Hey look! It’s 2019, the year I graduate and become a real adult! Ever had that moment when you look back at life and realize that you may never enjoy things you enjoyed as a child the same way again? It’s moments like this that make me kind of sad and help me realize just how precious every second of life really is. Every second you let pass by is a second you’ll never get back, and we only have a finite amount of time to live our lives. When I made my New Year’s resolutions this year, I made them with the knowledge that by the end of the year I would be a full fledged adult, living in my own apartment, paying my own bills, working my own job. It’s both frightening and exciting at the same time.

Anyways, this post is about resolutions. I’ve made many resolutions, not just New Year’s resolutions. You know, little promises to myself. “Let me just finish this one assignment and afterwards I’ll spend the rest of the night chilling with my friends.” Or, “I will start studying for my exam three days in advance.” Inevitably though, I can’t keep all my promises. It seems like the only promise I’ve really made to myself was keeping my grades up. And I’ve started to realize that at this point in my life (really, since coming to college) I’ve had no real reason to keep this promise to myself (old habits die hard).

This year though, I put together several years worth of observations about my work habits into a more comprehensive work style that I’ve found particularly effective. First, I found out that not all time is equal. Some nights I would spend hours, (say, from 8pm to 2am) fixing little bugs in my code that I would instantly figure out in the span of 10 minutes the following morning. Indeed, I tend to be most motivated to work, and most effective at working before noon. Consequently I began structuring my days in such a way that I would do the most critical things in the morning and leave the afternoons or evenings for dredge work or entertainment.

Furthermore, I found that I worked better given blocks of uninterrupted time. This meant not checking Facebook or emails, and not having to get out of my desk to do other errands while I was in the middle of work. The act of context switching between different tasks was a huge mental block for me, and I found that it would take me about 15 minutes working on something before I could be fully absorbed into it. In other words, waiting 20 minutes between classes wasn’t going to be enough time for me to finish a small thing for an assignment, unless it was very straightforward.

My second realization was that my motivation to work highly influenced how well I could work. Motivation comes in several forms. In one form, my current physical condition can distract me from working. For instance, when I’m sleepy or ill I would be far less effective working than if I weren’t. I found that when I was sleepy I would just nap it off. If done carefully (e.g. without accidentally napping for 3 hours), I could be motivated to do work in a span of 15 minutes after getting up.

Motivation also comes in the form of mental motivation. Sometimes I would I find myself in the right state of mind for work, but generally disinterested in trying to work on anything. For instance, a difficult pset or a blocking bug would discourage me from actually continuing with progress on a particular project or assignment. When it comes to schoolwork, I’m generally saved by my habit of trying to keep up my grades. In that case, when time became tight, I would miraculously churn out the work, or otherwise go to office hours or ask for help, as most students would in those situations. For other things though, it’s a lot harder. Part of it is trying to schedule working on these things during the right time of day, when my motivation activation energy is lowest, that is, in the morning. This means I would often declare a project closed for the day and work on something else with the promise I would revisit it the next morning. In general, this tends to work.

It doesn’t always though, and so I will often use external motivators when my internal ones fail. In particular, I will promise myself some kind of reward if I could finish what I want to do. This could take the form of an episode of the anime I’m watching, for instance. While this works sometimes, I abuse it easily. Sometimes I think to myself I’ll watch just one episode, but one quickly becomes three and before I know it and hour or two has gone by. Some days I would try restricting any kind of entertainment until after hours but willing myself to do this was difficult.

Yet these past three weeks, I’ve miraculously found a way to become super productive (I finished three of my major final projects over break and was done with everything by the second day of Reading Period, the week before finals). My first resolution was to permanently restrict access to Facebook, Youtube, and streaming sites to after 8 or 9pm (depending on the site). I was surprised and a bit hesitant at first to put Youtube on there, since I frequently used Youtube to play background music or to watch important videos. However I found that the need for background music isn’t really that great for me (I quickly got used to not having it), and I didn’t really need Youtube as much as I thought I did. The same went for Facebook. I have absolutely zero reason to check Facebook (save messages, but I use a separate application for messenger), and oftentimes get very depressed when I do. I enforced these promises with a browser plugin called LeechBlock, which blocks the page every single time I access it. I found my productivity increase dramatically, as I spent less time trying to open up Facebook or youtube to mindlessly browse and thus interrupt my work, and thus increased the amount of actual quality time at my disposal to actually work. When I did need a small mental break, I would stand up and stretch, or do a more worthy pursuit, such as practicing the piano or working on a toy project.

Sure, you say, but what prevents you from opening up a different browser without the extension and overriding everything? This was a point brought up to me by a friend who had done something similar, and to be honest, I wasn’t without my doubts. Somehow though, I’ve been able to keep this up for three weeks and I’ve been combing my thoughts for ideas as to why. I believe it comes down to three things. First, I know that the moment I circumvent my blockers would be the moment I break my resolution. This certainly helped me keep focused on not trying to cross my blockers. The second reason particularly applies to Facebook and Youtube, namely that I gain no real benefit from browsing them, not even entertainment. As I mentioned earlier, browsing Facebook often left me sad about the state of the world, which certainly wasn’t a mindset I wanted going into my work. Knowing this, I was significantly motivated to avoid browsing Facebook or Youtube. As for streaming sites (in particular, anime, my favorite), this was a bit harder, but I did have a good reason for keeping my discipline on these sites. Watching an episode of a show was an excellent way to destress, in particular after a productive day. I found that when I watched shows without discipline, I actually felt uncomfortable, because I felt that I would be so much better off doing some kind of useful work. By leaving watching shows to late night hours, I increased the value of the reward of doing so, and also made it more likely for me to have done some kind of work that I felt I could reward myself for doing.

The final part of this is ensuring that each day is spent meaningfully. Steve Jobs (and others, I’m sure), after developing pancreatic cancer said to live each day like it was your last. I’m sure he really, really meant it, but to those of us who still have many days left, it’s hard to really feel or understand it. Too often we bide our time (or worse, find some mindless occupation to “pass the time”) in anticipation of something more exciting. It seems terrible that we do this, since it’s time we’re never getting back. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer if we spent that time doing something productive, or at the very least enjoying it in some exciting and interesting pursuit? With this in mind, I wanted to make sure that every day I had at least one major task queued to get done so I could confidently say, by the end of the day that I had accomplished something that day, and that it didn’t go to waste. Of course, it would be something critical that I would get done in the morning, my most productive time. This did wonders for my mental motivation because each day I felt like I finally got something meaningful done. If I got extra work done in the afternoon I would be even more satisfied by the evenings, and of course, when the evenings did arrive, the reward of some rest through entertainment was all the more enjoyable.

This turned out to be a pretty great system. Certainly there are some roadblocks, such as how do you prevent yourself from circumventing the system? In particular, what if you decided to take a day off? Or what if the one thing you planned to get done that day was simply impossible to do at that moment. What would be the main thing you accomplished that day? They certainly are all real issues, and I hope to find ways of resolving them over the next several months as I go into my last semester of college.

Hope this helps someone.

~Roland