Upward Spiral

For almost 20 years, I've indulged myself in the  "too good to work hard" mentality, that was backed up by my marginal success in academic fields, but then I stumbled upon a certain claim from an anonymous source. It said something along these lines : Constant self-improvement is the only way to get the most out of your life.    The claim itself wasn't exactly pleasing to hear because I, rightfully so, knew that improving oneself is a hard, ambiguous and life-long commitment. As I was about to throw the idea of constant self-improvement away and continue my day without giving it further thought, I had an epiphany. At that particular moment my thought process was something like this:  How much of a better person would I become, if I took as little as an hour from each day I spent on wasted leisure and invested it into the self-growth?    Awfully embarrassed at the fact that until that point, such an obvious thought has never cro...

 Today I decided to only make a quick status update instead of delving deep into the activities, I've performed throughout the week. Nothing of great importance really happened. However, in spite of that, I've been steadily working towards my goals which included (but were not limited to):  a) learning new English vocab for the C2 attestation that awaits me in December (my policy in regards to practice is better safe than sorry , especially when it comes to a non-trivial manner such as attaining proficiency in the English language.) b) studying for the upcoming exam season (yikes) c) working on a comprehensive plan for my forthcoming summer (as of now, it's about 95% completed, and I plan to elaborate on it in the next post that hopefully comes out this Friday - I currently have a lot on my plate because I am in the middle of the exam season.) d) doing research on some futuristic topics such as AI, string theory or exploring possible intricaci...

  A new week, the same blunder... Writing a weekly review on Friday instead of Monday as I wanted. To be fair, I postponed this article so much because I was in a dire need to revamp the system by which I measure how productive my week is compared to the other ones.   Starting out with just a vague idea on how to design the system itself, I tried fair amount apps that incorporated various approaches on the productivity and time management (such as Gantt charts) in their products, however, I wasn't exactly satisfied with their functionality. Don't get me wrong they were pretty ok but they were not that I needed.  One needs to be comfortable with a productivity tool he uses otherwise, he will grow tired of it in almost no time.    After failing to find a suitable productivity app, I was left with the last resort - The "good, old" excel spreadsheet.    (Disclaimer) Just to make it clear: there are lots of great productivity/time manageme...

  This week’s review will be focused on Cal Newport’s: Deep work. What is interesting about the title is that for once it describes the contents of the book very well. Despite knowing that the contents of the book itself are rather predictable, I didn’t find it to be an unpleasant or boring read, quite the contrary. I finished the entire book in two reading sessions – on Tuesday and Wednesday – and I enjoyed it greatly. So, without further ado, let me begin with the review itself. Aesthetics   Ignoring the appendix and glossary, there are approximately 250 pages of content. I bought the paperback version of the book (because it’s cheaper xd) and realized that it's quite broad and big. I expected it to be smaller because it does not contain as much content as some other books I’ve read recently. However, a substantial advantage stemming from the proportions of the book itself is that it’s extremely easy to read. The author is left with plenty of space to make the text...

This article was supposed to be out more than 24 hours ago, but for some peculiar reason, it simply didn't happen. The reason was that I was seriously overworked - the prototypical excuse people give when you ask them why they didn't do something they promised to do.   In my case, it's a little different story but basically the identical outcome, which means that there is lots of room for improvement in my time management.  If we convert my past week into statistics, we get something like this : Tasks completed: 58 (96 last week, 446 in total) Habits completed: 112 (151 last week, 499 in total) Habits failed:  26 (13 last week, 85 in total) Time management: ~49h of sleep (48,5h last week) ~58.5h of self-imposed work* (42h last week) ~12h of desired leisure (23h last week) ~18h of wasted leisure (17h last week) ~7h of required work (15h last week) ~9,5h of leisure involving people (9,5h last week - consist...

What a book... While reading this book, I've experienced boredom, excitement and at times, feelings of inadequacy while reading some of the more difficult chapters (a lot more than would have been optimal). The underlying theme of the book is to explain how regular exercise affects multiple domains of our cognition. Genre:  Self-help / health management / neuroscience (for dummies? xd) Aesthetics   The book itself is quite small but thick. It has an eye-catching yellow cover and bold design. Inside of the book is handled in a minimalist fashion which is really compelling to me - I do not enjoy a lot of shenanigans such as a gigantic heading and tons of sections written in bold. Minimalistic design is fine but one needs to be careful with it because it can easily happen that book is made in minimalistic fashion but at the price of decreased readability, which is sadly the case with this particular book.    The issue itself is not that strikin...