Hello, my fellow friends.
I'm on detox now. It means that I'm trying to read books instead of scrolling the newsfeed, watching online courses instead of Instagram stories, eating fruits/vegetables/nuts/otherHealthyStuff instead of trashy snacks, walking every day. This process has led me to have much more spare time to think about my own life.
Who am I? What do I want? What's next?
During these solitary reflections, I've found out that I do like helping people. But in what field am I competent? A bit of programming (currently working as a mobile dev) and everything connected to building good habits, self-discipline.
Not so long ago, a good friend of mine started her telegram channel. It has hit me. I sincerely believe that sharing your positive and negative experiences may help other people in their life. This is why I've created this channel. I hope it will make somebody's life better.
Keep it up and feel free to text me)
I'm on detox now. It means that I'm trying to read books instead of scrolling the newsfeed, watching online courses instead of Instagram stories, eating fruits/vegetables/nuts/otherHealthyStuff instead of trashy snacks, walking every day. This process has led me to have much more spare time to think about my own life.
Who am I? What do I want? What's next?
During these solitary reflections, I've found out that I do like helping people. But in what field am I competent? A bit of programming (currently working as a mobile dev) and everything connected to building good habits, self-discipline.
Not so long ago, a good friend of mine started her telegram channel. It has hit me. I sincerely believe that sharing your positive and negative experiences may help other people in their life. This is why I've created this channel. I hope it will make somebody's life better.
Keep it up and feel free to text me)
Of course, I also expect that this channel will help me to improve my English and motivate to stay on this cool "self-discipline track"
Plan or suffer
If I don't have a plan in some area of life (training, finance, learning, etc.) I suffer. Suffer badly.
The most recent example from my life is morning exercises. I get up at 6:30 every day and go to the sports ground. For several weeks I was training without a clear plan (I don't really have a reason for not planning this, probably, I was too lazy).
My workout went like this:
I did 8-10 pull-ups and walked around until I'm ready for the next set. I didn't have the number of pull-ups that I wanted to accomplish during training, neither had I a time limit for rest between sets. When I felt a bit tired, I went home.
One day I did 40 pull-ups in 30 minutes, another - 70 during the same time!
In my world, a training session should bring joy and motivation for the rest of the day. But these kinda uncontrollable sessions gave me only the feeling that I'm lazy and not consistent. Not hard to imagine that this has negatively affected my work sessions.
Moreover, when you practice without planning, it's hard to make any progress and nearly impossible to monitor it (if there is any).
I've decided to change my approach.
Guess what happened when I just started setting the minimum amount of pull-ups for each session the day before?
50, 55, 60, 65....
I felt like superhuman)
You may ask: "What happened?"
It's all about planning and setting small clear goals.
This applies to all areas of our lives.
- You want to work efficiently and have more free time for your hobbies: find your working hours and prepare the most important tickets.
- Want to eat healthier: research + create a meal plan + stick to it.
- Want to learn a new language: I don't know how I can help you. It's beyond me. (kidding, just decompose this cumbersome task, set deadlines and milestones, and start learning)
Don't suffer if you experience these kinda feelings. Make a plan and stand by it!
If I don't have a plan in some area of life (training, finance, learning, etc.) I suffer. Suffer badly.
The most recent example from my life is morning exercises. I get up at 6:30 every day and go to the sports ground. For several weeks I was training without a clear plan (I don't really have a reason for not planning this, probably, I was too lazy).
My workout went like this:
I did 8-10 pull-ups and walked around until I'm ready for the next set. I didn't have the number of pull-ups that I wanted to accomplish during training, neither had I a time limit for rest between sets. When I felt a bit tired, I went home.
One day I did 40 pull-ups in 30 minutes, another - 70 during the same time!
In my world, a training session should bring joy and motivation for the rest of the day. But these kinda uncontrollable sessions gave me only the feeling that I'm lazy and not consistent. Not hard to imagine that this has negatively affected my work sessions.
Moreover, when you practice without planning, it's hard to make any progress and nearly impossible to monitor it (if there is any).
I've decided to change my approach.
Guess what happened when I just started setting the minimum amount of pull-ups for each session the day before?
50, 55, 60, 65....
I felt like superhuman)
You may ask: "What happened?"
It's all about planning and setting small clear goals.
This applies to all areas of our lives.
- You want to work efficiently and have more free time for your hobbies: find your working hours and prepare the most important tickets.
- Want to eat healthier: research + create a meal plan + stick to it.
- Want to learn a new language: I don't know how I can help you. It's beyond me. (kidding, just decompose this cumbersome task, set deadlines and milestones, and start learning)
Don't suffer if you experience these kinda feelings. Make a plan and stand by it!
The problem with instant gratification
You’ve probably heard something about instant gratification (or immediate reward). Every motivational book doesn’t forget to mention this term and how it can affect your life.
Basically, this is a temptation to obtain pleasure HERE and NOW instead of gaining some more in the future.
First of all, you should understand that this is a weird natural thing that happens to all of us on a daily basis. I won't deep dive into the reasons for such behavior (google it), I’ll just say that we have inherited this tendency to see pleasure and avoid pain from our ancestors. It gave them some advantages many centuries ago. But the world has evolved and nowadays this behavior is mostly ruthlessly ruining our lives.
Some examples of instant gratification are:
- Hitting snooze instead of getting up early in the morning.
- Watching funny YouTube videos instead of completing your work (study).
- Eating junk food instead of cooking healthy one
Easy to see that delayed gratification is generally (there can be some exceptions*) the best choice for your future self. If you prefer deferred reward, most likely, you pursue a long-term goal which can be learning new technologies, getting fit, saving money for your future self.
There are several ways, which can help you to choose delayed gratification over instant one.
1. Think about your future self. What would you feel? Will you be happy about your "past self" decision to choose immediate reward?
2. Plan (again and again) and commit to something beforehand. This won’t require making any decision at the moment. This way you’ll more likely do what you suppose to do.
3. Break down big goals into smaller ones. It is hard to do something when the task is laborious and unclear, moreover, the moment of getting pleasure lies too far from you. When you achieve a small goal you can already get some satisfaction (this is a little hack).
*As I was writing this post I had a related discussion with my girlfriend which led us to the conclusion, that we are all different and instant-grat-thing for one person could be a part of a long journey to success for another. For example, somebody chooses to watch some entertaining youtube videos, cause it helps him to relax and get some mental boost for another work session, not because he is simply procrastinating.
You’ve probably heard something about instant gratification (or immediate reward). Every motivational book doesn’t forget to mention this term and how it can affect your life.
Basically, this is a temptation to obtain pleasure HERE and NOW instead of gaining some more in the future.
First of all, you should understand that this is a weird natural thing that happens to all of us on a daily basis. I won't deep dive into the reasons for such behavior (google it), I’ll just say that we have inherited this tendency to see pleasure and avoid pain from our ancestors. It gave them some advantages many centuries ago. But the world has evolved and nowadays this behavior is mostly ruthlessly ruining our lives.
Some examples of instant gratification are:
- Hitting snooze instead of getting up early in the morning.
- Watching funny YouTube videos instead of completing your work (study).
- Eating junk food instead of cooking healthy one
Easy to see that delayed gratification is generally (there can be some exceptions*) the best choice for your future self. If you prefer deferred reward, most likely, you pursue a long-term goal which can be learning new technologies, getting fit, saving money for your future self.
There are several ways, which can help you to choose delayed gratification over instant one.
1. Think about your future self. What would you feel? Will you be happy about your "past self" decision to choose immediate reward?
2. Plan (again and again) and commit to something beforehand. This won’t require making any decision at the moment. This way you’ll more likely do what you suppose to do.
3. Break down big goals into smaller ones. It is hard to do something when the task is laborious and unclear, moreover, the moment of getting pleasure lies too far from you. When you achieve a small goal you can already get some satisfaction (this is a little hack).
*As I was writing this post I had a related discussion with my girlfriend which led us to the conclusion, that we are all different and instant-grat-thing for one person could be a part of a long journey to success for another. For example, somebody chooses to watch some entertaining youtube videos, cause it helps him to relax and get some mental boost for another work session, not because he is simply procrastinating.
How to work more productively (based on my own experience)
We waste too much time working unproductively, saying that we don't have time for something meaningful. For me, it is a big problem.
I did this many times before. I still do it sometimes (doing my best not to fall into the same trap). I know what I'm talking about.
If I need to work 4/6/8 hours a day (remotely), I try to complete all the work in my working hours (7:00-10:00, 13:00-16:00, for example). Otherwise, Parkinson's law comes into play. It states that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion." If this is the case, I work more hours less productively, having less time for other things at the end of the day. Furthermore, I start feeling guilty and try to compensate for a wasted time by sacrificing my free time.
Having specific working hours is not the only hack that I use.
- I track my working sessions using a time tracker (I prefer Toggl). It helps not to get distracted when the timer is on.
- I have all my tasks in Trello, so I could take one from the "To do" column and start/continue working.
- If you're prone to surf socials during work, install special software, which will block certain websites. I used Self-Control for macOS. It is a free supersimple no-way-back type of app.
- If you're not alone, warn your mates that you don't want to be distracted during specific hours.
I hope these tricks will help you to be more productive and have more time for your hobbies. If you have some cool hacks not stated above and they work for you, I would love to know about them.
We waste too much time working unproductively, saying that we don't have time for something meaningful. For me, it is a big problem.
I did this many times before. I still do it sometimes (doing my best not to fall into the same trap). I know what I'm talking about.
If I need to work 4/6/8 hours a day (remotely), I try to complete all the work in my working hours (7:00-10:00, 13:00-16:00, for example). Otherwise, Parkinson's law comes into play. It states that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion." If this is the case, I work more hours less productively, having less time for other things at the end of the day. Furthermore, I start feeling guilty and try to compensate for a wasted time by sacrificing my free time.
Having specific working hours is not the only hack that I use.
- I track my working sessions using a time tracker (I prefer Toggl). It helps not to get distracted when the timer is on.
- I have all my tasks in Trello, so I could take one from the "To do" column and start/continue working.
- If you're prone to surf socials during work, install special software, which will block certain websites. I used Self-Control for macOS. It is a free supersimple no-way-back type of app.
- If you're not alone, warn your mates that you don't want to be distracted during specific hours.
I hope these tricks will help you to be more productive and have more time for your hobbies. If you have some cool hacks not stated above and they work for you, I would love to know about them.
Make your fingers smarter
It's time to remind you (and me) that I'm a programmer. And one skill that is perfectly assisting me in this craft is touch typing (an ability to type some text without looking at the keyboard).
I've started practicing a year ago when I was typing 40w/min using an advanced hunt-and-peck technique.
Why did I start?
First of all, 40w/min is just too slow for fingers that spend their lives mostly on the keyboard. Why not speed up a bit?
Another reason is that it is mentally exhausting to look for the needed key and think about your current programming problem simultaneously. It's like driving a car when you're a beginner. Painful.
I've decided to practice for at least 30 minutes daily, found a web app that teaches this skill in a step-by-step manner, and started.
Honestly, it wasn't a walk in the park.
I remember how I did 15-20 w/min during the first days using only 5 keys.
I remember how I learned to type long-distance keys ("y", "b", all of the numbers). It's pretty demanding and takes time to build muscle memory.
I remember a regress in speed and accuracy when I started typing capital letters and punctuation.
I'm 100% sure that everybody who has mastered this skill experienced the same difficulties during their learning process.
On the other hand, there were also many enjoyable moments.
What on earth can be better than beating your speed record by 2-3 words or winning a multiplayer typing race? Nothing.
I've intensely practiced for 3-4 months in different apps. After 6 months, I was already typing 60 w/min on average. I started trying to apply my new secret weapon to my work. It was a success. It has certainly paid off.
I urge you to try it out if you're still struggling with your typing routine. Make it a one-month challenge. It’s worth a shot. I believe in you.
Btw, check out my profile on keybr.com. It was the first app that I've used, and I loved it. It collects every possible statistical data that you can imagine, so you can always see where you should try a bit harder.
It's time to remind you (and me) that I'm a programmer. And one skill that is perfectly assisting me in this craft is touch typing (an ability to type some text without looking at the keyboard).
I've started practicing a year ago when I was typing 40w/min using an advanced hunt-and-peck technique.
Why did I start?
First of all, 40w/min is just too slow for fingers that spend their lives mostly on the keyboard. Why not speed up a bit?
Another reason is that it is mentally exhausting to look for the needed key and think about your current programming problem simultaneously. It's like driving a car when you're a beginner. Painful.
I've decided to practice for at least 30 minutes daily, found a web app that teaches this skill in a step-by-step manner, and started.
Honestly, it wasn't a walk in the park.
I remember how I did 15-20 w/min during the first days using only 5 keys.
I remember how I learned to type long-distance keys ("y", "b", all of the numbers). It's pretty demanding and takes time to build muscle memory.
I remember a regress in speed and accuracy when I started typing capital letters and punctuation.
I'm 100% sure that everybody who has mastered this skill experienced the same difficulties during their learning process.
On the other hand, there were also many enjoyable moments.
What on earth can be better than beating your speed record by 2-3 words or winning a multiplayer typing race? Nothing.
I've intensely practiced for 3-4 months in different apps. After 6 months, I was already typing 60 w/min on average. I started trying to apply my new secret weapon to my work. It was a success. It has certainly paid off.
I urge you to try it out if you're still struggling with your typing routine. Make it a one-month challenge. It’s worth a shot. I believe in you.
Btw, check out my profile on keybr.com. It was the first app that I've used, and I loved it. It collects every possible statistical data that you can imagine, so you can always see where you should try a bit harder.
What is your typing speed (in words per minute)?
Anonymous Poll
0%
0-20 (novice)
23%
21-40 (keep it going)
23%
41-60 (wow, that's cool)
15%
61-90 (you're amazing)
0%
90+ (fastest fingers in the Wild West)
38%
I have no clue(
What is Self-Image, and why it's so important?
My close friend recently asked me how do I work out every day? How did I develop such consistency?
I took some time to think about how I make habits stick in general and what helps me wake up every morning and work out. I guess I've finally found an answer.
The answer is Self-image.
It is all about how we perceive ourselves. What kind of person do we think we are, and what do we believe others think about us.
It all comes down to 1 simple idea. You do what you think you're supposed to do as a person from your self-image. For example, if you think you are a shy person, it's unlikely that you'll start a conversation with a stranger in the bar.
I know. It may sound ridiculous. Like another useless mantra from an amazon bestseller self-help book. But it works.
So, in my case, my self-image tells me that I am a sportsman (as I've been professionally playing tennis for 11 straight years.) So I do what I'm supposed to do. I don't need any motivation or discipline to keep it going. Somebody may call it a habit. Maybe.
I also consider myself a consistent and responsible person who keeps his word and likes to build new habits, to try something new.
- It helps me to do everything before the deadlines. Of course, if they are adequate.
- Plans work as a promise to myself to do something. So, I do it.
- I like taking up new challenges. Meditation for a month or solving a couple of problems on Leetcode every day (yet to come).
Of course, there is also a negative part of my Self-Image.
Back then, when I was playing tennis, I thought I have a terrible backhand. So, my backhand was magically disappearing during the tournaments.
I still think that I'm a bit shy and not-talkative person. And if I don't have a strong reason to talk to some stranger, I won't.
And never ask me to solve some Physics problem. I'm the worst at it.
Self-image forms unconsciously from our past experiences, successes, and failures. And there is a way to change it. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it is the easiest way to alter your behavior, not for a month or a year (wasting all your willpower), but for as long as it is consistent with your self-image. If you're interested in it, read this article on Medium.
My close friend recently asked me how do I work out every day? How did I develop such consistency?
I took some time to think about how I make habits stick in general and what helps me wake up every morning and work out. I guess I've finally found an answer.
The answer is Self-image.
It is all about how we perceive ourselves. What kind of person do we think we are, and what do we believe others think about us.
It all comes down to 1 simple idea. You do what you think you're supposed to do as a person from your self-image. For example, if you think you are a shy person, it's unlikely that you'll start a conversation with a stranger in the bar.
I know. It may sound ridiculous. Like another useless mantra from an amazon bestseller self-help book. But it works.
So, in my case, my self-image tells me that I am a sportsman (as I've been professionally playing tennis for 11 straight years.) So I do what I'm supposed to do. I don't need any motivation or discipline to keep it going. Somebody may call it a habit. Maybe.
I also consider myself a consistent and responsible person who keeps his word and likes to build new habits, to try something new.
- It helps me to do everything before the deadlines. Of course, if they are adequate.
- Plans work as a promise to myself to do something. So, I do it.
- I like taking up new challenges. Meditation for a month or solving a couple of problems on Leetcode every day (yet to come).
Of course, there is also a negative part of my Self-Image.
Back then, when I was playing tennis, I thought I have a terrible backhand. So, my backhand was magically disappearing during the tournaments.
I still think that I'm a bit shy and not-talkative person. And if I don't have a strong reason to talk to some stranger, I won't.
And never ask me to solve some Physics problem. I'm the worst at it.
Self-image forms unconsciously from our past experiences, successes, and failures. And there is a way to change it. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it is the easiest way to alter your behavior, not for a month or a year (wasting all your willpower), but for as long as it is consistent with your self-image. If you're interested in it, read this article on Medium.
Do you use the best tools money can buy?
I'm not a money-waster.
When I need to buy something, I think like hundred times if I need this particular thing and where it'll be in several days/months/years after the purchase. But when it comes to investing in myself and my tools, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.
I've upgraded my laptop two times. In both cases, I was thinking about how it would make my job easier and more efficient. In both cases, I regretted not getting them earlier. I still believe making these purchases was the best choice at the moment.
After the first upgrade, I was able to develop web projects in professional IDE. So, I've made like 5-6 small web apps (Python/Django) in 2 months and got some pocket money and a hell of a lot of experience.
After the second one, I gained the ability to develop Flutter apps for iOS and macOS and decreased an app build time by 200%. It allowed me to look for new job opportunities and explore an App Store Connect (better keep away from it).
I've made an example of my laptop because it's the most crucial tool in a programmer's inventory. That goes without saying. The same approach applies to additional hardware&software, working place, and other things that can make my life as a programmer more enjoyable and efficient. The more I can remove avoidable stress and frustration from my daily routines, the better the work I'll be able to deliver.
So, don't ever try to save money on your tools. Upgrade and open up new opportunities.
P.S. Don't take it too far. If you don't have enough money at the moment, try to save up a bit. Taking a loan may not be the best decision in your situation.
I'm not a money-waster.
When I need to buy something, I think like hundred times if I need this particular thing and where it'll be in several days/months/years after the purchase. But when it comes to investing in myself and my tools, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.
I've upgraded my laptop two times. In both cases, I was thinking about how it would make my job easier and more efficient. In both cases, I regretted not getting them earlier. I still believe making these purchases was the best choice at the moment.
After the first upgrade, I was able to develop web projects in professional IDE. So, I've made like 5-6 small web apps (Python/Django) in 2 months and got some pocket money and a hell of a lot of experience.
After the second one, I gained the ability to develop Flutter apps for iOS and macOS and decreased an app build time by 200%. It allowed me to look for new job opportunities and explore an App Store Connect (better keep away from it).
I've made an example of my laptop because it's the most crucial tool in a programmer's inventory. That goes without saying. The same approach applies to additional hardware&software, working place, and other things that can make my life as a programmer more enjoyable and efficient. The more I can remove avoidable stress and frustration from my daily routines, the better the work I'll be able to deliver.
So, don't ever try to save money on your tools. Upgrade and open up new opportunities.
P.S. Don't take it too far. If you don't have enough money at the moment, try to save up a bit. Taking a loan may not be the best decision in your situation.