I recently finished university, now i have one bachelor and two master degrees, all of them in some engineering area. I am happy to conclude my academic journey, it's something that made me change a lot and will shape the rest of my life, in a positive way, but I want to specify that I do not think this as a great achievement, finishing university is just normal, and especially in recent years does not bring that much value in itself, but this is a different and long topic, that i want to address in another article.
When I started, i knew zero mathematics, zero physics, no method of studying whatsoever, my high school journey was full of bumps for many different reasons, and i was starting 4 years later compared to the rest of the people, so in that moment it felt like an incredible challange, and i enjoyed every minute of it, because it was against "the odds", but to be honest, what people think about what you can do does not matter when you really know what you want.
Many times during these years it felt like being David Goggins in the trenches, many other times it felt like being Bartleby, the Scrivener, why is that? Can the same person be so motivated at times and so empty and numb about life after a week?
What i know is this, my university results are fairly good, but it never felt like i was doing 100%, why? because it's draining, it's difficult to keep the level for long, and so I have these waves of extreme behavior, extreme interest in something that eventually fades into procrastination, of course with time and learning, these waves have been smoothed, but still, they exist.
One month of grinding, one month of binge watching The Office, where would I be without the month of binge watching?? But probably i need it, and without it i cannot grind the next month.
Like for studying, this type of behaviour shows up at work, in private life, it's just who I am.
But it looks like some people have this laser focus, organized, objective oriented mindset, and they can grind at choice.
I think it has to do with several factors:
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motivation and passion: without it, it's impossible to enjoy the daily work, the road that takes to the final goal it's way more important than the goal itself, because that's the long and hard road, the part that takes you where you need to be in order to achieve something.
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long term thinking + delusional: you have to be able to accept sacrifices for long term gains, and cope with it every day, and it's also important sometimes to believe you can be better than you will ever be, this helps.
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organization of work: this is what is missing in my mix, being able to have a clear work organization and task division.
Decide what is the final goal and being able to break it down into manageable chunks, and also be able to split the work in a coherent way. Sometimes it's not easy to have a clear cut goal that is easy to state in one sentence, but i think it's good to decide one and try to achieve that, by trial and error we should be able to narrow it down to what we really want.
If I want to change the outcomes of what I am doing, I think that i need to change how I behave, and this is a good point to start changing.
Note to self for the future, do the hard things, and ORGANIZE everything, your work, your study, your meetings, your life, every minute of it.