Learning a new thing per day, for five days
Asked friends on Instagram what new things I should learn…here’s what happened
Oh, Instagram. The ultimate double-edged sword. We love it even though we don’t want to love it. It’s a time suck, but it’s also an excellent tool that connects people across space and time.
We often get so focused on our daily routines and patterns that we stop being curious. Stop learning, stop asking questions, and stop being silly.
The goal is not to become an expert at something, for when we become experts, we stop being curious to learn more and ask why.
So, attempting to use the crowd-sourcing powers of Instagram for good, we made a little experiment to shake things up.
A few weeks ago I posted a poll asking for ideas of random stuff I could learn in 30 minutes. Instagram friends delivered. Then over the span of a week, I picked 5 of those things to learn.
A mix of intellectual stuff and physical challenges. I haven’t gotten through the list of all the suggested things to learn, so I’ll publish it at the bottom of this article in case you want to try some for yourself.
But here are the things I learned:
Thing 1: Permaculture 🌍
A friend just got back from Costa Rica where she spent weeks living and learning about permaculture. Here’s some of what she taught me about permaculture is a philosophy of life.
At first glance, we might think permaculture is about agriculture, but it goes beyond that. Permaculture means designing systems that allow us to meet our goals with less energy.
This “energy” includes things like electricity and gas of course but also includes our physical energy, mental energy, financial energy, and material energy.
Permaculture is a reflection of nature in all that we do. We all give and receive energy. The question becomes how we can meet our goals while caring for the planet, for the people, and making sure each has a fair share.
Three Pillars
Earth Care
People Care
Fair Share
After learning this, I connected the dots linking permaculture and business. B-Corps are an example. They are companies dedicated to doing business for good, and focusing on the earth, people, and ensuring fair share.
Thing 2: Break Dancing 🕺
This is a favorite. It had never crossed my mind to break dance. But why not learn? A video speaks louder than words, so you can entertain yourself watching that here. All it took was Googling “break dancing for beginners” and then clearing the room for a practice session. Also learned the correct way to spell “break dance”. It is not “brake dance” as I had spelled in the video. I also learned it originated in Harlem. Fun fact is the dance made its way across the sea to Medellin, Colombia where it reached the infamous comuna 13 where it played a role in saving and revitalizing that neighborhood. Got to witness it when I traveled there last summer, there are so many street performers break dancing, it’s incredible.
Thing 3: Juggling 🤹♂️
This was harder than expected. The logic of juggling is interesting but the balls move too fast for my brain. Also, I didn’t have tennis balls or hacky sacks to use so I improvised with rolled-up socks… Have fun watching this ridiculousness.
Thing 4: Car maintenance 🧰
The downside of having a 22-year-old car is it always needs maintenance. The upside is having a dad who is a self-taught mechanic who has taken countless cars apart and put them back together My Jeep might be old but its parts are basic and generally easy to fix. None of that modern tech, just some good old elbow grease and patience.
How convenient was it that my car was having issues in the middle of this challenge and that someone from Instagram suggested I learn something about car maintenance?
Seeing a puddle under my car led me to call my dad. “It’s the anti-freeze coolant,” he said. “The tank is empty, you have a leak.”
He pulled out an infrared light to try and find the leak, without success. The next step was buying new radiator hoses and replacing them. So we took the Jeep into surgery. From 10am to 8pm we took out the intestines of the car to replace the old radiator hoses. It wasn’t rocket science, it was patience.
I learned cars have a tank under the hood that stores the anti-freeze, a reservoir for engine coolant. There is a small hose that runs from the tank into the radiator. The radiator uses this to cool the engine and spits the extra back into the tank. Those hoses get old and leaky, so after 22 years, mine had failed and needed replacement. Lesson: check your anti-freeze coolant tank regularly!
Thing 5: Read a Sonnet then Write a One 📜
My Shakespearian knowledge about sonnets is a little rusty, so I asked ChatGPT to remind me what a sonnet was and to write one. It’s response:
A sonnet is, in brief, a 14-line poem with a “twist,” or volta, occurring in the middle.
It spit out a sonnet it made up. But instead of sharing what a robot wrote, I’ll share what myself, a person, wrote
Below is what I wrote, 14 lines in a specific rhyme:
Last week there was frost on the fence
The wind howled and the cold raged.
But today the air is hot and dense
Summer has escaped its cage.
How are we to live in a world of extremes
Where nothing is certain, nothing is still.
Uncertainty screams
And it’s up to us to pay the bill.
Sure, we can complain, but what good will that do
Picking a fight with nature is not one we will win
But two plus two we can bond together like glue
Flip the frown into a grin.
Think, this way we are not trapped,
For the one thing we do well is adapt.
Thing 6: Learn Portuguese 🇵🇹
Oi, meu nome e Maria e eu gosto de cafe.
Video attempting to say this and the origin of the idea for this one is here.
Thing 7: Cemeteries 🪦
This was more of a curiosity I discovered on my daily walks through the cemetery that I live across the street from. Normally my eye catches the Free Masons symbol on a bunch of tombstones. But on this particular day, I noticed another smaller symbol on some graves. What made me see it was that on this day some gravestones had little red flags next to them. Curious, I walked up to read what they said. Odd Fellows Society.
What’s Odd Fellows Society?
Well, turns out it’s another fraternal organization, this one with traditions likely dating back to the times of Roman Emperors Nero and Titus, in 37 AD. The first recorded lodges were in England in the 1700s.
List of things to learn
Below is the compiled list friends from Instagram suggested I could try to learn. Sharing it with you in case you are curious to take a few minutes to learn. Mastery is not necessary. Often just trying it for a few minutes is enough to open up curiosity.
Learn hand whistling
Research mushrooms and how they talk to trees
Archigram
Paolo Soleri utopian cities
How the city of savannah was a radical concept when planned because it promoted social equity
Learn how to juggle
Needlework
Woonerfs (type of street)
Tejer
Harmonica
Sound connectors
Research a new coffee shop and then go there and ask the barista for their favorite song
An agility move
Read a sonnet and then write one
Learn facts about mosses
Tap dance
Portugues
Car maintenance
After Effects
Geocaching