Attempt No. 5

May 27, 2022
Diary

Yes, this blog post has taken me 4 months to write, 5 attempts and a lot of cups of hot chocolate. Bear with me.

At the start of the year, I thought about writing monthly summaries to get my writing game up and create a routine of posting on here, but unfortunately, fatigue, “burnout?” and A-Level stress caught up to me; and suddenly, it’s May!

There’s a lot that has happened since January. Let me update you all!


Knowing my limits

Clark Narvas working

Posing.

Honestly, I have a lot of credit to give myself. Over the past year, I’ve transformed from being someone who barely worked, lacked discipline and was overwhelmingly shy, into a person who studies regularly, is working on himself, and while could be shy sometimes, can shamelessly scream “HELLO” to you from the other side of the corridor.

But with this very rapid transformation, I eventually started feeling fatigued and then, over time, very burnt out. So, I decided to put down a few ground rules for myself to create boundaries and know my limits:

  • No studying on Sundays
  • Max studying 4 hours a day
  • Focus on efficiency

Restraining my unconscious mind

Steve Jobs quote

From Steve Jobs Biography

There was this research study that I heard about in a podcast (I think it was Mindset Mentor by Rob Dial?) where scientists put people in a low-powered electric shock chair and told them to stay there with their unconscious minds for 15 minutes. When they feel like their thoughts are unbearable, they can press a button to zap themselves and get out of the chair. Most people in the experiment could not stay with their thoughts for 15 minutes.

I’ve become self-aware of my unconscious mind, and I’ve decided it’s time for me to work on it. I switch from one thought to another very quickly, seemingly affecting how I act, my emotions and what I do.

Last year, I read ‘The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle’. It mentions overthinking is a “disease we all have, but we don’t talk about it because we all think it’s normal.” I didn’t know what he meant when I first read it, but I think I know now. It also mentions that we should focus on spectating an emotion, not acting on it, which I am learning to put into practice.

Not perfect, but finished.

Not perfect, but finished.

📸

I’ve also started reading a few biographies, namely Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela’s, and one thing stuck out to me: they are very successful, but they were never perfect people.

It made me think: should I be focusing so much on getting everything perfect at once?

My living philosophy recently has been about ticking tasks and constant progression, but now that I’ve seemed to gain some sense of direction, I’m looking for more fulfilment, and perhaps constant perfectionism isn’t the way to achieve that fulfilment.

When I fix a problem, more problems seem to pop up, just like a game of whack-a-mole. I guess there’s no way to prevent that, and it’s about solving it step-by-step.


Other things I’ve found cool this month (+ the past few months)

See you all next month! 👋🏼 (hopefully!)

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