In August 2022, I felt like I had stagnated in life.

Yes, I was still doing programming-related stuff—a field I’m still passionate about.

Yes, while things were stressful, I also grew immensely through my discussion-based classes at Minerva and living in a different country every semester.

But things just didn’t have that spark anymore.

I was on autopilot mode, trying to fulfill the requirements of school and work, and not looking forward to anything in particular.

So, in September 2022, I decided to try something completely different: Hapkido, a Korean martial art form.

I learned four important lessons on my “zero-to-noob” journey:

• Begin your journey with a map
• Expect (a lot of) resistance
• Consistency compounds
• Patience pays off

🗺️ Begin your journey with a map

“The best time to have a map is before you enter the woods.”

— Brendon Burchard

Before I started my gap year at IBM, I was the kind of person who made elaborate, detailed plans for my future.

I also had some success with “manifestation”. I strived to score straight A1s for my national examinations, and I did. I set a goal to graduate high school with only Distinction (A+) grades, and managed to score only one A.

However, when I began my gap year at the start of the pandemic, I learned that life rarely goes according to plan.

I’d always envisioned myself working from an office, but the pandemic made that impossible. I’d always thought I would get a government scholarship to finance my university education, but working full-time helped me realize that the scholarship bond would feel like golden handcuffs.

So, when I started college, I decided to make maps, not just goals.

The map analogy frames my endeavors as a journey, with multiple possible paths to my desired outcome. This helped me focus on clarifying what my next two steps are, instead of worrying about the outcome I wanted to achieve.

A map has:

• a starting point (where I am now)
• an end point (where I want to be)
• At least one immediate action to kickstart my journey
• At least one checkpoint (intermediary goals/milestones)

My Hapkido map looked something like:

• Starting point (September 2022): Zero fitness and martial art experience
• Checkpoint #1: Sign up for 10 classes and attend 2 classes every week
• Checkpoint #2: Pass evaluation for yellow belt
• End point (December 2022): Pass evaluation for green belt

😵‍💫 Expect (a lot of) resistance

If there’s no resistance, there’s no growth.

The warmup of every Hapkido class is intense. Immediately after working on my cardio and core muscles for 10 minutes, I had to do 50 squats in one go—something I’d never done before.

For the first few lessons, my thighs started burning at the 30th squat. At the 40th squat, my legs always wobbled and threatened to give out.

“You’re okay,” Master Lok would say when he saw me struggling. “You’re almost there.”

In those moments, I would think back to how I felt when I started learning to code: interested, but also incredibly frustrated at the bugs that would pop up because of my inexperience.

However, pushing through those bugs and learning from my mistakes also taught me the most—more than any tutorial video.

With that in mind, I took a deep breath and persisted through the warmups.

📈 Consistency compounds

When you’re consistent, you get used to it.

When you get used to it, you feel less resistance.

When you feel less resistance, it becomes more enjoyable.

For the first six lessons, I was extremely sore for the next few days.

I limped when I walked. My muscles screamed whenever I sat down or stood up.

The pain made me apprehensive about attending more classes, but I forced myself to go anyway.

My muscles protested, obviously. I had to do the same set of warmups with the same number of reps each time.

In the 7th session, however, I finished the warmup feeling less winded than in the first five sessions.

While I was sore the next day, I didn’t need to limp.

By committing to two classes every week, I had created the consistency my body needed to get used to the warmup.

When I took a two-week break from Hapkido due to my period, I didn’t exercise at all. The breathlessness and extreme soreness came back on my first lesson after the break, but with less intensity than the first five sessions.

🧘‍♂️ Patience pays off

More haste, less speed.

I wanted to earn my green belt by December 2022, before I left Taiwan.

Before attending a belt evaluation, however, I had to earn five black stripes. Each stripe represented passing the mini-evaluation for a core Hapkido concept—kicks, punches, sparring, wrist locks, or ground techniques.

In late October, after 8 lessons and being consistent enough in my attendance, I successfully memorized the punches and earned my first black stripe.

At that point, I realized that I wasn’t going to earn all five stripes for the yellow belt evaluation by December 2022.

However, I also realized that slowing down could be beneficial. If I covered multiple concepts for each class, I might earn my stripes faster, but forgo the deliberate practice needed for a good foundation in those concepts.

Checkpoint #2—earning my yellow belt—was simply delayed, and I just had to keep working at it in the days to come.

By mid-December 2022, I’d attended 23 lessons and earned three stripes.

Because I deliberately practiced each concept I encountered, I also found it easy to train under other Hapkido masters. The techniques might be different, but the concepts stay the same.

Get going, then get better.

This semester, apart from Hapkido, I’m on two other zero-to-noob journeys.

My Psychology and Research Methods courses have a lot of readings. It is a stark contrast to my Math and Programming courses last semester, so I’m struggling now because I haven’t had enough practice in tackling so many readings every week.

Whenever I feel like giving up, however, I think of Ai Ning and Jerry.

Ai Ning and Jerry were my Hapkido instructors. They’re the most skilled students under Master Lok, with five stripes on their red belt—the color before the black belt—and several gold medals from the competitions they attended.

It also took them ~7 years of regular training—three to five days every week, every month, every year—to get to where they are.

So, I’m currently trying to be patient with myself. At least I’m trying and learning—and the progress I get from some action will never be zero.

Are you on a zero-to-noob journey right now? Let me know! I’m always curious to hear about the journeys people are taking.