Here's What Recording One Second A Day For 365 Days Looks Like
Every single day in 2014, I recorded a video and put it all together to make one montage.
Yes, all 365 days.
I got the concept from a TED video I watched sometime in 2013 and told myself that I'd do it when the new year hits. The idea is that you would record one video a day, trim each of them to exactly 1 second, and then put all of it together to make a 6-minute video of your whole year.
Here's the final product of my year.
Pretty cool, huh?
Anyway, I learned some things after doing this project that I'd like to share.
1. Developing new habits take more than 21 days
You know how they say that it takes 21 days to build a new habit?
Well, not exactly.
Here's why: it took a whole lot more than 21 days for the habit of recording something every day to stick. In fact — even after a few months — I still had to rely on a reminder I set on my phone to remind me every night to record a video.
I bring this up because of the simple fact that habit-building relates to fitness as well. You have to be patient, determined, and committed.
Which brings me to the next thing I learned…
2. Like anything you do in life, success requires commitment
I remember about 2 weeks into the project I wanted to quit. I thought to myself "Shit, I still have to do this for another 50 weeks?". I was really close to stopping and contemplated attempting it again some other time.
But then I realized that just as with any goal I create for myself, all it takes is some commitment. Ever since then, I went all in and made a commitment to finishing the project, just as I would with anything else that I do.
3. Enjoy the process
One of the biggest lessons that I tell my clients is to not think about what their future selves will look like, but to focus on the process of striving to be better every day.
This video project was similar — I had to learn how to just enjoy the process of taking of moments as they happen, instead of thinking about the final product (which was only making me impatient and anxious). Once I started being more mindful about that, the whole thing became much more fun.
4. You've got to have a plan
As I mentioned above, the habit of recording something every day wasn't so easy. So I set up a plan.
Every night, my phone would remind me at 9PM to record a video. There were two reasons for why I set it up for this time:
- Timing is everything. If I set my reminder for earlier in the day while I'm too busy, I find myself just swiping the notification away and later forget about it.
- Night time is when I'm usually doing things that are NOT fitness related. While it may seem like all I do is sleep and go to the gym, I wanted to capture all the other moments that encompass my everyday life.
Again, like in fitness, you've got to have a plan of attack. Going through the motions and expecting an outcome without any planning will always lead to failure.
Oh, and one more thing.
I invite you to try this out. There's nothing better than being able to see a flashback of your life with a video.
No need to start on January 1st by the way. Start whenever.
Shit, start today.
