Things To Avoid Flashcards
Friends who can be occasionally frustrating
Best to stay away from them if you need to get something important done
-same thing applies to their partners
-you have a habit of overstaying your welcome
-They often says things that are frustrating and a little delusional (the right comment from them can bother/distract you for many hours after your leave)
-under no circumstances should you visit them on a day when you have a assignment due
Pacing
Pacing is the enemy. The moment you start pacing, that’s your sign to sit down and get to work. NEED to use this as your own personal feedback system
One way to snap out of it: When you recognize that you need to stop what you’re doing and be productive, just repeat (out loud) the word ‘no’ until you reaume a productive activity (specifically a note-taking based activity)
Endless scrolling on streaming services
If you are browsing streaming services and you cannot find something to watch within 5 minutes, just shut the whole thing off. Don’t waste your time.
-May also help to have some reliable back ups in there so you can just throw something on
-or better yet, limit yourself to only one episode per week
Open-ended breaks
Make sure your breaks end when they are supposed to. If you don’t have SCHEDULED breaks, you risk taking more break time than you should (days or weeks) and actually losing productivity
Amazon shopping
The entire website is designed to keep you buying stuff. When you were looking for stuff for your apartment you would spend entire days browsing on Amazon
Porn
Some days you get particularly horny. And you end up jorkin the whole day. You need to be aware of this so you can prevent it.
If it’s late at night, and you start looking at porn, that is the end of your night. Even if you go back to the living room, you will NOT get back to being productive afterwards. This is due to a very specific reason: The immediate after-effect of porn is INSECURITY -not because you feel guilty for watching porn but because you do not believe you could really have an experience like THAT …and because the window of time in which that experience is possible is closing. You need to know that going on:
- Porn leads to insecurity
- Insecurity leads to dopamine-seeking activity (like scrolling on Instagram)
Food
Food and productivity doesn’t mix. Productivity doesn’t work if you are eating.
- Food should be something you do during down-time (maybe even as a reward)
TV
TV and productivity doesn’t mix. You’re not being productive if you’re spending half your time scrolling through streaming services, reading subtitles, or being engrossed in an intense scene.
Being a night owl
1) Rarely does anything actually productive happen after midnight (especially if you just satisfied a forcing function like a midnight due date). Just go to bed. The sleep is better for you than the R&R you will inevitably do if you stay up.
2) There is no substitute for a good night’s sleep. Without it the quality of work goes down and the rate at which you’re completing the work goes down.
3) Sleep deprivation also lowers your immune system and makes it more likely that you’re going to get sick. Which eats up a considerable amount of time due to muscle weakness and fatigue.
4) The later you stay up, the less likely you are to actually do what you are supposed to at the end of the night (dishes, brushing teeth, putting dogs away, etc)
Procrastination
The heavier the workload (or more challenging the tasks), the more important it is to do that task THE DAY IT IS ASSIGNED
- There is ALWAYS less time to work on it than you anticipate
- Waiting even 24 hours will result in:
1. high stress
2. missing or low quality work
3. guilt/frustration during the troughs in the productivity cycle
- This causes a ripple effect: scrambling to get things done or catch up to where you should be results in significant lack of sleep, which impacts your ability to wrap up future tasks, leading to even more high stress, more missing or low quality work, and more guilt/frustration during the low-productivity part of your cycle
- Also it looks bad to your team
- Tech is finicky: No guarantee you’ll actually be able to access what is required later in the week, or even tomorrow. It’s better just do it now all the tech is functioning.
- Schedules are finicky: something could easily pop up tomorrow and take up a bunch of your time (time that you intended to use on a going to ask you were assigned today)
- Hofstater’s law: the task/assignment will often take more time to complete than you expected
- putting off a task, even if you think it’s just for a little bit, always ends in you rushing to get it done at the last minute. The stress just isn’t worth it
*The short version: do the tasks and assignments when you CAN not when you FEEL like it (you might not actually be able to do it later, and even if you can it’ll only add to your stress)
Working from home
If you’re working in a lab or office and you think to yourself, “I could just work on this at home”… no you won’t. Don’t kid yourself. Going from a productive environment to your home results in an immediate trough in the productivity cycle
Insisting on using AI for very large complicated tasks
Sometimes doing something the old school way is faster/more efficient (especially when it comes to AI, the more complicated the task the better you need to understand the AI in order to actually pull it off. If you only know how to use the AI for simple tasks, then you don’t know how or even whether it’s useful for larger more complex tasks)
- Example: Asking AI to read several documents and make lists of tasks that are informed by the information in those documents is like pulling teeth.
Insisting on doing the task without guidance
If you have never done that kind of task for assignment before… DO NOT Just jump Right In. You need to read the instructions very carefully. On more than one occasion you have discovered halfway through the task or assignment that you were not doing it the way you were supposed to and you had to start over. That’s a waste of time, just read the instructions thoroughly. Also try to make a point of confirming with someone that you understood the instructions correctly
Skipping class and/or club meetings
If you have a meeting for a class or a project… do NOT skip it unless you have to. At least if you go to the meeting, you know it will be an effective use of your time. If you skip, you might not even use the time wisely. You could easily end up on social media.
-Cases in which you can skip:
1. You have something due soon (an urgent forcing function)
2. You have no way to attend
*If you know you will be in a position where you will be learning or accomplishing something instead of watching TV or scrolling through social media… then why would you skip??
*If it is lecture style, make sure you are taking notes as FLASHCARDS (not on a page)
- You will almost certainly not go back and revisit the lecture videos and even if you do, you could have just gone to the meeting and saved yourself a lot of time
Naps
Going to sleep “for a little bit” does not work. You will not wake yourself up on time unless there are severe consequences for not doing so
*It’s better to just not put yourself in a position where you need naps
Saying “I will do this thing EVERYDAY”
It is just not realistic
- A couple times a year, there will be two or three weeks where you are super busy and simply won’t have the time (urgently replacing a car, gearing up for a big presentation, catching up on classes, etc)
- You need to plan for this accordingly
Working on random BS in class
You should be taking NOTES (specifically notes on flashcards). It gets you in a state of flow, and having to do this later is a surprisingly huge time sink
