First of all, I would like to thank
Scott Hsu-Storaker, the original source of the Thousander Club idea, for dropping in and leaving his bit of
encouraging comment. I hadn't even dropped him that comment that I said I would; I was waiting till I submit this post with what I actually plan to do. He must've seen the back-link, and he was kind enough to drop by and leave that comment. Thanks :-).
Secondly, here is what I have decided to do as my Thousander Club challange:
- 1000 Programming hours a year
- 1000 Reading hours a year
- 250 Hours yearly at the Gym!
1000 Programming hours
Figures! I'm a programmer, so that's normally the first thing I wanna excel at. I have noticed that I waste an awful amount of time without doing any actual programming, so this challenge is aimed at making me focus more on enhancing my programming skills. The only current project I have is my Graduation Project, so I'll count the hours I spend working on that. As my profile says, I'm also very passionate about game programming, and I actually wish I can work as a game programmer after graduating; so that will have a big share too. Other than that, I plan to try and make some sort of contribution to the Open Source community, as a form of participation and a way of giving back for all that I have taken and keep taking. So, I hope I can try to make some participations in form of Open Source code, be it my own programs made from scratch or plugins/modifications/etc... on other open source programs.
1000 Reading hours
I love reading. I have also noticed that I don't do as much reading as I wish I did. So, my goal is to do 1000 hours of reading every year. That's counting technical books, college books, novels, anything. It just has to be books; I won't count online browsing as reading. I also wanted to make a goal of a minimum 10 books every year, but then I figured sometimes I only need to read the first half of a book and leave off the second half cuz it's too advanced for my needs on the topic or something, so I didn't think counting the number of books would work.
250 Gym hours
Well, let's just say I'm not exactly the most fit guy on the planet... So, I figured if I can make myself get off of my computer chair and head to the gym to spend an hour there every day, that'd be real nice! I figured I might not be able to do that every day so I said at least it can be 5 days a week. Multiplying by 50 to give myself 10 days when I can slack off and still not lose the challenge; things added up to 250 hours at the gym every year.
It might sound overly optimistic. It sure sounds veeery hard to keep up with, to me at least. I would have to dedicate 6 or 7 hours every day! It's not easy, but it's not impossible either. What can I say, I'm an optimist!
I would be posting my weekly updates on Saturday, starting the one a week from now. Let the record show that I am starting the count on Saturday March 17th, 2007. Let's see where I'd be by the end of 2007, and where I'd be a year from now... Who knows!