dirac

Today was really great I have to say. It was by far the best day this week. I was really productive the entire day and felt really good about it. I also went on a long run (for me atleast) and pushed myself more than usual. I also read something related to university in the evening which is also really cool. At the moment I am searching for something kind of entertaining to watch while eating but its difficult. Because a real tv show is first of all a waste of time and second if it is any good I will want to watch more which is bad. I wish there was something that would be entertaining but also useful and would last about 30 minutes. Iam sure it exists I just have to find it. I am thinking about watching some coding videos or something but first I would have to find a nice channel that has lots of videos. I am excited for tomorrow as it is my uni free day and I can spend it on whatever I want (but not gaming!). Lets see what I will spend my time on 🙂

@PochatokHey , thank you for the comment! No I havent heard of that but it sounds interesting I will look into it! Yeah a routine makes sense, I am a big believer in good planning and starting early with tasks so stress is minimized in the first place but of course this does not always work. I think finding activities that satisfy the needs that gaming provides is quite hard, especially because gaming is so available and easy to do. But I think I am on to some things 🙂

So today went pretty shitty I have to say. I was productive in the morning for about 3 hours but then I basically just gave up because I felt kind of bad again. I spend the rest of my day playing dota and watching netflix. However I am very determined to stop gaming now. I even downloaded the respawn guide again and printed it. I will read a bit of it now and I will conitnue reading it on the next days. I dont think I will ever be able to develope something like a reading habit while I still game. Because I will always choose gaming over reading - if I have to choice. I already uninstalled all my games right before this post. I think it will be quite difficult but I will do my best to stay strong. I am also even more motivated now that I saw that in the last 2 weeks I played 50 hours on steam alone. This doesnt include minecraft and netflix so I probably spend about 80 hours in the last 2 weeks watching shows or playing games. This means 40 hours per week which is basically a normal job which is just insane. I mean it would already be amazing to have 2 more hours a day but we are talking about much more than that. What did go well today was the fact that I took a walk which was nice. I also didnt eat any sugar and I will do my breathing exercises right after this post. I didnt work out but thats ok, tomorrow I will go for a run!

I usually dont post during the day but I have some things on my mind right now that I wanted to bring to paper and I thougt it might be a good idea to do it here. So lately I have been declining quite a bit again. Even though my presentation went really well, everything else really didnt. I feel like I have to step up and become more physically and mentally healthy again. I have been quite stressed lately and I basically stopped working out because of my lower back pain but its not gonna go away by itself and if I dont start exercising a lot and regularly again I will soon start to spiral because I know myself. I also dont feel good mentally which is tightly connected to not exercising and sitting on my computer all day due to the home office situation. This depresses me and it drains my motivation because I have no way of dealing with the stress at the moment. I have also been feeling unhealthy in general lately. Low energy, low motivation, physical unwellness. None of it is serious but I know its on its way to get serious if I dont step in now. I want to establish some ground rules and or develope some habits that will get me back on track. 1. Workout 5 times a week and make it a priority. I neglected this a lot and I am paying the physical and emotional price for it. My lower back hurts and prevents me from doing real and fun workouts so I will have to fix this first. I will research a bit about which exercises and things I can do to solve this. I have had this for quite some time, always coming back again. So I know that its mostly related to my posture while sitting but also due to some muscular imbalances in my lower back / hip flexor region and that its also connected to tight hamstrings and weak butt muscles. So I will dig in there a little more. I also want to focus less on muscle building and more on general exercise and fitness for now because this seems more important. I also want to include stretching and foam rolling again because my body is a mess. 2. Take one walk every day. Even if its just a short walk this is vital for my wellbeing and I often skip on it because I am lazy or whatever. 3. Do well in my research job and university. I think I am partly feeling bad due to the fact that I fell behind everywhere at university because I was working on my presentation so much and also just gamed to much instead of putting in some extra hours. I feel like a bad student and an even worse employee. My last couple of lectures I didnt even finish watching because I am so behind that I just have no idea whats going on. I also find it really hard to concentrate on them as well which is probably because I am lacking exercise and some way to cope with the stress. 4. Do a breathing exercise every evening. That is something that I used to do for a while and it always made me feel better but at some point I stopped doing it because I was too lazy. This is something that I really need also for stress reduction and better sleep quality. 5. Quit sugar again. I basically didnt eat any sugar in the first 3 months of this year but started again a couple of weeks ago. I feel like my energy levels are down since then and I feel sort of inflamed. Starting from today I will quit sugar again. 6. Quit gaming alone. For the first time in quite some time I really feel like gaming has become a problem again for me. Because I am so stressed and have no real way to get it out of the system I fall back into gaming. Yesterday I felt so bad thinking about doing some work for my research job that I couldnt deal with it and just told myself it would be ok to game one day. So instead of actually suffering a little and solving a problem I kind of made it worse by escaping it instead of dealing with it. 7. I want to read. I had such big plans on reading and it went so well for a while until I stopped completely. I feel like this is partly due to the fact that I told myself I have to read before I can game. Because of that reading basically was just an obstacle that I had to get over to game. However if I remove gaming as a possibility maybe I can find a way to make reading a thing again. 8. So this point just came spontaneously from 7. I think it might be a real game changer to shut off my computer at 9 every evening if I dont have something I need it for. I will try this out starting tomorrow (because tonight I have my weekly discord meeting with my friends). I am committing to the things I just wrote and even if they might seem difficult I will do my best to follow through on them and of course I will post daily how everything goes.

Today was a little awful I have to say. I woke up with back pain that persisted the entire day. I also felt kind of bad in general because I slept really horrible. I was in kind of an unproductive mood for the majority of the day and because of that I took the easy way out and just said it would be okay to play video games for the rest of the day. Which I did. I did kind of enjoy it but I mostly did it so I didnt have to deal with my physical and emotional unwellness. I hope I will feel good again tomorrow, I really miss working out because ever since my backpain came back last week I basically did nothing and I really need regular workouts to feel good and cope with the stress. Tomorrow I cant pull something like today either way because I just cant afford it again. I really need to catch up on my courses and my reasearch assistant job. I kind of needed to do that today already but I didnt. I cant really say I am motivated because as I said I dont feel very good and whenever that is the case my motivation just drops below zero. I will meditate now, maybe this will help me sleep and make me feel better tomorrow.

Today was pretty cool. I did one more test presentation in the morning and noticed that I was still a couple of minutes over the time limit so I made some adjustments. The actual presentation in the afternoon went really well and I was very happy about it. I can safely say that this was the best presentation I ever gave and I am really proud of it. I was very happy afterwards. Other than that I wasnt really productive in anyway today because I couldnt focus on anything but that presentation. It really did stress me out. Well but now its done and I am very happy about that. After the presentation I really just kind of celebrated and did what I want which was nice. But tomorrow Im getting serious again because of the presentation I really fell behind in my other courses and I will use this week and the next to catch up in those courses. I am really motivated to do so as well. Thats about it. Cant wait to get started on my other courses again tomorrow!

Today was nice, I worked a lot on my presentation. I gave it once to myself and one more time to my girlfriend. I was about 7 minutes over the time limit which is bad, so I kicked out some slides. I will have to do another test presentation tomorrow morning to see if I can reach the 35 minute mark now. It kind of sucks because I felt really good about my presentation and now it feels like its not as smooth as before, lets just hope I can make it tomorrow morning in time, otherwise I will be stressed to death during the real presentation which is tomorrow at noon. But either way, I will give my best tomorrow and this time the result will be fine. Because unlike with the last two exams, I can really say I did my best for that presentation and I really worked my ass off. And thats what counts. Not a dumb little number that I get assigned to it. I feel like I really learned to read myself into several difficult topics in a short time and develope an understanding for a difficult range of concepts. I also learned how to prepare and structure a presentation nicely. Yeah lets do this

Today was really nice. I worked on my presentation for about 2-3 hours and finished it. I will send it to my professor first thing in the morning. After that I was able to wind down a bit. Took a nice long walk with my girlfriend, played a videogame for about 90 minutes with my best friend which was nice as well. We also talked a lot and hes actually planning to have children next year. He just finished his master and his girlfriend will finish her Phd next year and after that they want to have children. I am super excited and happy for them. Me and my girlfriend also really want children but we are both still in the midst of our masters degree but its really nice to see my bestfriend already taking that step. He would be the first one of my friends to have children. I always thougt I wasnt ready to have children yet because I never really felt like a "real adult" but during the past years this completely changed and I am "ready" basically since I turned 26 (last year). I am really excited about the future in general. Like where will I live, when will I have my first child, what will I work. I just wanna be done with uni as soon as possible because I am really done with it. I always loved uni but due to covid I really didnt enjoy it at all in the last year. I just want to be done with it, so I can progress further in my life. But well I still have this semester before I can start my master thesis. But hey its only one semester and I really like my courses so I think I will manage. And I think the masterthesis will be pretty cool. But for now I will keep my focus on the presentation for tuesday. I will go through everything again tomorrow, I think I will try to do the presentation for myself tomorrow and then I will do it for my girlfriend as well. So I am as prepared as I possibly can be. But before that I will have to look at some topics a little more in detail because 1 or 2 concepts are not fully clear yet to me. This week will also be my week where I will catch up with all my courses again. I really neglected them in the past week. I didnt summarize my lectures and also didnt look at them again. I didnt spend enough time on the exercises and I will make up for it this week. The same goes for my job as a research assitant. Tomorrow we have our group meeting and I will have to admit that I didnt do anything this week because of my presentation but I hope they will understand it, as they are usually very understanding when it comes to studying for exams and the presentation is basically just a different form of exam. But of course I still feel guilty about not doing anything. @Jason70 Thank you for the encouragement 🙂

Today was really nice. I was quite productive but also managed to relax a little and went on a run. I really struggled with working out during the past week because I really didnt feel like it. The run today was pretty amazing though, I am really glad I went. I also worked a little more on my presentation and might actually be able to finish it tomorrow. This is great because the professor offered me to go over my slides once again on monday which would be really helpful. This will mean that I wont have my uni free sunday but I think under those circumstances thats just not worth it. But I already thougt it would be like that. I cant wait to be done with the presentation on tuesday, then I will have much more time for my courses and my job because the presentation really has been a lot of work. I dont really have more to say at the moment because its kind of going well.

Today was a nice day. I was quite productive and felt much better than yesterday, physically and mentally. I had the test presentation with my professor and he gave me lots of valuable feedback. I am quite confident that I can give a good presentation on tuesday once I have implemented the suggestions and feedback. Today I had some interesting thougts atleast they were interesting to me. I thougt about motivation and mindset and realized that in quite a few areas of my life I have no motivation for being good at them. For example my job as a research assistant. I feel like I have been underperforming a lot there, most of the time I work less than the hours in my contract because no one will know as its more about how much I progress and that seems to be sufficient. Of course I try my best in those hours but I think its very interesting that I have no interest in working longer than I get paid for. I know other people who put a lot of effort into their research assitant jobs but I dont really see any reason why. You cant get promoted and I also dont really see a lot of benefit in working more altogether. Because as long as you dont horribly underperform there will be no (negative) consequences. And I realized that I really dont like that I think like that. I feel like its in conflict with my self image and also my value system. Because I see myself as a hardworking, motivated career oriented person so underperforming at a job is something that really goes against this. The last week for example I didnt do anything for my job at all because I was so busy with my courses and the presentation. I know that its ok if I work less when I have exams or something like that but I still feel bad/guilty about it. I thougt also a lot about goals and where I want to go in life and I feel like most goals that are to specific and too far away are actually very damaging to me. Mostly because my goals are changing quite often because I find it hard and to be honest a little stupid to commit to something that I dont even know I would like. For example I think it might be really cool to have a company that produces household robots at some point, by I have no idea if that would actually be fulfilling work and/or feasible at all. And by having a goal like this I care less about my courses that I have in uni right now that are unrelated to this goal. I feel like I am wasting my time then in a nuclear physics lecture. I came to the conclusion that long term goals should be vague if they are outside the system you are momentarily part of, for example if you are a university student and dont (really really really) know for sure what you want to do later it makes more sense to have vague goals, like having your own company instead of specifying what kind and which products you would be selling. I think however it makes sense to have precise goals inside that system, like for example what kind of grades you want to get, in which time you want to finish what. I had a conversation with my girlfriend a while ago about motivation and she said that the best thing you can do wherever you are in your life is to be the best you can be right now. It means while being at uni you should be the best possible student, while being a research assitant, to be the best one you can be. Its about living in the moment and making the best out of it. Because if you always live in the future and make all your behaviour dependant on what might give you something in the future you will miss the whole present and also miss out on various opportunities you could have stumbled into by just being decent in what you were doing. Feels kind of nice to get those thougts out "on paper" I have to say. I wonder if I will have understood a lot about motivation by the time I am 30 or 40 years old or if I will struggle the same way I am doing now. Because I had better times where I was way more motivated and I dont really know why that is/was and why I have been struggling a bit with it lately. I dont even know if I am struggling with it to be honest, because I still work about 40-50 hours a week but I just feel like its not nearly enough. But well lets see how this evolves. I hope things will get a little better once I finished my presentation on tuesday.

Today was a bit awful actually. I felt quite bad physically and also didnt feel good mentally. I think its the stress related to the presentation or something, but I really didnt feel good today. I couldnt at all concentrate in my afternoon lecture and I felt too bad to exercise. But I did pretty good for that. Worked a lot anyways. Lets hope I will feel better tomorrow

Today was pretty good, I was quite productive even though I didnt feel good today. I still made the best of it though. Not really much to say. Lets hope some sleeps will make me feel better tomorrow

Today was a pretty solid day, I was quite productive but had quite some lower back pain. I think its from sitting too much with horrible posture. I managed to do a small workout for my lower back and butt muscles, that usually helps. I also ordered an orthopedic pillow from amazon because its been several times that I experienced this backpain. Hopefully this helps a little in addition to workouts and stretching. Tomorrow I will make sure to be productive as well. I will work a lot on my presentation so I can finish it up till tomorrow night because I want to give my girlfriend a test presentation so I get used to it a bit more. Hopefully I can workout for real again tomorrow, depending on my lower back of course. So far I am not being as productive as I was in the first week but I am still doing much better than last semester. I feel like I am quite consistent and its going well overall. I guess this first week rush was a little unrealistic in the long term but I will keep pushing every day to get better and set new limits. I think its also gonna be much better once the presentation is over because this has been taking most of my time in the last two weeks.

@technica Hey, so its always planned that I am watching a movie with my girlfriend, but apart from that I dont really plan for sunday. The sunday is really just for doing what I feel like, even if its just gaming. I think it would lose its purpose if I would spend it on something even remotely productive, so hanging out with friends or a long walk are also nice options, maybe even a small trip once the lockdown is over. But I am still experimenting around with it a little 😛

Today was a good day. I was very productive and did everything I wanted to. I even read a bit in the evening which was on my to do list. Im happy to see that having the uni free sunday turned out to be a good idea, I felt very fresh and rested today, like the stress from last week was well taken care of. Im also kind of excited about uni again, or atleast I view it more as something I get to do instead of a stress factor. Also had a nice workout today. Lets continue down this path and be productive every day so I can enjoy my free sunday without feeling guilty 🙂

It looks like I am starting to get inconsistent with the posting, yesterday I went to bed late and I just forgot to post again. Yesterday was a pretty good day, quite productive and also had some fun doing other things. Today I had my uni free day and it was kind of amazing, I played games most of the day and also met some friends outside and sat by a river for some hours. In the evening my girlfriend and I watched a movie together. I was really able to wind down today. Now I feel like I can actually deal with a week of university again. I think this uni free day might save me from all this stress and work. So I will give it my all again this week. Maybe even getting some perfect days in this week. Dont really have much to say apart from that. Im gaming a bit more again at the moment but I think its because of the high stress I experience. I think if I do it on my uni free day or late at night for an hour its totally fine but this week I will make sure I will tone it down a bit, so I only play after 9pm, that seems like a good rule to me. Also I wont be gaming every day which is also important! I actually didnt read at all this week, which pisses me off quite a bit. I will make sure to get reading again , starting tomorrow. Now I am going to bed

The zoom call yesterday got a little bit late and I forgot to make a post. Yesterday was quite alright I guess and today was too. However I feel like exactly what I feared is happening. I am basically becoming less and less motivated everyday and I dont really know what to do about it. Its honestly a bit depressing that I can see myself going through the same cycles of excitement and demotivation again and again. I feel like I am never learning or improving in the long run. Its only short bursts of enthusiasm that quickly decline. However I do have to say that I am still doing pretty well, I have been very productive the last days either way even though I didnt feel very great about myself. I feel like I am not giving myself enough credit. I did notice something though, I feel like this all might be connected to me not taking enough breaks and just spending too much time on uni stuff. I think the reason I was so motivated last weak was because I had holidays before, so I was able to rest a bit. During the semester I rarely even take one day off I basically work every saturday and sunday. I think this might be the reason why I struggle so much to keep it together because its just not possible for me to recover like that. I talked about that with my girlfriend and she feels the same way. We decided to make every sunday uni and work free for this semester and see how it turns out. So tomorrow I will try to give it everything I can so I will earn my sunday 🙂

Ok so today was also suboptimal. I was planning my whole day around this 3-4 hour lab slot in the afternoon. I had a lecture in the morning and went right to university afterwards only to find out the lab time for today was canceled and nobody told me. This pissed me of a little because I even asked in the group chat but apparently no one noticed. So I went home again and basically lost 2 hours of my day for nothing. Atleast I had lunch with a friend and rode my bike a little. The main problem was that I am not dealing too well with sudden changes like that in my plan because I feel like as soon as I dont know what I am doing I need a strong amount of willpower to not just chill or game. I managed to get it together though and did some work on my presentation. Sadly the professor still didnt comment on the structure of my presentation that I sent him on monday. If he doesnt reply tomorrow I will kindly remind him again because there is a bit of time pressure here. I also managed to do a workout today which was nice. I changed my home workout routine this week because with my new schedule I decided it would make more sense to workout more often but shorter. So far this works really well and I enjoy it a lot. However after the workout I didnt do anything productive and just played dota. I feel like this "rush" I had kind of came to an end in the last days, but I will do anything I can to prevent that. I felt so amazing when I was this productive, I remember talking to my girlfriend about it on monday night and I could basically not stop smiling because of how good I felt. But now I had two days in a row where I didnt perform at my best. However it was still better than basically every day in the last semester. But I want more for and from myself. Tomorrow will be a game free day because me and my friends have our weekly zoom call. What sadens me a little is that I struggle so much with reading again. I didnt read the last 2 evenings even though I really want to establish this reading habit, it felt really amazing when I read this much literature for my presentation a week ago and I dont want to lose that. I had real fun reading but I felt like it only came after about 20-30 minutes that I was really "in". Tomorrow I will not have time to read, or maybe before the weekly zoom call with my friends. Either way no wasting time tomorrow!

So today was actually not thaaat great. I was productive most of the time but I also slacked off a little here and there. Tuesday is a bit of a difficult day because my lectures are close together so I only have about 2 hours between them, makes it a little hard to squeeze something in there along lunch. Because of that I just watched some youtube after lunch for like an 40minutes which is too long and a bit of a time waste, but I am still struggling a little to find something useful that I can do in 40minutes. I think summarizing a lecture would have made sense I think I will do that from now one with those 30-60 minute windows. But I still worked out and was overall quite productive. I gave up a little early on the evening though, only worked till 8. I want to establish a 30 minute reading habit every evening and tonight I just skipped it because I felt like playing some dota. so I guess it was about a 70/100 day if that makes sense. Tomorrow I will have to work in the lab in the afternoon, lets hope everything goes well with driving there and back and being on time. I dont really know how long I will be there but hopefully I can work 2 more hours on my presentation afterwards and maybe even sneak in a workout or smth. Tomorrow I will make sure though to read in the evening.

Today was great! I was super productive and also had a bit of a break through (more of a personal one) in my research job which made me very happy as my previous performance made me feel a little inadequate. I also managed to finish up something for a course that I thougt would take me till wednesday. I also worked out and went on a walk and read a bit in the evening. This day was literally a 100 day. I feel like using the google calendar has been a game changer. I mean I always used to note appointments and as a timetable for my courses but since last week I have been putting in everything else, like what to work on for how long and when and its been amazing. I dont have any weird idle moments where I am confused what to do and it just so much easier to work on my courses when its already been decided and written down in the calendar. I am very surprised about how good it makes me feel to be doing well in university and my job and just not wasting my time on netflix or gaming. I feel genuinely good about myself and feel hopeful for the future. I always thougt that I am just so self critical that I would always feel somewhat inadequate or atleast like I could do more. But maybe that was just because I could indeed do more. But the way I am working right now I really feel like I am at my best ever. Lets make tomorrow another 100 day.

Today was the first (and therefore the only) not so good day this week. I wasnt very productive yesterday so I wanted to make up for it today but I ended up being very unproductive and instead gaming and feeling guilty and bad about it. I dug a little bit deeper into myself trying to understand why I felt so bad today. I think its because I feel like I am underperforming in my research assistant job at the moment. I have had this job for about half a year now and it went quite well in general I have to say. But I am working on a new project since 2 weeks and nothing works so far. I am basically just going from one error to another and feel like there is a lot of inconsistency like sometimes my code works and sometimes it doesnt even though I didnt make any changes. This makes me feel frustrated and powerless at times and demotivates me. Today for example I worked on something for 1 hour and everything was fine and then it suddenly stopped working and I just couldnt fix it. Later I found out that one of the oscilloscopes at the experiment just happened to freeze up so my code couldnt talk to it anymore. This week I basically pushed all the hours of my job onto the weekend because I just didnt want to do it. Which kind of destroyed my weekend. I also notice that this demotivation that comes from the job also streches to other areas which makes it even more important to deal with it. When I played video games today I didnt do that because I wanted to play but just because I felt so bad about my job that I didnt want to work but also didnt want to do anything else.... I decided the best way to fix it is to make sure I do my hours in the beginning of the week so I can get a headstart and start my week motivated. This will also enable me to have a more enjoyable weekend. This week is a good week to start with this because half my hours this week I can spend in the lab which doesnt take me any motivation. Apart from that I want to make sure my week gets atleast as good as last week. I want to make sure I dont fall behind after having a good week but continue to push hard and do well. I have a presentation in two weeks which will take quite some work so I have to make sure I do alot for it this week.

Today was a good day but not a productive one I suppose. My family came to visit, so I spend the entire morning with cleaning the flat and they stayed here till the late afternoon. Then I worked on exercises with a friend for two hours and then the day was basically over. I could definitely wind down a bit and enjoyed myself today. Tomorrow i will make sure to put in some work though.

It can indeed! Another really good day. I didnt game I was productive all day, took a walk in between and did pretty well altogether. I spend my evening reading which was also nice. I am also kind of proud how I handled a little "incident" today where our food storage cupboard basically collapsed with all our food in it. I took out the food, deconstructed it and didnt even get mad about it. My girlfriend went to the store and got some parts and I fixed it shortly after and now its more stable than ever. Today I thougt quite a lot about poverty. I watched a video from a german finance youtuber about it, talking about what problems "poor people" are facing. It was about not getting loans, only getting bad deals on credit cards, lower quality health insurance, higher risks to get sick, less time because they can not outsource and so on. I also watched some other things and read something about it and I never realized how bad poverty is. I was thinking about it especially because I consider myself quite poor as I am a university student. The big difference is though that as a student I have a very different place in society and a respectable identity and my live is basically filled with opportunity and potential. I feel like I got a bit more of an understanding of the concept of poverty altogether because its obviously not just about money. And also about how difficult it must be to get out of it once it grasped you. Well tomorrow is gonna be a less productive day because my parents are coming over and we need to clean the flat before that (was about time anyways). So the first 2/3 of the day I wont be able to do anything for university I suppose. But thats fine I will still get some important work done and this week went amazing so far.

Today was really amazing. I planned my day yesterday and it went much better, I didnt idle around so much thinking about what to do next, I just worked through my schedule on my google calendar and achieved everything I wanted to. All in all it was a really good day. I also felt really good about myself today. I feel like living a productive life where I can be proud about my performance just elevates my happyness levels to sort of a new normal. I dont really have any highs or rushes in that regard I just feel good about myself and how I spend my time. I already made my plan for tomorrow. Lets see if tomorrow can be another amazing day!

Today I also realised that I really need a plan, in a time table manner, because otherwise I will be confused many times during the day about what exactly to do now. Simply having a to do list doesnt imply any sense of hierarchy and I will still have to decide what to do next and I find this a bit crippling, because quite often I will start a task for 5 minutes and stop because I fell like I should rather do that other thing on my to do list. For tomorrow I already made a very thorough calendar. Of course the problems with calendars is that its hard to estimate time slots for everything but its still better than the confusing alternative of not knowing what to do when.