Category: Uncategorized

Don’t depend on technology for better discipline

The internet and all of its accessories have the potential to be extremely helpful. It provides us with relaxation, helpful resources and knowledge. On the other side, it can be harmful and prevent us from doing the things we want to do. We easily push our work to the side and procrastinate into the early hours of the morning then curse under our breath when we notice that we haven’t completed anything useful.

You may have resorted to helpful programs that will help you do more work. Some applications block our most visited sites if we just waste time on them. Others help us control the amount of time we spend on different tasks or help us slowly build habits by telling us how long we’ve been doing certain things.

I did (and still do) use apps to aid my discipline. However, they can easily be used as a crutch rather than a tool.

When we go to applications as solutions for our problems, we’re making an important mistake. Self discipline should be solved by the person. Not an external application found on the chrome store.

I find this approach problematic because you’ll find extremely easy ways to circumvent them. For example, ‘StayFocusd’ can be avoided if you do your browsing incognito mode or by using a different browser. There are stronger blocks out there but the point still stands.   Maybe you’ll feel guilty after finding a way around them. Maybe not. Either way, you probably won’t do what you need to be doing.

When you’re looking for apps to help you with productivity, keep in mind that they’re just applications. Not all knowing problem solvers. Not your key to becoming super disciplined. Not the only things that can make you work. Just applications. You shouldn’t have multiple apps that do the same thing. Or apps that contain too many features which will simply prove to distract you even more. Do you really need a note taking app that stores pictures, news snippets you’ll never read, gives you compliments and tells you the weather a year in advance?

If you find yourself downloading endless productivity apps or researching far too much about the perfect app that’ll help you become disciplined, you probably need to assess your problem a bit further.

Applications are helpful but they should be used as tools. Not crutches. Remember, you can always unplug yourself from the internet completely.

Do you use productivity applications? Do you find them essential or just convenient?

Stop doing so much

Ambition is good because it means that we want to actively improve ourselves and achieve great things.

There’s nothing wrong with this. However, there is a problem with trying to do too much at once.

Is it possible to be too motivated? 

Some self improvement efforts start from struggles with depression and apathy. Others may start from moments of bliss and happiness.

In the context of self improvement, extreme happiness and motivation leads to far too much enthusiasm for a better future. This actually results in a loss of focus and nothing actually being completed.

This issue tends to get ignored more than complete apathy to improvement because it’s mistakenly viewed as a desirable trait. The person who wants to do everything is better than the person who wants to do nothing. 

Start small 

A symptom of this extreme motivation is often having a laundry list of goals that must be completed because they will make you a better person. For me, it was trying to develop in all sorts of areas like art, fitness, writing and education. Not only did I not complete everything I wanted to but I ended the summer with half finished projects. Many that I never ended up touching. If i remember correctly, I only finished one online course.

I didn’t complete anything worthwhile because I didn’t focus my efforts on a single project.

My biggest strides in self development have come from adopting habits so small I couldn’t say no to them. I would focus my efforts on them for a while. When they became routine, I moved onto something else. This stopped me from becoming overloaded with lifestyle changes and never making any substantial progress.

For example, choosing to make my bed everyday was a small enough for me to begin and continue without any strain. This would later develop to keeping my desk and room more organised without thinking about it.

Meditating everyday for five minutes a day was not difficult to start. It later developed to meditating 10 – 15 minutes daily.

Drinking an extra cup of water everyday was a small addition and quickly led me only drinking water throughout the day.

Small steps are easier than big leaps

You don’t need to read 10 books in a week or paint Starry Night in a day in order to be make valuable progress with reading or art.

Focus on one area of your life and break it down into small sections. You’ll put more energy into the project or habit which will make you more likely to succeed. If it’s something you have in mind for the long term, focus on the beginning until it becomes a ‘non-focus’. That being, you no longer need to put as much energy into remaining consistent (which is a habit!) Then you can focus on the tougher parts of the project or goal. Or a completely different one.

If you sprint at the beginning of a marathon while juggling bricks, you’ll be the exhausted runner with a sore foot after ten minutes.

Start small and you’ll end big.

The Importance of a Good Attitude

The attitude of ‘this could be better’ plays a part in many areas of our lives. We are always trying to find ways to improve ourselves, whether it is our writing, fitness or just general well-being. This is motivation can stem from being disappointed with how we currently are or the need to achieve something else we want.

We then find different ways to improve ourselves by reading about how to instill good habits, become happier, wake up earlier and so on. Our efforts might not go the way we plan first time round or even the second. But we promise ourselves that we won’t make the same mistakes. However, our disappointment and frustration only continues to grow. If you exercised regularly a year ago, you already would have lost the weight, right? This disappointment will only fuel your current effort and make you even more determined than before.

Not really.

It’s important to understand just how powerful your attitude can be when approaching any form of self-improvement. A lot of self-improvement journeys start from moments of sadness and disappointment but we seldom look back and give ourselves credit for the good things we have done.

At what point does it change from wanting to improve things to simply focusing on the negative?

Forgive yourself.

Always saying ‘this could have been better’ can be more harmful than beneficial.

This isn’t the same as simply trying to forget about any goals you failed to achieve in the past. It requires honesty and willingness to let go of self-imposed burdens. Deciding to forgive myself for not reading much more when I was younger or not being more proactive with my education was tough. It meant that I had to admit that using disappointment and frustration as a basis for my attitude was only leading me towards more frustration. It meant I needed to stop dwelling on what I hadn’t achieved but on what I am going to do.

But ultimately, it meant that I freed myself from cycles of self-criticism of a past that I couldn’t change. My attitude towards self-improvement, and more importantly myself, started shifting from focusing simply on what I hadn’t achieved, to the progress I have made and the progress I will continue to make.

Why is this so useful?

  • It doesn’t prevent you from looking for areas of improvement.
  • You’ll dwell on past misfortunes much less which means you put more energy towards future goals.
  •  You enjoy the progress you make instead of worrying about the things you haven’t yet done.

Allowing yourself to appreciate your current progress and putting aside the anger you had for your previous actions will result in a more positive approach to your work.

Your attitude towards yourself and work also affects how likely you are to complete goals. Here are a few things you should remember when trying to complete something:

1. Perfection is impossible

Whether we admit it or not, we always want our best work to be the first piece of work we produce. It leads to constant worrying about whether our work will be good enough and we may even doubt our ability to get it done at all.

We seem to forget that work is actually worked on. Not produced and framed straight away. If I could write the perfect book without having to edit it, I would have written it yesterday. But I can’t do that and neither can any of the famous authors you read.

They begin and later improve on it.

2. Improvement is slow

A large reason why people give up on goals (especially New Year’s resolutions) is because they expect to see visible change instantly. When we don’t see the change we expect straight away we become demotivated and give up.

However, we shouldn’t expect fireworks to straight away. Musicians practice regularly, writers write regularly and runners run regularly. See the pattern? If you ask a person about how they lost weight, they won’t say it happened in a day. If you ask an author how many times they edited their work before they experienced some success, they won’t say only once.

Realising this helped me understand why consistency is the key to getting things done.

3.  You’re better than you give yourself credit for

Doubt is normal but it shouldn’t stop us from trying to work towards goals we want. Having a realistic outlook on things is good but that should not equate to always telling yourself that you’re worse than you actually are. This eventually leads us to the point where we believe that there’s no use is starting something. Usually because we don’t think we are intelligent enough, as hard working as we used to be or have the necessary self-discipline.

We essentially say to ourselves that we can’t run the race before we even get out of bed. Try letting yourself believe that you’re capable of completing what you want and see what happens. After all, you’ve probably downplayed your ability for much longer than you’ve praised your work.

Looking at the how influential my attitude towards myself and my work is has increased how much I enjoy it. Self-criticism should never result in self-loathing or continuous disappointment. It should only serve to improve the work that you’re doing.

Try changing your attitude towards yourself and your work. There’s little value always being negative about your progress or character.

30 days to Polish and gratitude comes to an end

My first monthly challenge ended yesterday. Here are my thoughts on how I did and whether it was worth it.

Gratitude

My first challenge was keeping a daily list of things that I’m grateful for or things that I enjoyed during that day. The main aim was to focus on more positive parts on the day so I don’t feel like I’m engulfed by darkness when a negative thing happens.

Looking through my list, it seems like extremely small things were worth writing down. I didn’t need to be kissed on the cheek by a fairy or win the lottery everyday to find something that was worth smiling about. A large number of the things were simple. For example,  enjoying a sandwich or noticing that the moon looked big one night.

Simply trying to find a positive thing put me in a better state of mind. Maybe temporarily. It might have lasted for the rest of the day. Regardless of how long it lasted, it was much better than being negative for the whole day.

I’d recommend you try it too.

Polish

This part of the challenge required me to simply learn a new word each day. I did that and a little bit of grammar but I can’t honestly say I’m better off. While the challenge was successful, I don’t think the challenge was useful in my aim to learn the language.

It was too passive and didn’t really force me to actively learn the language. I could make much more progress if I changed the challenge to make it more demanding. Speaking more often would help.

Overall, I’m happy I did the challenges. I will continue with gratitude and make changes to my Polish attempt. I’m unsure of what I’ll do for my next challenge but I’ll think of something, if I decide to do it this month.

Why should I write?

I’m not a writer but I write.

My attitude towards writing has changed a lot over the past few years. I’m glad it’s evolved because it’s far more accepting and positive than it was before. In primary school, I hated nearly everything to do with writing. Writing stories, letters, diary entries – you name it. I didn’t like it. I found it boring (and probably difficult) so I never cared about improving it deliberately.

I’m not going to lie to you and say that writing is now my undying passion. I don’t wake up, jump out of my bed and thank Zeus that I have an opportunity to write. I can’t say I’ve found a passion for anything yet. However, that doesn’t prevent me from saying I’ve grown to appreciate writing much more.

Writing is important is because it improves your thinking. We go from a state of confusion to clarity when we write ideas down and change them. We share them with other people and makes sure that our ideas live longer than we could ever hope.

Mastery of the art is difficult. People put hours and hours into improving how their work reads, how their characters develop and how they present information. Sometimes you dislike the process because ideas aren’t appearing as quickly or the sentences read poorly or the perfect word eludes you. But looking back on the final draft on whatever we’ve done is almost relaxing.

We’ve shared our thoughts with other people instead of keeping them locked inside our heads.

I began thinking about this issue because I want to improve my writing. I find it amazing how some writers can approach important issues respectfully while remaining entertaining. Some news reports can change a person’s mind on an issue convincingly or just illuminate an area that we never considered. Academic books and articles can do the same, although they seem to have a limited audience due to the complexity. Retelling stories about places we’ve visited or things we’ve done give us permission to relive the memory. Even if we can’t get the words completely correct,

Writing is beautiful because our minds are. We can help others, inspire them, make them cry, make them laugh and give them the opportunity to learn.

I write because it lets me connect with other people and, perhaps most importantly, it helps me understand myself.

Understanding selfishness

I think I’ve held a misunderstanding of what it means to be selfish. I’m trying to come to a better conclusion about why we would label one person as selfish and another person as normal or altruistic.

Selfishness is a bad thing. That’s what I’ve been told all my life. We should always strive to be a little more selfless in our everyday lives because that’s what good people do. They care about other people more than they do themselves. It’s an admirable trait that everyone should aim to have.

This definition, I fear, can be taken too literally. As I think I have been doing for the past couple of years. My mindset to how I should treat myself and others was heavily skewed against me. I thought that I should only wish well for other people because that is good. I should not always desire to have things just for myself if I could share them with other people like my siblings and friends.

“My things are our things.” That kind of mindset. (Unsurprisingly, that happened with food a lot. No one really wanted to share socks.)

Now I think I’m mistaken. Wishing good things to happen to yourself is not selfish. It’s not bad in anyway. In fact, it’s healthy. While we should attempt to stray away from being self defeatist, purposefully ignoring our wishes is unhelpful too. It doesn’t allow us to be positive in times that we want to or feel we need to. Having a desire for yourself is not bad. And we shouldn’t always feel guilty about wanting to act on it.

For example, I use a walking stick and use the train somewhat frequently. Now, sometimes there won’t be seats and I’ll have to stand. Usually I’m fine with that and don’t make a fuss about it. People are tired and want to sit down. We’re all in the same boat train. The problem, however, is that I used to think, when someone would offer me there seat, that taking it would be selfish. Sometimes I decline, other times I accept. But I shouldn’t feel guilty for accepting a good deed, should I? Nor should I feel guilty for not giving up a seat if I feel like I need it. Although, I still give up my seat for other people.

Some people might try to tell me that everyone is naturally selfish so I have absolutely no reason to worry about it. The way I understand it currently is: no matter what we do, we always try to do it for our own benefit. We’re all egoists at heart. The oft-cited example is giving to charity. While I may say that I just want to help other people, I really do it because it makes me feel good.

To me, that view is unfair. While it may be true that we enjoy the benefits of every action we do, in everyday life our intentions tend to be genuine and that is how we should measure selfishness. The last time you gave to charity or helped your sibling with homework, I doubt you asked the question ‘why will this help me?’

Thinking of yourself and wishing yourself well is not a negative thing. Being selfish requires negative intent and complete disregard of other people. There’s no need to feel guilty about enjoying your own slice of cake.

A small update on the monthly challenge

My challenge has been going well. I have not missed a day yet! Although it has only been 11 days, it’s still nice to say that I didn’t stop doing it after a couple of days.

In the 11 days I’ve been purposefully trying to be more grateful, I’ve noticed that the simple process of trying to find something to be grateful makes me feel good. There were a few days that I thought I would break the chain but I found something. It may have been small, but it was something. Here are a few things that happened:

  1. I went home and saw my parents and siblings.
  2. I finished my university essays in good time and, dare I say, they didn’t make me cry with disgust.
  3. I had an extremely relaxing weekend.

I haven’t saved the world or finally bought a complete group of properties on monopoly. I didn’t save a puppy from being eaten by a bear and I certainly haven’t landed on a triple word square in scrabble more than once. That would defy the laws of everything. But I am beginning to move away from the negative parts of my day to the positives.

The other section of my monthly challenge was to begin learning Polish. It’s difficult but a lot of fun. My favourite phrase is biała koza. Don’t ask why, it just is. I should have started with the alphabet but that would have been intelligent so I didn’t.

If you’re trying to or want to start learn something new or just improve a small part of your life, let me know!

That’s all for now. I hope you have a lovely day, evening and night.

Trzymaj się (I didn’t look that up! I’m becoming more Polish everyday.)

***

If you don’t know what this is about or just want to read something else, here is the post about the monthly challenge.

30 days to Polish and gratitude

It’s the beginning of November and I want to do a 30 day challenge. Of the current habits that I developed intentionally (they’re quite small – as they should be), progressing past the first month is the best part. Keeping it going for a week or two is too short and I don’t feel like much has changed if I break it.

The two things I want to start doing are learning Polish and being more grateful. Learning Polish is something that I’ve failed to do for the past few days (or months if you really want to be nit-picky about it). Being grateful is something I’ve been doing for quite sometime but I want to make it more purposeful so I stop dwelling on the negative parts of my day.

Polish – I’ll learn a few words each day. That’s the least I can do. I should be able to keep that up… I hope. Obviously, if time and energy permits I’ll do more but that’s a small, sustainable aim for now.

Gratitude – Being thankful for things throughout the day. A simple way of appreciating the good things. I actually started doing this as part of my meditation. It takes about 20 minutes. You start off by wishing good things will happen to you today and in the future, then you move onto a good friend, a person you dislike or hate (if you find it difficult to find someone like that, high five yourself silently. If not, I hope you let go of those emotions soon) then you pretend everyone is at a table together and wish good things to happen to everyone.

I’ll probably try to update every week about good things that have happened and hopefully someone else will be able to share a good thing that happened to them no matter how big or small it is.

Goodbye for now. Auf Wiedersehen und bis bald. Trzymajcie się.

And it begins

For those who don’t know, I’m studying philosophy at university. Well, it began a few weeks ago but we can ignore that.  I have a few plans for my time here with regards to personal development and writing in general. I won’t bore you with all the details. Only  a few of them.

So far, it’s not too bad. I haven’t met anyone I can say I don’t like. I’ve tried my best to be social and set a decent routine for work. Y’know the normal stuff. I might expand more on what’s happened but it’s not all that interesting. However, I realised that getting soaked after buses drive through puddles isn’t something that only happens in movies and to other people. The good news about university at this point is that it’s progressed from ‘What’s your name? What are you studying?’ to ‘I’ve forgotten your name but you’re on my course. Hi, this lecture is boring.’ Variety is the spice of life.

Here are a few things that I want to try doing over the next few weeks, months and my first year in general.

  • “Small philosophers”

This is a series I hope to start and keep consistent. It’ll involve me explaining what I’ve learnt in lectures and through reading. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make it entertaining for those who have no interest in philosophy and helpful to those that do. Though, I offer no guarantees because some of the things I’m studying are either too complicated for that or just plain boring. Plus, I’m not an entertaining writer.

It should also help solidify my understanding of the material if I manage to do it correctly. If I do enough, I’ll transfer it to another blog. Update schedule? Hopefully weekly.

  • General self improvement

The whole point of this blog! There are definitely a lot of areas in my life I still want to improve. For example, fitness and work discipline. I’ll keep this part short since you’ll see how I progress as a person as I update the blog.

  • Blogging

Yes, I’m including blogging in the list of things I want to do on the blog. I still want to maintain it. My update schedule will probably be less frequent as university progresses but it’s still important for me to improve my writing beyond philosophy essays and summaries. I’ll try to continue the random stories that I write because they’re fun and being received well.

I did say that I won’t bore you with all the details, so I won’t. This is mainly to let you know that I haven’t abandoned my blog. It’s only just started. It’d be sad to just stop so soon.

My first month of meditation

I’ve been meditating for a month now. It was one of my projects for this whole self development idea and so far I’m glad I started doing it.

At first I thought meditation was silly. It was only reserved for monks and the like. I wouldn’t really benefit from it in the slightest but I could never find much negativity about the practice. It would help with all sorts of things from being more focused to feeling more relaxed throughout the day. I knew I wanted to try it but struggled to put down the crude misconceptions I had about it.

The first 2 weeks were tough. I set my timer for five minutes but I couldn’t even clear my mind for few seconds. I would be thinking about a variety of things. The thoughts ranged from why I wanted to meditate to what I wanted to eat for breakfast. This happened while I continuously told myself to shut up.

Then it got a bit easier. I changed the timer to 10 minutes and focusing on my breathing wasn’t as difficult but the moments of quiet and focus were still rare. However, I did notice that I felt calmer afterwards. Not that I was always stressed in the mornings but I appreciated the silence much more than I had before.

I continuously told myself that it was too difficult because I couldn’t stop thinking about all sorts of things while I kept on saying ‘shut up and be quiet’. It became easier eventually. I had brief moments of peace and quiet when I stopped thinking about useless things and cleared my mind. It was similar to the feeling of finally getting into a good rhythm while running.

Do I recommend you start meditating? Yes. You probably have the time for at least 5 minutes. It might be a bit difficult (in fact, it still is for me) but the benefits are worthwhile and I expect the experience to only improve.