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Thing is, i cant tell myself anything if its simply not true. I cant force myself to get everything done by 5pm because i simply dont have to, i can do it later and i know it even if that means stress and doing it in the last hours.
My problem with this is this: "I tell myself that everything has to be done by 5pm" Thing is, i cant tell myself anything if its simply not true. I cant force myself to get everything done by 5pm because i simply dont have to, i can do it later and i know it even if that means stress and doing it in the last hours.
[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...
You have some great student life there. I'm 2nd year, full time CS student + working part time(30h/week) as a developer. My day starts at 6.30am and usualy ends at about 1am working/studying all day. I could only dream about your schedule.
I was thinking, wow, at university I had classes from 8am to about 4pm 4 days a week (Wednesday afternoons were "free")
Evenings were spent cracking the books and in the computer lab when I needed access to resources I couldn't get over the network.
Still managed to work part time.
Tasks can expand to fill the allotted time, that's true. But, conversely, if you don't have enough time to contemplate and to fail, you often don't chose the best route. You do what's familiar rather than what's correct.
This could be skewed. I'd imagine entrepreneurs who are already successful have the mental peace to order their life and make time for these things. Those without success will be overly concerned with making something work and figure they can deal with physical and mental health when they have achieved success. So the statistics or things you are reading may look like there is a causal relationship between exercise, sleep --> success, but it is really success --> exercise, sleep.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've tested exactly this last week, for an entire week. Result: I procrastinated like hell. Both in my private life and at my job.
I'm halfway through the book "The power of habit" at the moment and here's two little titbits I've picked up so far: 1. Habits have a trigger and a reward and you'll get nowhere unless you work within this fact. Yesterday I had some success, I was trying to fix a dumb programming mistake and getting frustrated. Normally that would trigger my usual behaviour of running off to /r/funny or HN to get my little reward of…
At the moment I've gone through my morning websites, consumed everything I need to, replied to emails I need to, and now this is my second visit to HN ... so it times to make my work environment a clean slate, eliminate all distractions, and focus for a little while... perhaps I'm not awake enough for the focus required though either... |)
That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up. tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and…
I went from grad school to Google in nyc, where the working culture supported going home by around 6pm. That felt like the opposite of grad school, where I regularly slept in my office.
The change needs to happen on a completely different level to get out of the old routines of laziness and inability to focus. I'm talking about some kind of life-changing experience. For example, people being diagnosed with cancer often makes them appreciate life and spend their time more carefully -- or something else that has an impact on our core values and instincts.
That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up. tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and…
I think it essentially is a question of personal character. I consider myself very lazy and procrastinate all the time, so it would not help to just cover the clocks for me to get things done. I would still procrastine, probably even more. The change needs to happen on a completely different level to get out of the old routines of laziness and inability to focus. I'm talking about some kind of life-changing experienc…
You can think of it as the difference between "that square way over there is green" and "that square is covered in tiny blue and yellow dots, with some a few reds ones for good measure".
Our brain performs that compression of "myriad behaviors to broad categorization" automatically, by the way, so we have to drum that mental compression with conscious effort.