Jump to content

NEW VIDEO: The EASIEST Way to Stop Gaming

Dirac's Journal


dirac

Recommended Posts

Today was another really good day. I went to the gym in the morning I was quite productive with studying and felt good throughout the day. I realised again though that working out in the morning is just not for me, I just like working out in the evening much more.

When I was done with studying at around 6pm I realised that this is where its becoming important to find some new activity. Something that I can and want to do where I can relax. Something that isnt very demanding. I really didnt feel like reading or anything but maybe thats only because reading is in general still a new activity to me, basically the opposite of a habit. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today was even better than yesterday. I basically studied all day and then had two beers with some friends. In the beginning I was only kind of productive, I was redoing some old problems for my exam next week and I didnt feel very engaged. Later I looked up some new exercises online and I was way more motivated to do something "new". I did well and I enjoyed doing it. Tomorrow I am planning to do the same. I cant wait to finish the exam and start my projects that I want to do in the holidays. 

I have to say I am a bit jealous of one of my friends who had I a beer with tonight. He did his bachelor's thesis in a field and group that turned out to be totally his thing. While I wasnt very interested in the topic I worked on and feel in general kind of lost in university right now because I just dont know where I want to go. I think next semester I will just take as many different courses as possible and see what I like most.

But anyways, good day lets make a better one tomorrow!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today was also a really good day. I continued to be productive and did some more nice studying. I found some nice additional exercises that I will be doing tomorrow. I didnt game and I feel really good not gaming. I am starting to get more and more motivated which could be because of the no gaming.

Tonight I watched some episodes of the umbrella academy (amazing series by the way) and the father of the children really inspired me in a way. I was thinking that basically everyone can become an amazingly powerful/succesful being given he is smart enough and works hard enough. This got me thinking a little bit more about myself. I always had this mindset that you can achieve anything if you work hard and smart for it but to be honest I never really put that much work into anything. I never had a big goal that would motivate and drive me to do so. My goals and dreams where always in motion and I never really felt like chasing a certain goal for very long. I mean I am doing well at uni and im not really lazy or anything, but I never really "hustled" so to speak. And I today I realised that I will never have an amazing life if I dont start to go hard at some point. I keep pushing this point forward in my life which is a huge problem. I feel somewhat entitled to an amazing life and I always think I will have decent money and an awesome job later but I never really do something for it apart of my uni stuff. I want so much in life later, so much more than an "average" life but I havent done anything for it yet. Im not studying harder than most people I am not working on any projects or reading anything or learning more than I have to. 

I want to start using my time better. I want to work more and do more and make sure that when I am 50 years old I wont look back and say "man I was a lazy piece of shit in my 20's, all I did was gaming while my friends from uni did so many things which got them to really high places now, while I am just an average joe whos doing kind of fine." I mean I only have this one live and instead of making it the best life possible I waste most of it on youtube and netflix or gaming. Of course there has to be some sort of balance but balance shouldnt mean wasting 3-6 hours a day on nonsense with no value for later. 

I really want to change my life around and I believe that no gaming is an essential part of it. I will start counting days now and start every post with my streak, which by today is 5days of no gaming.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 days of no gaming.

Today was great, I was so productive I studied a lot and I feel like I am gonna axe this exam. Because I did almost every additional exercise I found on the internet and I feel like I know everything we did. This is the feeling that I want before my exam. Tomorrow I am gonna do some till the early afternoon and then I am gonna relax and mentally prepare. I also went to training today which was great.

I cant wait to finish the exam and then use this time in my holidays. First of all I will spend some time moving though, as I am moving in with my girlfriend this month.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/6/2020 at 11:34 PM, dirac said:

@Amphibian220 the concept of dota is similar to most of the "modern" online games. Into the same category I would push in league of legends, Overwatch, Fortnite and many more. Those games are all different in how you play them (strategy,shooters,rpgs....)  but they are all the same in the following way:

- You play "a round" of the game. you cant finish it because they are all multiplayer only

-"a round" is usually between 20 and 60 minutes

-you play with players against other players

- horrible communities with very toxic people

- every round has highs and lows which leads to the two biggest problems:

1) you get an insane endorphin rush when you play well and win

2) you feel bad and empty if you lose

The whole concept of playing a quick round and then another and another and so on is horrible. You are always chasing the one game that was so super awesome because you played so well. Sometimes you just lose 4 times in a row and feel empty because you still didnt get the "high" that you want.

 

So I hope this made my problem with dota a little more clear. Of course this is just my point of view and I am sure others might disagree. 

 

Apart from that my day was nice, I did most of what I wanted to do, I was kind of productive for uni but I also realised that I find it very hard to do uni stuff after working out in the afternoon. I will try to do my workouts from now on either later in the evening or first thing in the morning. I didnt game so far but I will play half an hour of a "non threatening" singleplayer game now. After that I will meditate and then go to bed:)

 

 

I’m a little bit late, but I wanna say how true it is. My biggest problem was when I was playing competitive Overwatch and losing rank points. Every time I though: I’ll win next match, get my rank back and stop. But almost always I ended up losing more and more.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I havent been here a while but today I coming back determined. 

The last weeks gave me a very interesting insight into myself and my relationship to gaming. This post is more for myself but if anyone can take something from it I wouldnt mind.

Since I finished my bachelors degree at the beginning of this month I had some interesting experiences. The days prior to the defense of my thesis I felt very bad emotionally. Probably the worst I felt in the last 1-2 years. I dont really know what it was but it was bad. I actually made a video adressed to myself where I just monologued a little about how its been going. I think I will watch this video tomorrow just to see what was on my mind back then. I think my emotional unwellness came from a mixture of stress, gaming to much and just feeling unhappy with my life. And then after my thesis defense I stopped gaming. I kept that up for about a week. This week was probably the best week I had this entire year. I did a lot with friends and my girlfriend, went to the gym, programmed a little by myself, got into electrical engineering and spent some time reading. It was really amazing, it was actually how I always wanted my life to be like. Just this feeling of being able to sit down and not do anything for a couple of minutes, neither feeling pulled towards gaming nor watching a video or anything was amazing. It went really well as I said for about a week. Then I came home from the gym last thursday and I felt like I was getting sick. It felt a little bit like the time I got corona which happened in march, so I was kind of scared that I might have caught it again. On thursday I even felt too bad to sit on the computer so I just layed in bed watching netflix all day. Then on friday I still felt a little bad so I was like " I cant be productive like this anyways, and I dont wanna watch anything. Hm I think its ok to game again because you know I am feeling to bad to do anything else" and thats when it all started again. I played games the entire weekend including today. I do have to say I kind of enjoyed it but I could have done so much more, especially because I have been feeling good again since yesterday.

This was my final prove, that I have to quit gaming for ever. As long as gaming is an optional activity its always gonna overrule everything else. And it doesnt matter if I am sick or bored or alone or if "I earned it". I am 26 years old and I feel like I have achieved nothing. 

This brings me to another point. While I wasnt gaming and using my time well, even if it was just for about a week, I was feeling so good about myself. I was proud of how well I did in my bachelor and that I really did something there and that this is actually a big achievement. I mean its a bachelors degree in physics!! Most people on the planet couldnt even do that. But as soon as I am back to gaming I feel like some kind of loser. When I game I see myself as someone who still lives with his mother is totally overweight, doesnt have a job and never talked to a girl. Which is so far from true. 

This even got to a point where I am still pushing forward the dinner date with my parents in a nice restaurant because I feel like "I dont deserve it because I am such a loser who just plays dota all day". And this is so sad. My parents want to celebrate my degree with me and I feel like its nothing.. 

I finally understood. I have to fully quit. No bullsh*t, shortcuts or whatever. No excuses, no whining. No "only singleplayer" or "only two hours per day" or "only to times a week."

I recently watched a video of youtuber I really like and someone asked him what he thinks about alcohol and what he said was simply "if you can drink in moderation then do it, if you cant then never touch alcohol again." I cant game in moderation. So I am never touching games again.

Tomorrow is day 1 of my new life!

Iam making this extra cheesy so it feels even worse to game again. After a post like this I better deliver, right?

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, dirac said:

After a post like this I better deliver, right?

Use the emotion of failure to propel you, but don't set ultimatums with yourself. Just be committed and do what works. Sometimes ultimatums can really cripple us. Ultimately, your path to success with quitting games will be different than mine. You have the rest of your life to accomplish things. Something I disliked about graduate school is how much work you put in and how little the reward is. Life gets better after college ends, trust me. Stick with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey. That’s so cool that you know physics on such high level. I wish I would too one day.

8 hours ago, dirac said:

programmed a little by myself, got into electrical engineering

What were you programing? What were you studying related to electrical engineering? Was that some sort of an Arduino project or something similar?

Dude that’s so interesting. 

Edited by WhoCares
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never thougt I would get two comments on that post ! I will answer them first and then talk about today.

@BooksandTrees I agree so much with what you say. I think the discomfort you feel when you are at a bad place can be a real powerful motivator. I also believe that everyones path to a gaming free life is different. I do have to say that I really love university so far. I find it so easy to motivate myself for the courses at uni and I have so much fun doing them but I struggle so hard to not waste my complete free time on games.

 

@WhoCares Hi, so there was already a lot of programming involved in my studies for university but right now I want to get more into machine learning. I even bought a book from the creator of the Keras and tensorflow libraries but because I have been gaming the entire holidays I didnt start to read it yet. But I will start tomorrow ! And yes I was actually talking about arduino when I said electrical engineering 🙂 . This is a hobby that I would love to get into more, to be able to build cool stuff at some point and also just have a deeper understanding of technology. Because I always felt like technology is the future of humanity and we are surrounded by it in our daily lifes but I have no clue about how most of it works. That arduino stuff seemed also really easy to get into and so far my physics didnt help me. There are lots of tutorials and everything online, so if you are interested in that I would just recommend you to buy a kit on amazon or smth and get going!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Day 1 

Man this was so tough today. I am so proud that I didnt game I can hardly put it into words. 

I woke up feeling quite bad again. Just exhausted and feeling like I am starting to get sick. I immediately wanted to just spend the whole day gaming. I even downloaded steam and dota again. But as soon as the download was finished I was thinking about the post I wrote yesterday and the comments you guys wrote so I was like "na f*ck it" and deleted dota and steam again. I am not gonna lie, I spend 70% of the day watching stuff on netflix because I still didnt feel healthy and couldnt concentrate that well. But the fact that I didnt game even though I was so close to it and craved it the entire day was amazing. I dont think I ever managed that. So far I only managed to stop gaming when I was sick of it or just didnt want to anymore but never had I managed to stay away from it when I actually wanted to play games.

So this was a nice first day. Lets keep it up !

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, dirac said:

That arduino stuff seemed also really easy to get into and so far my physics didnt help me. There are lots of tutorials and everything online, so if you are interested in that I would just recommend you to buy a kit on amazon or smth and get going!

That’s nice that you got into digital electronics with Arduino. Well, I do projects on Arduino boards since 12, so for 5 years already. But because of gaming during all that time I am still pretty mediocre at it. The hardest thing I’ve done would be a program for EEPROM (non-volatile memory) management. It was tricky to do. I guess at some point I’ll improve the algorithm a bit and then upload it as a library to GitHub, as far as I’m concerned nothing similar is publicly available. Also I’ve done a simple counter that works in a real factory for 1 year already. There’s a chrome plating line of 30 baths with different liquids in them. In order for chrome to stick to surface of metal object, bath itself works as positive electrode (anode) and plating object is negative electrode (cathode). So positive ions of chrome in a liquid stick to metal surface of an object. All process is controlled by computer, plating objects are hanging on a bar, bar moves on rails between baths. Every time bar dives in a bath with chrome, rectifier near a bath starts working on 4V 3000A, which starts chrome plating process. My task was to count how many bars with product were chromed. Rectifier turns on only when new bar is in a bath, when rectifier is on, its bus creates a magnetic field which is possible to detect by reed switch. So I programmed Arduino to detect when reed switch changes its state from 0 to 1 (it is important to ignore when it changes back from 1 to 0) and increase counter variable. I’ll attach a photo of my counter when I was testing it in a factory. I like that Arduino is very easy to start messing with unlike other microcontroller boards like STM32 (but they’re much more powerful and feature rich). So keep going if you like it, at some point you’ll be able to build whatever you want. I hope that my explanation was interesting to read, it might be unnecessary complicated and with a lot of grammar mistakes, but I felt like I wanna share it with someone. Good luck!

UPD: I found a photo of a counter installed on its place. 

AADA0ACF-7EDD-4CAF-B29B-CFFBE31E086D.jpeg

610B69B2-3FA7-4071-9AB2-258175FB9D9A.jpeg

Edited by WhoCares
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@WhoCares

Hey man, thanks for sharing ! Thats so cool, also the fact that you got into as early as 12 years old and have been doing projects like this! If my math is correct then you are 17 years old now, while I am 26. Imagine how amazing you could be at this stuff when you are my age if you just keep improving your skills with this. You would probably know more than most electrical engineers! I mean the younger you are the more hidden potential you have. If you spend your time and energy wisely you could become russias elon musk. I wish I had discovered my love for physics and engineering when I was your age but I stumbled around not knowing what I like to do till I was 22 years old. Thats also when I started studying physics at the university. 

How did you start doing arduino ? Did you follow tutorials ?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually really wanna post now, even though its just afternoon because I had kind of a crazy day already.

Day 0

So I failed today because I played games again but I also had some sort of revelation. My mistake was to just have "quit gaming" as my goal and no actual tactic/approach how to do it. I mean the first day I just watched netflix all day while I had strong cravings and just didnt know what to do with my time. Today I woke up with cravings to game again and I just couldnt bring up the willpower anymore so I gamed for like 3 hours in the morning.

But I didnt enjoy it at all. I actually felt miserable and after a while I just stopped. I started watching some videos of the game quitters youtube channel and I got really inspired and realized that I need an action plan. I have to do this more methodically. I have to find out why and when I game. I also have to find out what my triggers are and then I have to find activities that I can replace gaming with. Those activites I definitely want to be programming, sports, arduino and reading. 

I will also spend some time today and tomorrow by reading the respawn guide again. 

Another thing that also happened today is that I got a job interview for a job at a great company in my city, where I can work on robotics in industry while still studying at university. The job interview will be in about 10 days and its kind of a dream job for me. I am super excited and this also motivated me very hard to stop gaming. I dont know what that job interview could be like but in case they ask me coding questions of some sort I want to be prepared so I will spend some time coding until then.

I actually started a daily coding challenge a while ago which I only held up for like 5-6 days but they kept sending me the challenges so I think I will just do all the ones I missed tomorrow and the following days. 

Im not gonna die if I dont get that job and I until the interview I wont even know what exactly I will be doing there but the thougt of that alone really motivates me and that is what I need right now!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@dirac Thank you, I am trying to learn as much as I can. I started with Arduino when my friend who works as an electrical engineer told me about it. He also gave me a board and some electronic components to play with. At first I was watching and reading tutorials on the internet, after that I bought a book about Arduino. And in my case it was a pretty bad way to learn Arduino from scratch, because I had 0 coding or electronics experience, many topics in such resources are not fully explained, and I started copping code or electronic schemes without understanding how they actually work. So in my opinion it is best to learn C/C++ on a proper level, and learn electronics on a basic level, at least fully understand Ohm’s law, how transistors work etc. After that you can try to do a project that you are interested in. In that process you’ll learn everything else what is needed. This is how I see a decent way to learn Arduino. I might be wrong though.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@WhoCares Thanks for your input! I think thats where my physics degree might come in handy because I had a c++ course for one semester and also studied things like ohms law and basic electric components along the way. I think I will also post my arduino progress in here from time to time so you can see how its going. Are you still working on projects?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is my fourth post today but I still want to bring down some thougts. From now on I wanna plan my days in advance so there is less time where I dont know what to do, because I feel like thats most dangerous. I realize the best thing I could do, is to not be at home so I cant game but the pandemic doesnt really allow that. Also basically all my interests/hobbies and work are done on the computer so I cant really avoid my computer that well. 

However if I plan my days in advance I will be able decrease the time I browse around youtube and might get triggered to game. Because another habit that I picked up latey is to read youtube comments which also has had a negative impact on me. Because for many videos the comment section is a very toxic place. So to combine all of this I wanna make sure I dont start my day on the computer and that I only use it if I actually want to do something productive on it like programming.

Another thing I want to try is to not wear sweatpants all day. This might be weird but I had the idea that wearing clothes that I would also wear to work could put me into a more productive mindset. 

Because I felt healthy again today I also want to go to the gym again tomorrow.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@dirac That would be very cool if you’d post Arduino progress here. Gonna be interesting for sure. Also it can motivate you to do more. Recently I worked with FPGA board, it’s much harder than Arduino. On FPGA, instead of writing a program you are configuring logic inside a chip. If you wanna learn more about it, google or check my journal, I had some posts about it few weeks ago. But still I have some plans for Arduino. This month I’m gonna build ‘smart’ humidifier, that’ll use a sensor to keep humidity in a room on set level. Also I’m planning to build mechanical keyboard from scratch. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@WhoCares Im glad to hear you have a project in mind, thats pretty cool! As far as I know there is a masters course at my university every summer where they teach FPGA programming, they even gift you a board for that. I am definitely planning to take that course next year!

Right now I am struggling a bit with getting in to arduino again because just going through the parts as I did before is neither challenging nor fun but I dont know if I know enough for an actual project yet. But I think I will just go ahead anyways and do some simple projects out of a book that I have.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Day 1(ish)

So today was actually kind of mixed. I felt pretty good about myself and my life the entire day and I went to the gym for about 2 hours which was nice. I can safely say that I am back to full health so now feeling bad is not a good excuse anymore. 

My morning was rather interesting. Because I actually wanted to read. But I couldnt concentrate. Something concerning the job interview was on my mind so I wrote an email. Then I was on the pc again which I planned not to do before lunch. So I thougt "ok you are on the pc but this means you are gonna be productive and programm now". But then I actually started watching the presidential debate for about 40 minutes and then I scrolled around youtube mindlessly for a while. So I basically lost my whole morning without gaming at all. 

Here again gaming is of course not the only problem and its quite easy to lose yourself in other nonsense. Because for me mindless youtube browsing is even worse than watching a netflix series or smth like that (which is also not great).

Then when I came home from the gym I bought a new game on steam. I thougt about this for a while and talked about it with my girlfriend because the thing is that I never actually had a problem with any game that wasnt a competitive online game and the one I bought is pure singleplayer story stuff. Weirdly enough the main reason I bought it because I thougt it might motivate me to work more on my coding and arduino stuff and so far that is indeed the case. I only played about 2 hours because that seemed enough for today. 

I lately realized that I really want to start reading some fiction books. Because lately I realised that I love the cyberpunk sci fi genre and there are just not many series or movies about that that I havent seen so far. And one of the things I enjoy so much about games is the worlds they create and the stories they tell which can be great to escape in. So  I thougt why not just buy a book about that genre you want to get into.

I also just found out that I have much more tutorials for Arduino things that I thougt. Because so far the only tutorials I found where about single parts and how to wire them which is basically always the same after a while and wasnt very entertaining. But now that I know that I have more interesting tutorials as well I am quite eager to go at them tomorrow.

I will actually count this day towards my no gaming because for me the goal is to stay away from dota and other cancers like that. If I play a game at night for 1-2 hours I am perfectly fine with it. But the ground on which I rate whether or not it counts is how I feel when I think I should stop. If I see myself struggling to do other activities or experience strong cravings or game for longer periods than I want to then I will reset the streak and stop gaming completely.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@dirac Great idea to try FPGA. I’ve been on such courses and they were pretty intense. I know a very good book related to FPGA and digital design, so tell me if you’re interested in it. This book will prepare you to any FPGA courses very well. 
 

I highly recommend starting your own Arduino project, from my experience copying projects is not that interesting. You can always learn something that you don’t know in the process. If you don’t know what to do, you can find existing project and make your own version with your code and scheme. 
 

Be careful with that game though. I had couple of times when I started playing single player game, but ended up playing Overwatch after. Your case might be different, just keep an eye on that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@WhoCares I would definitely like to know the title of the book! But I dont think I will look at it before next february or so 😄

I also realised today that I will learn the most and have to most fun by doing my own projects. Because if I just copy and follow tutorials I dont really learn anything and its neither fun nor engaging in any way. I think ideas might just come along the way but I am mostly interested in building some sort of robot. I think I will first focus on ways of movement.

Do you have any idea how to get plastic parts to build certain things? Like if I want to make an arduino car for example I would something where I would put wheels in. I was hoping to just find some sort of plastic on amazon that I could cut correctly but that seems a little more difficult than expected. I will also think about it a little more. We also have like a hardware store nearby, maybe I can find some stuff there.

Yeah I know that also happened to me quite often but I am being careful!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Day 2 of no dota

Man this was a 100 day. It was really awesome. 

I started my day with an exercise from the daily coding challenge and I vowed to do all challenges in c++ from now on because I wanna get better at it and I am way more proficient in python anyways. The exercise is pretty tough for me and I spend about 3 hours on it but finally managed to do it. That made me really happy and gave me quite a boost. After that I cooked a nice lunch for me and my girlfriend and we ate lunch together.

Here I want to insert that this is actually a new thing. We often just ate lunch in front of the tv and watched a netflix show or smth but since we moved in together a month ago, we vowed to always eat together at the table and so far its been really nice. Its quality time and I also think its nice to take a break from the screen, doesnt matter if I was coding or doing anything else.

After lunch I wanted to follow some more basic Arduino projects but realized that I just wanna do something by myself and learn along the way. This is more fun and also more useful I believe. I did that for a couple of hours and then I did another coding exercise which only took like half an hour though because it was an easier one.

After that I read a little more in the Respawn guide. The part I read entailed a passage about the three kind of activities you need to replace gaming. First you need mentally challenging activities then you need activities to relax/escape and last but not least you need social activities. With the mentally challenging activities I am already doing quite well as I code, started arduino and will begin my master in physics next month. The relax/escape activities I find extremely challenging because this is mostly about stuff you would when you are to exhausted/tired for most other things. I think I will give reading fiction another shot because I think this could really be a good way to find an escape while also having some benefits for my ability to concentrate and stuff. Cam said that listening to podcasts/audiobooks might also be a good idea, which is something I never did by itself. I always listen to stuff while on the bus or cleaning or riding my bike. It feels a little odd to do that without another activity but I will try it anyways. For the social stuff I will just do stuff with my friends and go to my martial arts class.

I found this concept pretty interesting because I always struggled quite a bit with mentally challenging activities. Because I always had some problems with anxiety if I didnt game while I was still in school. They completely disappeared since I started studying physics so I kind of see a connection there. I have a very active brain in general and I think if I dont tell it what to focus on it will just focus on bad things after a while.

After reading the respawn guide I read a chapter in my book about machine learning which was also really nice and inspiring. To finish up the day I played my singleplayer game for about 90 minutes. 

I actually made a goal/plan for october and I wrote down that I will allow myself to play 20 hours of this singleplayer game in total but not a minute of any online games. I will write down every hour I spend on it so I keep track of my plan.

All in all this day was amazing and I feel great ! Cant wait to get tomorrow started!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@dirac The book is Digital Design and Computer Architecture by David Harris & Sarah Harris. We used this book on our FPGA course. Instead of many others, it was written and edited by people who actually work in the industry. In companies like AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Broadcom. So it is very accurate. 
 

I would use 3D printer in your case. They’re pretty inexpensive on AliExpress. And learning 3D modeling seems very interesting for me as well.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@WhoCares oh that book really sounds good!

I think a 3d printer is a really good idea, I will look a bit more into that. I am about to get a job in the next two weeks, I think I might buy a printer from my first salary then. Not an expensive one because its just a small job as well.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Day 3 of no dota

Today was interesting. Especially in contrast to yesterday.

I started the day with my daily coding challenge, it was a very difficult problem (atleast for me) and I spend like 2-3 hours on it and wasnt really able to solve it in the end. I stopped eventually because my girlfriend and I wanted to clean our flat but I also stopped because I got really frustrated. If I want to make this a habit I have to set myself a time limit like somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. Otherwise it takes way too much time and I will just get frustrated eventually. And once I get frustrated I also get demotivated quite a bit. Which definitely happened today. Because after cleaning the flat and having lunch it was already like 5pm and I basically crossed of nothing on my to do list. 

I still continued to work on my to do list and read a bit and even did another daily coding challenge which I managed to succeed at. Even though I struggled a bit because I was already quite tired or mentally exhausted however you want to call it. I think tomorrow I will have another coffee at around 4pm to keep myself awake and my mind a little sharper.

Today I also questioned my approach towards arduino and coding and machine learning. Because write now Iam basically trying to do everything at once. I feel like this approach is not working that well because I cant really get into any of it if I want to do all of it everyday. I think it will be more beneficial if I focuss myself on one or two things per day (or week?). Because otherwise I wont get deep enough into it.

And I decided to put arduino at the bottom of the list for now. Its actually the thing I want to do most but I am very specific about what projects I actually want to do and which not. Because I want to build something that can move and this is basically impossible without the right materials. Ive tied servo motors to a piece of cardboard using a wire and this just doesnt hold at all and dont even get me started on the "legs" I am making. If I want to have fun doing that I will need to be able to make things in the shapes I want which will have to wait until I actually got a 3d printer. There might be some other projects that I can do where I will not need any kind of material and I will look into that a little more. But I am less motivated to do those I think. But lets see I might come up with something.

I think I will focuss a little more on machine learning the next days. I will read the book in the morning and afternoon and think about a project I want to do.

All in all it was still a good day but I guess my expectations were a little high after yesterday. But who cares, tomorrow will be awesome again!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...