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Wellness Wednesday for February 5, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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General updates, productivity and maybe growing up

People here kinda knew me as a guy who would write paragraphs every week and get nothing done, I am not that guy anymore. I still have issues, I cannot perceive time like normal people, I can focus fairly well, and I have an elaborate alarm system where my phone and computer buzz every single hour reminding me of what to do. I cringe when I look back at who I was or how I was, and how much time I wasted which is why I try to never think of the past. There is nothing good there for me.

I hit diamond in Math Academy, their highest tier was emerald and that was 4 percent, this is 1 percent, they started it this week. Sunday is my off day, I watch polo with my dad on those days. I was about to not make it to diamond and cranked out about 3-4 hours of math to not miss getting promoted. Earlier, I would have simply not cared, not been competitive and found ways to justify inaction. Instead, I sat down and did it. This is not a feat, my baseline was just non-existent.

I still have trouble sleeping on time, I still have terrible adhd and all the bad habits and sub-habits I got from it but I have agency to make a difference. I was able to go beyond 40 hours of work in a week for the first time in my life. My friends think I am doing a good job, my dysfunctional family unanimously goes out of its way to be nice to me given they see me working. Perhaps I can respect myself now, a little bit at least for actually doing something, doing something hard.

I was unable to meet my goals for this week because some stuff happened, though I still get better each day. Besides myself, my family, and friends, I hope that my updates give you some positivity too. There is progress in my life, non-trivial and in the correct direction. There is a lot of ground to be covered from here, I have to do a lot lot more programming-wise, get to at least stats on math academy, gain 20lbs, and meditate more. As long as I do my best, it will happen.

On a side note, I have completely cut contact with my ex-co-founder, my opinion of him is really low at this point, I hate logging on twitter, checking reddit or anything internet. Themotte is different, though I apologise if I don't participate much, I just have been a little busy. Life is better this way, I logged out and went back on twitter after a week and it all felt the same.

RSD Tyler's book The Blueprint opened with this line "Do you ever feel like you could change?" most people never do, but quite a few have and can. The satisfaction I get from working till my head hurts and seeing tangible progress in how much more focused I am from all the meditation, the code I have written, and topics in math. I was told by this user named standard_order here to chase sun and steel, in his words, satisfaction from real life, all of it sounds cliched, but it feels great. I don't look back at any point in the past with fondness, which is what my default was, I guess I am finally growing up.

Congratulations! I'm glad you're finally finding a set of habits that work for you.