis is. I read books and journals about them without any luck – all I found out was no one yet identified the causes due to its complexity. There are multiple stages in endometriosis – mine is in stage 3. Inflammation can, therefore, impact some of my pelvic organs. I have tried many medical treatments to get rid of endometriosis. I have had surgeries to remove cysts. I took pills to prevent growing more cysts.

Every month, I fear getting an endometriosis pain attack. In many months the pain is so mild that I do not mind it at all. Sometimes, I do not even feel it. Since I do not get it every month, I never knew when I would be getting it next. It seemed a very random event at first. Over the years, I started to notice patterns that triggered the pain.

The Pattern of The Occurrence of Endometriosis

After my first operation, I became more conscious of endometriosis. I noticed a pattern of triggers of the pain. In my case, I manage the pain with certain foods or by reducing stress.

Some foods such as pork, mushrooms, and onion can trigger endometriosis pain if I eat them during my period. Since I did not care for pork, I stopped eating pork altogether. I could not stop eating mushrooms or onions, so I tried not overeating them. I do not eat them at all during my period. I noticed that my endometriosis pains resemble irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) now.

My stress level has a strong correlation with my endometriosis pain. A high level of stress can make inflammation worse. Researchers found that stress makes inflammation severe due to cortisol, a stress hormone (Rosenkranz et al., 2016). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that stress is somewhat correlated to inflammation, thus, endometriosis.

Fifteen years ago, I stopped medical treatments. There are not many things doctors can do. So, I decided to treat my endometriosis differently. The critical thing is actively managing my stress. Yoga or Aerobics exercise can reduce inflammation. So, I try to manage my stress level by exercising, managing my time better, and breathing exercises. I even started logging my stress level so that I could monitor my stress. I noticed that actively reducing stress dropped the frequency of getting severe endometriosis attacks.

I also recognize the limitation to an alternative method. Stress management is to ease the pain or to reduce the frequency of endometriosis. Also, it is impossible to eliminate all my stress. A herbal option has limitations due to its minimal potency. I avoided severe endometriosis pain until 2015, when my husband became ill. The last severe endometriosis attack was in November 2020, when I was leading a big project at work. I got the pain again. Sometimes the pain is so intense that I need to take ibuprofen.

I noticed that my stress level increased last few weeks. My resting heart rate seems higher. Despite exercise and breathing exercises, I experience difficulties falling asleep some days. During the past five days, I thought about the possible causes. All I can do is find out the way to eliminate the root causes. I need to rearrange my other schedule items since it is impossible to delegate my work projects to others due to a lack of resources. We are getting another headcount for our department, so this busy schedule will not be permanent.

There is no point rushing and stressing out myself. I can relieve my stress level, so I do not repeat this cycle next month. During the past five days, I adjusted my studying schedule. I took two days off from my work this week. With the extra time, I did something I enjoyed doing. It has been almost a week, and my pain is mostly manageable.

Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to cure endometriosis; however, its symptoms are manageable. I am considering getting medical advice since I started to have symptoms of having bowel endometriosis. If I have bowel endometriosis, I must change my diet altogether to avoid IBS-like symptoms. I decided to share my experience with endometriosis – hoping it can help other females who suffer.

References

Maroon, J. C., Bost, J. W., & Maroon, A. (2010). Natural anti-inflammatory agents for pain relief. Surgical Neurology International, 1. https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.73804

Rosenkranz, M. A., Lutz, A., Perlman, D. M., Bachhuber, D. R. W., Schuyler, B. S., MacCoon, D. G., & Davidson, R. J. (2016). Reduced stress and inflammatory responsiveness in experienced meditators compared to a matched healthy control group. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 68, 117–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2016.02.013

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Is Speed Matter for Reading

For a long time, I had thought that it was always better to read ever faster. Curiosity was the biggest drive to read for me. I have read a lot of books, articles, and journals. When I understand a concept, my heart rates rise. Then, I feel immense joy from understanding a concept. I become satisfied, but I will repeat this cycle.

One day, I began to suspect that my reading method may not be good enough. I often have trouble remembering the source of the supporting ideas, so it takes me a long time to find the actual research. I started to feel this more strongly when I began to write seriously.

The most disturbing thing was that I should have a tremendous amount of knowledge from cumulative research because I read many books or journals in the past. The reality is that I do not recall most of the things I learned from these books. It is because our memory is short-lived unless we put them into long-term memory.

I thought reviewing some pointers after reading the books helped me to remember them long-term. During my first reading, I highlight the critical points of the book in my kindle, and I review them in a few days. 

Unfortunately, this system did not work well. There were so many books in my kindle that I could not maintain the reviewing system. So, I created a system, which forces me to reexamine the highlighted items from books I read. These highlighting notes help me find the source of a concept as long as I remember which books held the highlighted items.

The primary benefit of reading fast is I can surface-read books quickly. I can read a lot of books or other materials for research purposes. If your objective of reading is to enjoy casual reading, there is no problem reading fast. I can finish multiple books in a day if I want to do so. However, the effects stop at the extent of surface reading. I may not remember stories or things I learned a few days later.

If I want to make my reading more meaningful and effective, I must exercise a more active reading strategy. For example, to perform literary analysis, I must put conscious effort into recognizing the pattern while reading. Unless I am actively seeking and reevaluating the reading materials for relevance to what I need, no amount of reading is good for me. I would rather sleep more or exercise. No matter how fast you can read the materials, it is not as helpful as you think.

To exercise active reading, I started to take notes directly onto kindle. Rephrasing is a powerful method to understand the texts you are reading. It helps me to retain certain concepts for the long term. Then, I faced another challenge. My notes were still all over my kindle books. Unless I start reviewing all of them periodically, the knowledge will fade away from my memory. I still need to remember which book each note belongs to use as a source.

Smart Note Taking Techniques You Can Use While You Are Reading

One day, I found an excellent book, “How to Take Smart Notes,” written by Sonke Ahrens. The book taught me to effectively read books and retain the knowledge to use them later. According to Ahrens, you will need to do the following steps:

Take temporary notes as you read. Taking quick notes helps you to retain the information you just obtained. Ahrens suggests that handwriting is better since it takes a longer time to write than typing. It takes a long time to type in kindle unless I use a PC to read a digital. So, you will become selective of which information you keep as a note. So, I use the kindle note function.

Summarize the temporary notes in your own words within a day after the quick notes are created. Brief notes are temporary. You must elaborate the note in your own words, which reinforces the ideas. I HAD TO REREAD THE SECTION when I did these steps a few days after my initial notetaking. So, I found it is faster to do this process within a day.

Classify the summarized notes. Sonke explained that students seem to retain what they learn better when the professor teaches unorganized materials. I do a similar step for organizing my 10-page notes every day. Organizing unclassified information helps you to retain the information better not only digitally but also in your brain.

Tag the notes to other notes you have created. Using software such as Zotero, you can easily tag other notes while making a permanent note. Ahrens explains that making cross-references requires serious thinking, and it helps us develop our thought about the idea (p. 112).

Think about what is not in the text and add them to your note. This process requires additional effort to process the information. You dive further into the text since you are now challenging and creating your idea against the new data you are learning. Unfortunately, I rarely do this process.

I use Zotero to make my permanent notes. I can create my categories and sort all my permanent notes. The use of the software made my life much easier. It can add the info of the reading material for future bibliographies. You can also organize and tag the note to link it to another note. Finally, the use of the software is free.

The new process takes a lot more time to read a single book. In some cases, I may read the section multiple times to create a decent permanent note. These extra steps made me more selective of the information I intended to retain. The important thing is I start synthesizing the new information more thoroughly than before.

Conclusion

There is one thing I am still working on is thinking about what is not in the text. This process is challenging and time-consuming so that I tend to get lazy. Maybe I may create a habit of adding one idea of my own to a note per day.

If someone asks me whether they need to learn speed reading, I would say no. Instead, I recommend that they find a way to retain the information gained from the book just like I did. No increase in the number of books one can read is helpful if you forget what you read.

Reference

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking—For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book writers.[kindle edition].

Zotero’s Link

https://www.zotero.org/

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How to Improve Your English Writing Skills even English is not Your Mother Tongue

English is not my first language, and English writing was among my communication fears. Unlike face-to-face communication methods, a reader cannot see my body language, accommodating my broken English. Despite the challenge, I wanted to write in English. I wrote a lot when I was younger in Japanese, my mother tongue. Soon after I migrated to North America, I tried to write in English. It was tough because I did not have enough knowledge of vocabulary or idioms. When you do not know which word to use, you end up using more words to explain. My sentences were wordy and hard to understand.

It was utterly inconvenient to be unable to communicate fluently. All of your communication is not as effective. Furthermore, some people treated me as an unintelligent person. I think many immigrants have a similar experience. When I was young, I even cried from the frustration caused by my broken English. Although, I was hesitant to improve my English writing skills because it was hard for me to write in English. Then, I finally started work on my writing seriously a little over a year ago.

First, I listed the item that I needed to improve to develop some strategies to work on them.

Spelling: Like most Japanese, I still have difficulty distinguishing between “R” and “L,” which negatively affects my spelling. I also mixed spelling conventions from multiple languages, such as German and French.

Preposition: My knowledge of idioms is still limited, and I have many preposition errors.

Syntax:  I have trouble finding the appropriate word to express something.

English Grammar: I still make many grammatical errors: such as missing articles and comma splices.

Fear of writing: My biggest block was my fear of writing.

I must be conscious of learning words, idioms, and spelling when I read. In terms of grammar, I need to be aware of making mistakes. So, I bought the Grammarly app subscription – this is the best purchase I ever made. My last obstacle, fear of writing, was a little tricky to overcome. I thought I had to write a lot in English to overcome the fear.

After activating the Grammarly subscription, I started to write a few paragraphs every day. The average word count of a piece was between 150 to 300. I knew my speed of writing was extremely slow when I was in a graduate program. Just as I suspected, it took me at least 3 hours to write 150-300 words.

One of the most significant pieces of help using Grammarly gave me immediate feedback on my grammatical errors. I already knew that I was terrible at using proper articles. I often misuse prepositions. Some prepositions don’t make sense to me at all. Grammarly gives me weekly feedback on how I am doing with my writing. I started to see improvements.

Despite these efforts, I faced another obstacle – I was too conscious of my grammatical errors to write a paragraph. As a result, I experienced something close to writer’s block. On some days, I might spend 4 hours writing merely one hundred words. Even I managed to produce a single paragraph in English, and my sentences are monotone – soulless sentences. As soon as I tried to write, my brain started rebelling– this was how I felt. With frustration, I stopped writing for a while.

Then, I read a book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. After reading the book, I started writing 2-3 pages on an A4 size notebook, anything that came to my mind every morning. According to the author, I am not supposed to be showing the notes to anyone. Since I was handwriting, I did not have to stop to correct errors. Then, I stopped caring about my English errors. Who cares? No one sees the book anyway. And this is the time I began to be able to write again. It took me about three months or so to get rid of the writer’s block. I assume that I was writing in my logical brain, which killed my creative brain, just like Julia Cameron pointed out in the book.

After few months, I began to share my writing with my husband. My husband is a native English speaker with good writing skills. He started giving me some advice by editing my essays. He also advised me on word choice. He majored in Rhetoric at University, so he gave me Rhetoric advice on my writing. Getting help from my husband was a big help.

I also started to highlight my kindle vocabulary, idioms, and expressions. I was not about to plagiarism them, but I wanted to use them in my writing. I tried to steal like a good artist, just like Austin Kleon wrote in his book, Steal Like an Artist.

Then, I started writing a blog in English last March. I committed to writing one English blog per week. I am aware that my English is nowhere near perfect. I cannot tell whether my English is truly improving; however, Grammarly’s weekly reports show I create much fewer errors than I used to make a year ago. Most importantly, I don’t hesitate to write in English. I sometimes even feel joy from writing.

1st week

1st week

1 year later

Grammarly after 1 year later

The last week (1 year & 4 months)

Grammarly Weekly Report

Of course, writing a lot is not the only solution to improving your writing. I am not going to say how many words you should be writing to improve your English. Great writers often write a lot. My husband loves to read Brandon Sanderson. According to Ang (Aug 2020), Sanderson writes 2,000-2,500 words per day. Faulkner wrote 3,000 – 10,000 words per day. So, I just wrote a lot. I wrote more English than when I was in a graduate program. There is no shortcut to improve writing skills. It is daunting to even think about investing a lot of time on something we cannot tell ourselves whether we improve or not.

An app like Grammarly helps get some qualitative measurement. There were weeks that my accuracy declined. There were weeks I could not write a lot because I was busy doing something else. Rather than focusing on the week’s result, I focused on how many words I had written since April 20th. I still make many grammatical errors, but I started to see substantial improvement in my grammar.

Most importantly, I have more confidence in my writing. I started submitting more business cases since I could write them in a shorter time. Any task that involves writing became easier to complete. There is no age limit to start improving your writing skill. If I can improve my language at my age, then so you can.

Creativity is a critical part of writing. Writing a lot may not help me much. Although, the morning page technique seems to work. So, I am still doing 2-3 morning pages of writing every morning because it helps me be more creative.

It is more important to understand how to use words, idioms, or expressions rather than knowing them. I try to use the word in any of my writing, idioms, and expressions I highlight from any reading I do. Then, I show it to my husband. He will tell me something if I misuse the word.

There is no shortcut to improving English writing skills – it seems. Although, I have great news. There is no age limit to start working on improving your writing skill. If I can improve my writing skill at my age, and so can you. It never is “too late” to start a project like this.

References

Ang, Alvin. (Aug 17, 2020). 10 Legendary Writers & Their Daily Word Counts.https://writingcooperative.com/10-legendary-writers-their-daily-word-counts-692c56cb97a5

Cameron, Julia (2016). The Artist’s Way. [Kindle Edition]. Penguin Random House

Kleon, Austin (2012). Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. [Kindle Edition]. Workman Publishing Company.

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Revisiting Spirit Away

I recently watched “Sprit Away – English version.” I had previously watched Spirit Away almost two decades ago. I recalled it as an exciting adventure film with few messages such as environmental stewardship and greed.  My niece recently started watching Miyazaki’s movies, my neighbor Totoro and Ponyo, which made me want to watch Miyazaki’s films again.

It is interesting to discover how our cumulative experience and knowledge influence our perspective toward books or movies. This time, I had a different view of this film from the last time I watched it. The characters were carefully developed throughout the story. Miyazaki intentionally leaves some essential elements blank so that anyone can fill them in. Now everyone has different interpretations of the movie. After I re-watched this movie, I decided to do a literary analysis on this film from a Japanese perspective. For this blog, I focused on the following two points of the film.

–       Who is Haku?

–       What is the hidden motivation of the main character?

It is critical to understand the relationship of Chihiro to her parents before talking about Haku. Chihiro seems to have affection toward both of her parents just like a child, while her mother is distant to Chihiro. The mother did not show concern for Chihiru’s safety. For example, the mother did not check whether Chihiro passed the creek safely or not. In the scary place, Chihiro was disturbed. Just as a typical child would do, Chihiro held onto the arms of her mother. Instead of holding the daughter’s hand, the mother complained not to cling to her arm, which was an un-motherly-like behavior.

The next important character in this movie is Haku, the river god who helps her. Haku appeared in front of Chihiro early in the film, right after her parents turned into pigs. Miyazaki left Haku’s appearance in front of Chihiro ambiguous, so we must fill the detail ourselves.

When Chihiro returned the golden seal to Zeniba, Zeniba told Chihiro the spell on it was gone. Then, Zeniba exclaimed that only love could break her spell. What kind of love was that? Why was Haku so willing to help Chihiro from the beginning of her adventure? When we think about these questions, was there “a biological love” between them. Haku was Chihiro’s brother? Sometimes these spirits (Kami) can be created from people’s wishes. Sometimes spirits are created when one sacrifices one’s life for another.

When I was young, my grandmother told me a story about a girl who lost her way in the woods. She ended up among many flowers where she met an older woman there who said to the girl,

Do you see teardrops on the flower?

A girl somewhere just gave her food to her younger sisters, even though she was also starving.

Do you see the tear, that is the tear from the girl?

Do you see the mountain?

A man sacrificed his life to save the villagers. So, he became a mountain.

When people sacrifice something, they make a flower to grow.

When people sacrifice their lives, they turn into Mountains.

Now, go home.

There are reasons why I think Haku was Chihiro’s biological brother. Haku seems willing to risk his life to save Chihiro from the beginning, yet Haku remembers nothing except Chihiro’s name. Zeniba told Chihiro that the spell was removed because of love. Zeniba repeated “Love” twice, and this is important.

When Chihiro was riding on Haku, the dragon, fragments of memories flashed through her head – her pink shoes were carried away by the river’s current.  Then, there is a hand with a white T-shirt that pulled her from the river. Chihiro wondered why she could not recall the memory earlier. Chihiro almost died from drowning in the past, and he could not remember it. It is documented that some traumatic events can create memory loss associated with the traumatic events. Health professionals address the symptom as Trauma-related dissociation, a survival mechanism of forgetting the event that is so overwhelming that one can no longer cope (International Society for Study of Trauma and Dissociation, n.d.). With few seconds of information, I could formulate the following hypothesis.

When Chihiro was younger, she nearly drowned in a river. Her brother, Haku, drowned in the river when he was trying to save Chihiro. With the overwhelming traumatic event of near-death experience and the loss of her brother, Chihiro could not remember the event at all. Chihiro’s mother is distant subconsciously because she somehow felt that Chihiro was responsible for her son’s death. According to Foster (2003), there are some common personality traits – they tend to be responsible for the death of someone close. This trait is not clearly stated in the text, so we need to fill in this blank to make sense of the character. Unfortunately, the characters, such as Haku, are rarely the protagonist. Instead, their death is often used to move the plot forward.

After sacrificing his life for his sister, Haku turned into the Kohaku River. Haku is the river’s name. Spirits don’t remember their name, why they died or what they were doing before they turned into a spirit. After sacrificing his life for his sister, Haku turned into the Kohaku River. Haku is the river’s name. Spirits don’t remember their name, why they died or what they were doing before becoming a spirit. Chihiro says that the Kohaku River no longer exists because of the new apartment complexes where the river used to be. It must be at least a few years that have passed since the traumatic event. Her parents are moving away from the old town to start a new life to rebuild the family relationship because some family problems are incurred from their son’s death. They may be moving because the river no longer exists.

Chihiro starts her adventure to save her parents, then to save Haku. These are the stated motivation of the heroes in the movie. There is a common trait among parents, Chihiro, and Haku in the spirit world. All of them seek an establishment place. Chihiro and her parents are moving away from the home they lived. Haku lost the river he used to haunt. I think the hidden motivation of the hero was to find the next place to inhabit. Since Chihiro could not remember her brother’s death, she moves forward (grown) by placing how someone sacrificed his life for her in the past.

Neither parents nor Chihiro will have a clear memory of their disappearance. They will continue with their life after they moved into a new home.

In Japan, many folklores spoke about Kamikakushi, spirited away. The Japanese title of this movie is “Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakishi.” Kamikakushi means “hidden by the gods,” and people often use the word to explain the disappearance of people and their reappearance. Many returned with either fuzzy memories or no memories of their disappearance. The folktales were made so that the parents or people close to the missing people could deal with the tragic disappearance of someone they love (Matsuura, 2019).

There is personal development in Chihiro her adventures in the spirit world. When Chihiro’s father said to Chihiro,” A new home and a new school? It is a bit Scary”, Chihiro replied. “I think I can handle it.” We will never know whether she remembers her past after she is out from the spirit world. She may remember her traumatic events. Even she remembers her traumatic event, and I feel that Chihiro could make peace in her mind to move on with her life. I think Haku left the spirit world where he was trapped and came back to Chihiro’s world to protect her as her protective spirit (Shyugorei) just as promised to Zeniba – This is an ending I imagined after revisiting the film.

This is the second time I did a literary analysis. Literature is just like art. The key to understanding the literature is the motivation behind the techniques the creator intentionally used. Miyazaki left out what happened to them or Haku for the movie. So, this will be up to the audience to fill in the blank – that is the exciting part of literary analysis. And, it is interesting to find out how I come up with a different perspective from what I remembered from 20 years ago.

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How to Learn in a Digital Environment

There are multiple ways to learn. The introduction of Internet technology enables us to gather knowledge online. When I was young, accessing the internet was expensive since we were charged by the minute. I still remember it took us almost 6 hours to download low-grade pictures. Although the internet was more accessible when I was in the university, the students used a hybrid way (library in person or online) to do their academic research. I still can’t forget how excited I was to access academic journals from the online library. By the time I was doing my MBA, most people exclusively used the internet for their research. 

We can gain many types of information from the internet. I do not have to physically go to a library to access journal or newspaper articles. You can quickly learn the name of a capital city of a country. I admit my life changed because of the internet; however, I sometimes fear I skipped a fundamental step of the learning process, such as creating my hypothesis or acquiring foundational knowledge of a subject. I admit that the internet enhanced our lives in many ways, yet I sometimes fear losing something due to acquiring convenience. 

When I was a child, we once had a big argument about why frogs lay eggs over the water surface. Most of us were eight-year-olds. Since we lived in a tiny city in Japan, we knew we could always find frog eggs over a still creek near our school. The argument started with a simple question from one of the children. We used to catch Tadpoles in the water; we all agreed that eggs must be over the water’s surface. But how do all frogs know where to lay eggs? We had an excellent, elementally teacher who encouraged us to discuss a child’s questions. Instead of answering the question, she told all of us to find out the reason. I checked the school library and my father’s library. I pulled out the encyclopedia and looked for the answer. I do not remember whether I found out the answer by myself this time. I do remember how hungry I was to find out the answers. I think the experience impacted me immensely later in my academic life. 

I found out later in my life that my school teacher guided us to understand why a frog lays eggs above the water surface by using Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s Taxonomy elaborates the framework of the six levels of learning stages. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy (as cited in Armstrong, n.d.), we go through six cognitive levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. 

Figure 1. Bloom’s Taxonomy Vanderbilt Center for Teaching

Knowledge: Recognize or Remember facts, terms, or basic concepts without understanding why.

Comprehension: Demonstrate or Understand the reasons behind the facts, terms, or fundamental concepts.

Application: You can apply acquired knowledge to solve problems in a new situation.

Analysis: You can analyze and connect or differentiate the facts, terms, or basic concepts in a single dimension.

Synthesis: You can connect the facts, terms, or basic concepts with multiple dimensions.

Evaluation: You can evaluate ideas or create or plan a new idea or a product from facts, terms, or basic concepts.

It would be easier if the teacher just answered the children’s questions; however, we would have stopped at the first cognitive level, knowledge. A year before, we came up with an identical question with a different teacher. The teacher scolded us for discussing something irrelevant to the subject. I was fortunate to have a teacher who motivated us to think and research. Remembering my early school year learning experience prompted me to question whether current children get this learning experience since they can obtain answers very conveniently from the internet.

Finding quick answers from the internet can easily prevent us from progressing in our cognitive level of information if we are not careful. The use of the internet can make completing our assignments efficient; however, I am not sure of the effectiveness of the learning. I have no desire to quit using the internet since it is convenient; however, we must be mindful of how we integrate technology into our learning process. 

I understand the theory behind Bloom’s Taxonomy, yet, I caught myself getting easy answers from the internet. A YouTube channel shows dropping an ant from 10m, 20m, and 30m. The show was demonstrating terminal velocity, and nothing happened to the ant. I should have known the theory since I learned it in my undergrad. Instead of putting my effort into understanding the idea, I was satisfied finding the terminology. 

My husband, who teaches at a university, told me that finding out “what” from the internet would help us think about the idea or information ourselves. It would be ideal to think about the idea before finding out the “why”. Processing the information with the concept first helps us identify what we need to find out from further research. Now, you have more purposes or objectives, and you can progress into the 2nd cognitive level of comprehension. Of course, we still need to be careful about biases caused by doing so; but it still enables us to progress to a higher cognitive level. 

There is nothing wrong with using the internet, but we must be mindful of how we use it to acquire our knowledge. There are steps I use to prevent my experience of acquiring information from limiting my knowledge. Once I obtain the information, I rephrase the concept within one day. Then, I categorize the idea; then, I link it to other information I acquired previously. I used to do this process on paper with great difficulty. Now I use Zotero, a computer application, to do this process. It is a free app until you become a heavy user. I discovered this software from a book, How to Take Smart Notes from Sonke Ahrens. This made me re-think how I learn. If you get a chance, it is a good book to read.

References

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking – for students, academics and nonfiction book writers. [Kindle Edition]. North Charleston

Armstrong, P. (n.d.). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

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The Important Lesson I Learned from Losing Weight Quickly

Background

To improve my physical and mental condition, I decided to work on changing my lifestyle. I started with dancing Zumba on my switch, and I gradually made changes. My goal is to lose weight without losing my muscle mass. I implemented formal strength training offered by Les Mills into my exercise program in June. I have been exercising mindful eating for the last few months. Since the rate of losing weight was so slow, I decided to switch back to the calorie restriction. I started with creating 500 calories deficit per week.

My Exercise Program

 MONTUEWEDTHURFRISATSUN
MorningRestBODYPUMPAny cardioBODYPUMPAny cardioBODYPUMPBODYFLOW
Evening HIIT HIIT HIIT 
My Exercise Program (Les Mills On-Demand)

HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) – 17minutes training – generates 40-45 minutes of activity minutes

BODYPUMP – 30 minutes -> generates 22 minutes of activity minutes

BODYSTEPS – 30 minutes -> generates 60-65 minutes of activities minutes

BODYCOMBAT – 30 minutes -> generates 60-70 minutes of activities minutes

BODYATTACK – 30 minutes -> generates 65-75 minutes of activities minutes

Result

The biggest change I did this time was creating 400-500 calories deficits per day to lose weight. I lost a total weight of 4.4lb. (2.8lb, 1.4lb, 0.2, 0.2lb) over the four weeks. I also lost 0.6lb of muscles mass (-0.6, -0.2, 0, +0.2). I lost 2.8lb; however, I also lost 0.6lb of muscle mass. So, I changed my tactic immediately as I am eating too little for the activities level. In the 2nd week, I ate 1,300 calories per day, resulting in muscle loss of 0.2lb. So, I adjusted my calories intake to 1,400 – 1,500 per day, which stopped my muscle loss. I could not measure the muscle mass of the 4th week due to a technical issue with my phone app.

Analysis

If my primary goal were to lose weight, I would have been happy about the result. In reality, I was shocked by the loss of muscle mass from the first week. I have been working hard to gain muscle by doing strength exercises and yoga three times per week.

My immediate reaction was to investigate how much I must eat not to lose my muscle mass. With my level of activities, getting 1,200 -1,300 calories per day was too little. At least I know that 1,400 calories are my current floor for my calorie intake.

I felt a little lightheaded in the first week because I was not eating enough food. Since I was so hungry at night, and I had difficulties falling asleep at night. As a result, my sleep quality dropped. Increasing the calories intakes by 100 calories did not stop muscle loss or sleep quality problems. Rising to 1,400 calories stopped the issues. At least I know that 1,400 calories are my current floor for my calorie intake. The minimum calories intake changes with the muscle mass; therefore, regular monitoring is essential.

Technical Problems

During the 2nd day of the 4th week, my 4-year-old smartphone stopped uploading my digital weight. The only measurement I can take is weight. Therefore, I expect some challenges in controlling and monitoring. I ordered a new phone, and I should have a new smartphone by September 12th. Since I can no longer watch my muscle mass, I must maintain 1,400 – 1,500 Calories per day with the same exercise routine.

Expectation Gaps

I lost weight; however, I was not happy with the result because I lost muscle mass. I conclude what I want is not to lose weight. To discover the output I want, I decided to organize my thoughts.

What I want to Happen:

  • I want to lose FAT %. My aim is 25% for the moment. I want to fit into my clothing.
  • I want to increase my muscle mass to increase my metabolisms and muscle strengths. (Strong).
  • I want to lose weight.
  • I want to improve my cardio endurance.
  • I want to increase flexibility.
  • I want to decrease my stress.

GAP Analysis

With the five items I listed, I care a lot about retaining or increasing my muscle mass. There are multiple reasons why I want to maintain my muscles. Exercise promotes muscle gains, which helps to prevent diabetes and to improve metabolism (McPherron, Guo, Bond, Gavrilova, 2013). I enjoy many outdoor activities, and retaining my muscles is the key to sustain these activities I enjoy. Moderate exercise can prevent Aging. Naturally, we tend to lose muscle mass as we age. We can prevent muscle loss by doing adequate exercises. I wanted the first two items the most. Mathematically if I increase my muscle mass, I should lose my fat percentage. Thus, I think these goals can coexist easily.

The amount of calorie input is a key to recent unnecessary loss in muscles. In the results from this round, I noticed that eating less than 1,200 calories made my weight decrease. I also lost fat mass. After two weeks, I had to make immediate changes since I did not want to lose any more muscle. I increased to 1,400 – 1,500 calories which seems to prevent me from losing muscle mass; however, the rate of weight loss will slow.

Conclusions

I learned an important lesson. Do not rush my weight loss because I can lose muscle mass. Furthermore, I felt lightheaded, and I had no energy with only 1,200 calories. My muscle loss stopped at 1,400 calories. I seem to have enough energy and a clearer head. Therefore, my current minimum calories intake is 1,400 calories.

Due to technical issues, I do not have the tools to monitor my muscle mass until the 2nd week of September. Thus, I decided to maintain my current programs.

Daily Calories Intake: 1,400 Calories

Exercise: Strength Exercise (3 times) and a short HIIT, 2 Cardio, 1 Body Flow

My Exercise Programs

 MONTUEWEDTHURFRISATSUN
MorningRestBODYPUMPAny cardioBODYPUMPAny cardioBODYPUMPBODYFLOW
Evening HIIT HIIT HIIT 
My Exercise Program (Les Mills On-Demand)

When you know there are some expectation gaps, it will be good to organize your thoughts. For this round, I realize that I want to gain muscle and lose fat. Those measurements will be my primary monitoring inputs. I continue monitoring my total weight. Regular monitoring activities are crucial so that you can create timely corrective actions. The important thing is that I am improving little by little.

Reference

McPherron, A. C., Guo, T., Bond, N. D., & Gavrilova, O. (2013). Increasing muscle mass to improve metabolism. Adipocyte, 2(2), 92–98. https://doi.org/10.4161/adip.22500

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The Memo Technique to Remove the Worry

About a month ago, I watched an interesting YouTube video about a memo skill to solve your problems. The video introduced a book written by Yuji Akaba, who graduated from Stanford University and worked as a consultant with McKenzie for 14 years. The direct translation will be zero-second thinking. When I heard the title, I was skeptical. How can we find the solution to a problem in zero seconds because the only thing that can solve a problem that fast is a robot or computer? So, I was listening to the video for my entertainment.

He explains some people are never able to solve their problems. Those people will react to their situations in three patterns:

The first pattern is to ignore and endure the situation.

The second pattern is to sit with the problem with an uneasy feeling.

The third pattern is to think about the solution; however, not acting on it.

Despite there being three patterns, all people who use them sit with the problems. Thus, they all reach the same result – they all sit with the trouble forever.

Akaba explains this. There is an approach to solve our problems.

  1. You receive the information or fact
  2. You have felt toward the information or fact
  3. You contemplate on the information or fact
  4. You organize the thought
  5. You create a hypothesis or find the solutions to the problem
  6. You solve the problem

People with the first pattern stop at the first step. This type of person does not try to understand their feelings or ignores them when receiving the information. So, they stay with the issue. For example, they are told by the doctor that they have a weight problem. They may feel something about it, but they will ignore their feeling. They sit with the situation without doing anything about it. 

People with the second pattern cannot go beyond the second step. They have the information. They acknowledge their feeling about the information; however, they will sit with the sentiment. For example, they are told that they have a weight problem by their doctors. They may be angry at themselves or doctors that telling them they have a weight problem. They may be anxious because they may get health problems. These people worry about many issues; however, they also do not do anything about the problems.

People with the third pattern also cannot go beyond the second step. After they have the information, they acknowledge the feeling toward the information. They think about their problem, but they will stop there. They will think about it. For example, they found about their weight problem. They don’t like it. So, they will think about why they have the weight problem. They may research how to lose weight, but they stop there.

Organizing Our thoughts:

Smarter people can organize their thoughts. After finding out about a weight problem, they go beyond thinking about their weight problems. They identify the root causes of the issue. Then, they create hypotheses that they may be overeating or exercising too little. So, they make a goal to lose weight by creating a calorie deficit by exercising or eating less. They develop strategies to create a calorie deficit. They even think about any possible obstacles they may face. Some people even think about how to overcome those barriers.

Competent people put their strategies or plans into action. These people clear their controllable problems. These people can use the new information to innovate something new.

According to Akaba, we are stuck at the 3rd step because we don’t organize our thoughts. More competent people will go through the subsequent steps. People like Akaba, who a consultant from a vast consulting firm is. I imagine he could be consulted about many issues from his clients. He would need to deal with the problems promptly in the right way. Over the 14 years of working at McKenzie, he developed a memo technique.

If you want to acquire the skill to solve your problem, please exercise the memo technique he invented. If you want to acquire the skill to solve your problem, please exercise the memo technique he invented. There is no need to reinvent the method.

  • You will need the following:
    • A4 or letter size paper
    • Translucent Poly File Folders
    • White Label sticker for the clear file folders
    • A clipboard

Write down the following categories on the label stickers. (I used the below labeling, but you can create your labels. Just keep it to 5-7 categories.

  • Future
    • Communication
    • Teamwork
    • Information
    • Idea

Memo Steps

  1. You will write one idea per page. Put the title in the left-hand corner. Put the date in the right-hand corner. One page can contain one idea. Summarize the one idea in 4-6 sentences. You do write ten pages every day.
Memo Format: A4 or Letter Size (Landscape)

2. Every night, you file them in the clear file folders you made earlier. For example, if you think up a new idea during the day, the page is in the new idea folder.

3. Put them aside and review them in three months and then again in six months.

Important things to Remember

Only one idea per page

It is essential to use a physical paper and write it down. Don’t do this process on a PC or mobile device.

The paper orientation must be landscape so that your ideas can expand easier.

Use A4 or Letter size paper. You can expand your ideas better with a wider page.

Write and draw. Don’t limit yourself to using only words.

Use Large fonts.

Write down the idea as soon as you are able

Spend only 1 minute per page.

When you exercise this memo technique, you start worrying or thinking about the same things – money, Work, Family, Friends, etc. By categorizing your thought, you can push yourself beyond the 3rd step.  When you review the files in three months and six months, you notice that you worked on ideas or issues. You start to see the log of how you dealt with your problems. So, you will gain confidence.

Discussion

When I found out the technique, I thought. “what’s the hell….”.  What kind of person would do thing this every day?

I know I do struggle going beyond the 3rd step. What am I going to lose from this? I will probably lose nothing from doing this.  So, I followed his memo technique. I have been writing ten pages every day.

Initially, it was hard. Writing one idea in one minute was hard. I almost ditched this newly acquired habit once because it was hard. But I am still doing this.

I have not passed my first three months yet, so I cannot tell how I feel when reviewing my files. However, I noticed there are some changes in my thought process. My focus toward the idea and worry has shifted from being passive to being active.

I am more focused on my feelings, something I used to ignore or was oblivious about. Once I started paying attention to the little emotions or thoughts, I used to dismiss, the ideas repeatedly appeared on my page. It is interesting to find out how I continually worry about the same thing. So, I started to find the solution so I can get rid of them for good.

I am going to read the actual book which I just ordered from Amazon Japan. I will let you know after three months and six months.

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Completing Project Management Principles and Practices Specialization

I have led many financial transformation projects throughout my career. I gained knowledge from years of experience and certification courses provided by companies I worked with. I have been leading much more challenging projects at work last several years. So, I have been seriously considering becoming certified with a PMP certification. The objective of taking this course is to determine if I want to proceed with actual PMP certification.

This specialization consists of 4 Courses:

Initiating and Planning Projects: the key roles and responsibilities of the project manager and project team are to define the objectives for the project is the critical component of a project. In this course, you will also learn how to defines the goals of the projects.

Budgeting and Scheduling Projects: The project budget defines the constraints that can prevent a project team from completing the project. This course teaches you how to plan and monitor your schedule, costs, and any other constraint to ensure the success of your project.

Managing Project Risks and Changes: In this course, you will learn how to manage the risk of projects. You will learn the tools to monitor and manage the identified risks to minimize or mitigate risks for your team and other project stakeholders.

Project Management Project: Capstone course: In this course, you will create several key project planning deliverables using the knowledge you gained from the specialization courses.

Capstone:

  1. A narrative charter statements
  2. Work breakdown structure
  3. Sequence project activities
  4. A Project Schedule
  5. A Project Budget
  6. A responsibility assignment matrix
  7. Project risks and define responses for those risks

This course is offered by the University of California, Irvine. The courses consisted of videos, slides, reading materials, quizzes, and guided capstone for the last course. Additionally, there are optional reading materials:  I obtained the suggested reading materials: a guide to the project management body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) and Fast Forward MBA in Project Management. They are optional reading materials, but those books helped me a lot in completing these courses.  Since I decided to read all the suggested materials, completing each course took longer than recommended.

Paid courses in COURSERA have multiple choice quizzes or Peer graded assignments. The first three courses had quizzes, and the capstone had peer-graded assignments and a guided project. Make sure to read the requirements. I found that it is easier to find reviewers if you submit the assignment on Friday night. Many students seem to work on their course from Friday to Sunday.

You can start a course any day of the week for this course. The good thing was you could begin the capstone as soon as you complete all prerequisite courses. In the past, I had to wait a few months to take the capstone course because it started on a specific day.

Challenges

I did not have a lot of time to study. So, I spent at least 30 – 45 minutes working on this course every day. It can be hard to complete courses if you sorely relied on your motivation. Once I started studying for 10 minutes, I found it was easy to continue for another 20-30 minutes.

The Specialization course in 3 Sentences:

This specialization course teaches the most effective method to deliver the required product or function within the target cost and schedule. You will gain the fundamental knowledge to manage a project after taking these courses. You will produce a project plan that includes the product scope, a work breakdown structure, a project plan, a project schedule, budget, and risk management for the capstone course.

Impressions

Most videos are short; however, they are clear and concise. The videos and reading materials provide essential knowledge, and they are easy to understand. There are two optional reading materials for this course. If you want to take your learning to a higher level, these optional reading materials help. There is no limit on how much you can learn from the courses.

** Make sure to check the current PMBOK edition. This course recommends the 6th edition, but there is the 7th edition. 

How I Discovered It

I discovered this course from Coursera. I have a subscription from Coursera, and I am always taking courses from their website. I decided to take this course because I want to refine my project management skills. I also want to determine whether I want to obtain professional certification.

Who should take this course?

You do not have to own a title in project management to do these specialization courses. Anyone should take this course. We are often working on projects at work and personal life. You can apply the project management skills gained from these courses for your projects, such as wedding planning or home renovations.

I do not think this counts toward the required 35 PMP contract hours; however, the course gives you an idea of whether you want to proceed with the PMP certification.

How this Course Changed Me

I decided to proceed with PMP certifications, and then I will get a SCRUM master certification. Since most project leading involves change management or continuous improvement, I hardly use the SCRUM technique to manage a project. First, it would be better for me to learn the traditional method because the methods used for SCRUM are based on the traditional project management approach.

I found a great project plan that was submitted by one of the students. The project plan was clear and concise. Many stakeholders (especially sponsors) do not want to spend time figuring out the details of the project. I was fortunate to see his assignment, and I applied some of his techniques to improve my future project plans.

During this course, I realized the APA format changed again. Not to promoting my university but use Purdue OWL if you do not know how to style your academic paper.

About Coursera Courses

Finally, I want to mention few things about the courses offered in Coursera. Generally, there are optional reading materials recommended by instructors. You can adjust the depth of learning by reading optional reading material. If you want more intensity, don’t stop at just optional reading—research external academic journals for the assignments. I use JSTOR, Scientific Research, and Academia since I can read some free journals. There are also YouTube courses. Since I have a Skillsoft account, I use it for some business-related research. It takes me longer to complete courses, but I end up acquiring more knowledge than it offers. I have a subscription to Coursera because I can access more courses with the subscription. If you do not care for assignments or certifications, you can audit courses for free.

Interested in taking this specialization course? Check the link below.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/project-management

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Does It Matter When I Exercise?

For the last few weeks, I changed my workout time to the early morning, 5:30 AM. On day one of the new exercise programs, I felt all workout routines feel much more challenging than when I do them at lunchtime or early evening.

Since I did not have a good sleep that day, I thought I was just tired. The following day, I did a cardio, BODYATTACK. I felt so pitiful that it was near impossible to bring my heart rate above 140 in the early morning than later in the day. I had 8.5 hours of sleep with a sleep score of 90 the day. So, it was nothing to do with the duration or quality of the sleep. I was curious about this phenomenon, so I continued the morning exercises every single day of the rest of the week and monitored my heart rates. I made changes to the intended exercise, but I wanted to check them all. So, I tried30 minutes BODYCOMBAT (Kickboxing), BODYATTACK (Bootcamp), BODYPUMP (Strength exercise), and GRIT (HIIT).

When I wake up, my heart rate is about 65. Usually, I move around the house for 15-20 minutes before exercising. The interesting part of this morning exercise was that I still felt as if I exercised at 90% of my max heart rate at the actual heart rate is just 135-140. GRIT was the worst one, and I had to give up at 17 minutes. Consequently, my calories output was lower by 100 calories for morning cardio exercises.

After one week of the observation, I made the following hypotheses.

The morning exercise feel harder because

  1. My starting heart rate is lower in the morning. I suspect that that is something to do with my heart rate being so low in the early morning. My resting heart rate is 63-65, and it can be a lot of stress to push it up to almost double.
  1. Since I am on intermittent fasting, my body does not have energy in the morning. I exercised at lunch during the fasting before. I have no problem reaching 90% of my max heart. Thus, the 2nd hypothesis is incorrect. 
  2. My muscles are not ready for a workout. I felt this when I was doing BODYPUMP (Strength Exercise) and GRIT (HIIT). I had difficulties keep my squats low.

I suspect that that is something to do with lower heart rates and stiffer muscles. Since my starting heart rate is so low, it can be a lot of stress to push it up to almost double in a short time. Interesting, right? I put my researcher’s hat on, and I investigated some.

If the primary objective is to have the best performance, the morning is not the right time to exercise.

As I suspected, the primary reason is the lower max heart rates in the morning. Thomas Reilly and his colleagues at the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moore University (as cited in the New York Times, Dec 9, 2009) found that our maximum heart rate is lower in the morning. However, the perception of how hard they were working was the same for morning and evening. Our body has a circadian rhythm that controls the hormones in our body to have a regular sleep-wake schedule. Our blood pressure, metabolism, energy level, and heart rates are lower in the early morning.

He and his colleagues also mentioned that our bodies are not as well prepared to exercise in the morning because our muscles tend to be less flexible. The athlete’s best performance is set in the late afternoon or the early evening (as cited in the New York Times, Dec 9, 2009).

Is morning exercise being all that bad? Despite my findings, there are some benefits to exercising in the morning.

Dietary Choices for the day

The people who work out in the morning tend to make healthier food choices for the day. After observing 2,680 young adults for 15-week cardio exercise in the morning, the young adults who work out in the morning tend to pursue healthier dietary preferences and habits (Joo, Willamson, Vazquez, Fernandez, and Bray, 2018). The study did not particularly seek to find the best time to exercise; however, the morning exercise motivated them to make healthier eating throughout the day. Since I started the training in the morning, I feel it has gotten easier to regulate my foods intake for the day.

More energy and higher productivity

I felt dreadful during my morning workout; however, I felt more energy when I did the morning exercises. My heart rate is higher after the training. My body is warmer. I even felt more alert and focused on my work. I usually do 1 hour of continuing education in the morning. I noticed my focus was higher after the morning exercise. The best part was I felt so good the whole day because I did a workout in the morning. So, I was more productive.

The choice is all about what you want to accomplish and your preference.

I prefer to work out in the morning because I must go to bed early at night. I have never liked to wake up early; however, I hated the morning traffic even more than waking early in the morning. For the last year, I have been working remotely. My work would like me to go to the office three times a week soon. So, I decided to adjust my schedule. Furthermore, I enjoyed the higher productivity due to the morning workout.

Discussion

The following week, I found out few things to minimize the loss. For example, a light intensity cardio before the strength exercise can help with the workout. BODYPUMP also has a warmup. After a short, low-intensity cardio session, my body is more prepared to do more strenuous strength training.

The Starting Exercise Program

 MONTUEWEDTHURFRISATSUN
MorningRestBODYPUMPAny cardioBODYPUMPAny cardioBODYPUMPBODYFLOW
Evening HIIT HIIT HIIT 

For one week, I did GRIT, BODYPUMP, BODYCOMBAT, BODYATTACK, and BODYSTEP all six mornings to satisfy my curiosity. After some investigation, I modified it a little bit. I kept a short GRIT (HIIT) exercise either on my lunch (when I was working remotely) or in the early evening (if I go into the office as I plan). The addition of HIIT exercises changed made a significant difference to my body weight. I started to lose weight again without losing my muscle mass.

I added a 5–10-minute low-intensity cardio before BODYPUMP so that my strength training has the intended effectiveness. This change is helping my strength workout.

Despite the lower-calorie output, I still prefer some cardio in the morning because of the productivity gain. So, I added another Cardio session on one of the weekends to accommodate the loss of 100 calories.

A New Modified Exercise Program

 MONTUEWEDTHURFRISATSUN
MorningRestBODYPUMP*CardioBODYPUMP*CardioBODYPUMP*BODYFLOW
Evening GRIT – Short GRIT – Short GRIT – Short Cardio

*A 5–10-minute light cardio before BODYPUMP

** GRIT – only short version (15-18 minutes)

What’s next

Initially, I thought of doing GRIT even on a Cardio day instead; however, I decided to add another cardio day on the weekend. I am finding out too much GRIT can cause mitochondria dysfunctions due to the stress caused by its strenuousness. You can reduce the damage by taking mitochondrial regulators and protector nutrients such as 5 grams of Leucine, 5 grams of creatine monohydrate, and 2.5 grams of betaine (Blechman, April 12, 2021). He is citing a lot of journals, so that I will check them out. For now, I am going to keep my new modified exercise program without taking these mitochondrial regulators and protector nutrients.

References

Blechman, S. (April 12, 2021). New Study Says High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) Can Cause Mitochondrial Dysfunction.https://advancedmolecularlabs.com/blogs/news/new-study-says-high-intensity-interval-training-hiit-can-cause-mitochondrial-dysfunction

Joo, J., Williamson, S. A., Vazquez, A. I., Fernandez, J. R., & Bray, M. S. (2019). The influence of 15-week exercise training on dietary patterns among young adults. International Journal of Obesity, 43(9), 1681–1690. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-018-0299-3

New York Times. (December 9, 2009). Ready to Exercise? Check Your Watch.https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/health/nutrition/10best.html