Thanks for sharing and sorry for your loss. Great that you managed to do it in time.
I started a similar project with my grandgrandmother whom I loved very much. She used to tell many stories from her long life, so I wanted to document them. Sadly,she died sooner than I expected and I managed to record very little of her.
Gym is great, but I would strongly advice going into martial arts classes, for examble thai-boxing or jiu-jitsu. You'll get a boost in self-confidence overall, but also will learn how to communicate with other people when being split to pairs for 1x1 training. That will help combating a lot of social awkwardness and inabvility to speak to new people.
Another one is: try getting into more managerial position at work — that naturally implies more communication, meetings, presentations and such, so you will learn by practice.
Speaking from personal experience, also being shy initially — still am but much much less, it is practically a non-issue anymore.
Thanks for sharing, it's nice that you found your peace and balance in life. Your “1 hour per day” approach is a great one and it looks like it has been proven to be successful by many people, because it's not the first time I read about something like this.
However, even if I personally have a big plan and that 1 hour per day, sometimes I just don't feel like doing anything at all but just purposelessly walking/biking or drinking alcohol. I guess that's the problem the author highlighted. It's not about accomplishing something, but not knowing what you actually want to accomplish in the first place, what to do next. When you know what to do, it's actually not that hard to find time for it, because you have a clear understanding and motivation, otherwise you're just getting caught in an everyday routine spending year after year burning out that limited time you have of your mediocre life.
I started a similar project with my grandgrandmother whom I loved very much. She used to tell many stories from her long life, so I wanted to document them. Sadly,she died sooner than I expected and I managed to record very little of her.