We all know how fast the days go by: If I blink, it will already be mid-semester. This kind of mental flash-forward makes me start stressing. What if I don’t fulfill any of my academic or health goals? What if everything is a blur and I spend my Winter Break wondering what on earth I did this semester? 

My solution? Do some pre-experimenting before the semester really kicks in. It’s like pregaming but there’s no risk of a headache. These tiny experiments focused on academics, improving health, and capturing memories were a nice forceful kick back into the land of living-in-the-moment. 

Table of Contents

Work: 30-Minutes of Learning a Day

Set-Up

30-minute recipes, workouts, Pomodoro Technique, fill in the blank; the world loves this seemingly-doable amount of time that can still produce results. I, too am infatuated with this round number and decided that it would be good for learning purposes while keeping things fresh. 

The experiment of spending 30 minutes a day learning something new for a week was born. It’s easy to get burnt out on academics and forget that learning can be done just for the sake of learning.

Results

Learning doesn’t stop after college. However, it’s all too common to not want to crack open another learning resource post-college. We all know that feeling of being home for summer break and just wanting to vegetate.

My experiment coincided with Syllabus Week. While the majority of this week was dedicated to starting my reading assignments, there were a few days when I just wanted to do something unrelated to a textbook. So I spent those 30 minutes taking notes on an article from a news site I frequent or a blog post I found really helpful.