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.