How many seconds in eternity?

[Timelocker]

Hello all,

My name is Lucas, and I'm 24 years old engineer / masters degree student. I'm on the way to quit binge-watching gameplays, youtube and netflix.

I want to start my Journal by telling you a story, of a bird by brothers Grimm:

"There was once on a time a shepherd boy whose fame spread far and wide because of the wise answers which he gave to every question. The King of the country heard of it likewise, but did not believe it, and sent for the boy. (...). “The third question is, how many seconds of time are there in eternity?” Then said the shepherd boy, “In Lower Pomerania is the Diamond Mountain, which is two miles and a half high, two miles and a half wide, and two miles and a half in depth; every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.”

So that is a hell of a bird, this story inspires me every time - to make progress.

So it's day two already and I've unsubscribed from every watching and streaming platform, deleted my second account on youtube (with a lot of subscriptions to game channels), and deleted all my games on my computer, that I've recently been hanging too. That was big steps, and I'm eager to do more.

Yesterday I derusted my piano and played some, it felt really good. Now I realize, that when I'm not wasting time to binge-watching, I'm not as tired as before when I go asleep.

 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Timelocker

[Timelocker]

Today was a very good day!

Yesterday I've finally ended my project for university that I did procrastinated to end for like a month, and today I've started a second one: even I went to library for some new materials.

It is a lot easier to start my projects now than like 2 days ago, when I started them after a long break. Before I was like saying to myself after coming to my apartment after work: just rest a little, then start the project. And it always was the same: I watched one episode, then another, then some gameplay and it was already too late to do anything.

Actually, listening to music helps me start my projects: I think because I used to listen to music at work too when soldering some circuits.

So I'm little by little gaining some more energy and I dont feel like a digger after 12 hour shift 😉

Binge-watching series, gameplays and videos actually drain energy. This is not a way to rest after all. After I understood that it became easier to not come back to them.

The next weekend will be a challenge to me. I've not planned it yet, so I have to do it carefully. I think I will go outside to change enviroment, because home is the place, when cravings will have the most power: at least for now, when it is so recent. Keep your fingers crossed 🙂

[Timelocker]

Hello, how're u doin?

Today I've been working on my project in the train, that i'm traveling to work. Usually I slept on the way there but hey, the travel is 1 hour long, so there is 2 additional hours every day:) When I came back home I managed some stuff and went learning piano for 1.5 hours. Actually I haven't slept long this week - 6 hours a day, so today I'm going to take a 9 hour sleep to recover. Tomorrow, after a good sleep I'm sure, that will be a great day:)

[ceponatia]

I've noticed an improvement on my procrastination as well, especially regarding university. I've already finished all of my assignments for the week and have plenty of time to study extracurricular things like programming and music. I'm also learning piano but a bit slowly... I'm doing it using apps and haven't paid for the full version yet so I only have one song to practice over and over, lol. At least I'm getting good at that song I guess!

[TheNewMe2.0]

Hello, that's cool you're playing piano and staying off video watching. I've been reading more myself, but I watch videos with my clients sometimes at work. I was thinking about joining an anime club, but maybe that's not a good idea. Too much tv. Maybe I could get into music instead. Is there a good place online to learn how to play? Nice story about the bird and the mountain. It reminds me of the book 'the slight edge'. Which is about staying true even when you're making marginal progress that you can't even notice in the day to day.

[Timelocker]

Hello everyone!

Yesterday I did not post, because I was focusing hard on finishing my last project for university - I've managed to do it today:) So now I will focus on my Master's Degree and my hobbies. This was a very successful week. Now, when I don't have an urgent work to do it will be a challenge to plan the time for productive things. First of all I'm going to fill up my calendar with things, so I don't have spare time to waste. Secondly I've some tasks that are not urgent but were waiting a long time, so I will finish them for peace of mind:) Thanks everyone for support in this hard week, now finally I've time to do some awesome projects:) My favorite DYI guys are Mark Robber and Adam Savage, I surely recommend getting inspired by them:)

 

[Timelocker]

Good evening everyone! (or morning, depending on the timezone)

Today I've managed to do a lot of things thanks to planning. I've cutted the day to 1 hour periods of activities and managed to do them:) (like reading books, learning piano, fixing stuff, doing workout) I did make a 2 hour videoconference with my girlfriend showing the building and developing my stepper motor circuit running by Raspberry PI 3 connected with VNC to my laptop 🙂 After that I got into some electonics films from ElectroBOOM channel - it's nice entertainment combined with learning.

So I've managed to go through the first week of detox without much difficulties. When I'm hooked up to my planned tasks, I don't have the urge for spending time watching streams in excuse for resting. Now I'm going to think about some bigger projects to do, to have a nice goal to achieve besides my Master's degree. I did think about making a line follower robot: it would combine all my hobbies (electronics design, control systems, C/C++ programming).

I've got one more remark to make: when I was watching Twitch I was mostly watching speedruns. Mostly I watched it because it was fun, but now I see the real cause - the most interesting thing was when someone was breaking a world record in some game. So I watched them achieving their goals and was cheering inside with them. But from the distance: the record was irrelevant in the bigger picture, it did not make anything relevant in the real world. So now when I'm thinking of them is like this - they do tremendous amount of work to achieve something, that is not worth anything, so it's like a useless effort. Doing my hobbies is both fun and relevant, so it's straight better. And if I'm to tired to focus so much on new knowledge or problems I can watch interesting things about engineering - that is gaining me more momentum to do more engineering and trying some stuff by myself 🙂

[ceponatia]

There are different kinds of hobbies, I think. There are those that supplement our career goals such as engineering for you and coding for me. Then there are hobbies that really don't matter, we just enjoy them. I think speedrunning falls into that category... long before Twitch existed people did speedruns just because they enjoyed the competition, not because they wanted 100k subs on their channel. In a similar vein for me is music. I play music pretty much all day now that I've given up gaming but I have no desire to be a pop star or paid musician. There's no monetary or social gain for me doing this, I just enjoy it. I think those kinds of hobbies have value too.

Although now that I think about it, I could set up a Twitch stream for people to watch me learn music. 😉

[Timelocker]

Hi @ceponatia

I agree with you, speedruning is for fun. Gaming is also for fun. But things like music and engineering make more meaning in life, so we should stick to them in my opinion:)

[Timelocker]

Hello everyone!

Today was the first time I couldn't wait to get home to do some electronics projects:) I'm really getting hooked up and I see much progress in my journey. I saw new oppurtunities to improve my design and coding skills - like learning embedded C++ or designing some testing circuits. I can't wait to make some cool circuitry with my STM32 board and Raspberry:) 

Also in work my friends share similar point of view, so I think soon we'll be doing some nice projects after work. Only if I could go back in time and tell my younger self to get detoxed:)

I've also improved much in piano: I've almost learned a new piece and I will continue to learn the harmonic structure, adding some stuff into it, learning soloing.

[ceponatia]

I feel like I say this to everyone who has a new hobby, but I've always wanted to learn to code a Raspberry, lol. Maybe I just like too many things. I thought about buying one a few months ago but I couldn't find any projects online that really spoke to me. Keep me updated on how it goes!

[Timelocker]

Hello all!

Today I was playing boardgames with my friends and it was very fun! We've also had some nice discussions. I've got one consideration to share: when sb is telling the group about the problem, I have a tendention to help them, even if they did not ask for help: that is something, that I need to work with.

As to raspberry project: lately I made a program, that recognizes hand gestures (using OpenCV 4 and some github projects) and those gestures are used to regulate volume and playing/pausing music. I'm thinking about implementing it with for ex. Alexa, but this will be the next project.

My current project on raspberry will be a control system for controlling dc motor: to archieve the best dynamics and steering, according to some math eq. in python:)

 

 

[Timelocker]

Hello!

Last three days I was spending time with my girlfriend, so I could not write new posts. It has been amazing days, I really enjoyed it.

Recently I had a little more craving for youtube videos than before, maybe it was because I watched some tech related youtube and my brain instantelusly cought up to previous habits, so it wants more of it. I need to be careful with that. I did not find out the solution to learn from youtube videos without picking up on cravings and bad habits. I was feeling really the putting off syndrome with youtube, I dont have the best way to deal with it. When I come back from my work at like 6 p.m., I dont have good options to do besides piano, because that stuff like engineering, microcontrollers and programming is very close related to my work, so If I want to rest from it, it is not the best option to do. My brain really wants some different activity (not every day, some days)

Playing board games is nice, but it have some of the properies related to games: you're playing for fun, after one game you want more. But there is one board game, that is challenging and good for playing - it's called Go (quite popular recently because of AI), so I play it sometimes, although it is tough.