{"id":30656,"date":"2017-02-02T10:28:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=30656"},"modified":"2017-02-01T08:33:10","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T13:33:10","slug":"free-time-building-fun-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2017\/02\/02\/free-time-building-fun-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Time? Building Fun Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"At the beginning of each year, like many others, I like to create a list of things I want to start doing. For 2017, the number one thing on my list is to build healthy habits, for example: reading more for fun, drinking more water, and learning a new language. A month has gone by and I have been checking all the things on my list for the entire month. I want to write about the most challenging thing on my list: learning a new language.\r\n\r\nFirst a little about me: I am Latin American and my first language is Spanish. I started to learn English when I was 5 and have gone to an English speaking school ever since. For this reason I consider both English and Spanish my first languages. However, I have always dreamed of learning Italian. I have taken some courses before, enjoy watching Italian films and listening to Italian music. My Italian skills are elementary, but this year I decided to grow this skill and turn it into a habit.\r\n\r\nI am a strong believer that learning a language is all about motivation. I was motivated to learn English when I moved from a Spanish speaking country to an English\u00a0speaking country. Motivation can be a constant struggle, and often learning a language can be frustrating because it takes SO much effort to become fluent. This is why, I changed this perspective and chose to focus on the habit itself. I no longer care if I become fluent in a year, two years, three years or ten. My goal is to start and not stop\u00a0practicing Italian consistently.\r\n\r\nFor the past month, I have been using the Duolingo app to practice and test out this new habit. Duolingo is a fantastic learning\u00a0tool which entertains me as much as any other game app on my phone. I like to think of the app as a game that needs to be won and finished rather than a textbook that needs to be finished.\r\n\r\n\"Duolingo<\/a>\r\n\r\nMotivation is a mixture of the goals you make and the habits you plan and form in order to achieve them. Establishing healthy habits is not only a self-investment but also a great way to create momentum that will push you forward. Once I noticed that\u00a0sometimes we tend to overestimate what we can do in one day, but underestimate what we can do in one year, I was able to start with my tiny habits and hopefully, I will be able to maintain them.\r\n\r\n\"Habit<\/a>\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n
\nAt the beginning of each year, like many others, I like to create a list of things I want to start doing. For 2017, the number one thing on my list is to build healthy habits, for example: reading more…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Free Time? Building Fun Habits”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Free Time? Building Fun Habits”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":30657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7204,62,67],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30656"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30656"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30668,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30656\/revisions\/30668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}