Something happened last semester that will probably have a permanent impact on my self-esteem.
It was in cold January that I enrolled in a compulsory course on information security in which we had to split into small groups of three to four members, and develop a security system.
These projects are usually quite demanding, since you have to do a great deal of research on your topic, figure out how to put that theory into practice and create a functioning system, and document every step from the project plan to implementation.
This means that every group member has to play an integral role throughout the project. If one person tries to sneak away and let the others do the work, his name gets crossed out pretty fast. Free rides are never permitted.
Stop Procrastinating by Setting Time Limits for Daily Entertainment
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Lifestyle, Productivity
We all have different schedules and commitments each day. Some of us are busier than others while others have more time on their hands. Many “successful” people, or those who tend to attract a lot of money, are often seen as busy because they supposedly have more (money-related) commitments to attend to. Well, I’m not here to judge whether that’s true or not… and, in fact, I’m starting to digress, so let’s move on.
What I actually want to talk about is time management, or more specifically, managing the time spent on daily entertainment. After all, we all want to relax at least a bit every day by watching TV, reading trashy novels, playing video games (my favorite), and so forth.
But if we don’t manage our time properly, we easily become consumed by all the entertainment that we have access to. The entertainment starts to control us, when it should be the other way around. And when we should be productive, we lose it because we fail to safeguard our schedules from unwanted shortcomings.
Some might argue that working every day on your personal projects can cause a burnout due to the constant strain you put on yourself. You don’t feel comfortable being shackled to a daily schedule, especially when you haven’t yet developed a habit out of it. But also, if you take a longer break you will, in turn, need a lot of acceleration to get back into orbit.
Don’t Get Discouraged By Not Being Able to Apply Your Skills Immediately
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Positive Thinking
Last time I talked about why people quit so easily. There can be many underlying reasons why we end up quitting activities. One major discourager is not being able to apply the skills immediately. We know how much time we’ve invested in learning a skill, but after all those hours we realize that we still aren’t able to put them into use. It is quite understandable to become disappointed in the results to such an extent that it causes us to quit the pursuit altogether.
It’s understandable, and also very regrettable. We humans are controlled by our emotions, and even our own emotions don’t always know whether their advice will be good for us in the long run. They just want to make us feel better and more comfortable by pulling us out of the predicament.
When we incorporate something new into our lives, like a hobby or a new skill, everything is fresh and fascinating. We enthuse over it. We believe that this is what we want to keep doing, and this is what we want to master. We get overly excited to pursue it in the beginning, but as the positive emotions start to cool down, we come across a rockier path with opposing emotions that block our passage. And they very often lead to a dead end.
Self-Learner is a blog about self-education and self-improvement based lifestyle design. Goal? To become the best "version" of yourself, and feel excited to jump out of your bed every morning.