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Sort of a venting blog, except I don't have much time so I'll try to keep this short.
I've probably read and/or most of the time-saving/motivation/concentration advice and help out there. There was a period (we might all have one) when I just went through all of that motivational/inspirational/helpful type of writing about just getting to work, not procrastinating or being lazy, or what have you. I've seriously spend hours on this kind of stuff, know about all the advice but just--won't--do--it. At this point it's not about little reward-punishment or approaching a problem one way; the issue is essentially that I refuse to devote myself and go I AM A MACHINE (as MightyAtom says ^^). It's hard to get myself to care consistently on a day-by-day basis, no matter what I try.
For probably the last 6 years (super rough estimate, I have no idea, but it has been going on for several years) I've still been winging everything and just kind of wasting my life away. Kind of sucks. I'll keep motivated for maybe 10 minutes and then relapse. Thank you Internet for giving me ADHD-esque attention span. Grr. :/
Always, the work gets done somehow, but there will come one day when it will come back to bite me in the ass, and by then it might only take one screw-up to really fuck me over. This is also what I tell myself after every all-nighter, followed by "never again if I can help it". Clearly I can't help it.
So much stuff I want to do...I want to chat (I've always read those little shoutouts in blogs or what have you, but finally for one of my own: ABL irc <3 yeye~), practice and play the piano, do my damn work, go exercise and enjoy myself, get adequate sleep, game a bit, try to be successful, and just...yeah. But usually I end up just wasting time until the 11th hour (but not literally, let's be honest it's more like 2 am or later) and miraculously somehow finishing it.
Each night I go to bed telling myself I'm going to go kick ass, and each morning I wake up telling myself the same thing, but inevitably it will be straight to bed eventually with yet another defeat ._. I always tell myself I need to get busy and pump everything out and maintain a consistent, daily beast mode through my work so I can enjoy myself but truth is, most of the time it's just miscellaneous time-wasting. The saying is "work hard, play hard", but I'm the quintessential "mix up the two and end up with a bad taste in my mouth because of the resultant pile of stuff that isn't finished"....guy.
Each day if it's not the usual mix of Internet time-wasting, there will also occasionally be a big doozy of a time-waster. Maybe I will read about the history of boxing on wikipedia. Maybe I will look up lightsaber styles on wookiepedia. Maybe it will be a movie (Bruce Almighty today actually). Maybe I will decide to ladder sc2 today. Maybe I will watch a bunch of tourneys and/or streams. There is always something, and as a curious person who is also generally just interested in a lot of things, anything can be a timesink. And getting sleepy drains my motivation too, kind of a vicious cycle in a way, but not precisely.
Sigh.
I'm sort of pure-o OCD (e.g. have to read a sentence in a book or really any phrase "right", or have to play a bit of music in my head "right" ...really it's hard to explain, sort of like getting a song--also phrase, whether from a book or a magazine or a poster or a webpage or wherever--stuck in your head but you're intent on doing it "perfect"/"right" and you REALLY don't want to play/read it...but you have to do so anyway. so that's my kind of terrible description of that)...and it comes in waves. Sometimes it will get really bad, but for now, at least (knock on wood), it's okay.
Never thought I would be like one of those people who would have these "problems" or at least would be able to live kind of normally, but with this ongoing problem as well and the lung collapse, it feels like these may be things that will plague me for the rest of my life. Kind of like the flawed, static hero in a tragedy who dies sadly at the end of the novel or something.
Coupled with that I'm ridiculously lazy, and being a perfectionist compounds the problem at times (deters me from approaching a problem). Though usually I just don't want to do it in the first place lol.
I'm really rambling now but yeah I guess I just wanted to vent. Sometimes it makes it worse to know that there are people with so much less opportunity than I had and are so much worse off than me, and here I am bitching about it, you know? Well, that's all I have to say for now. Also there may be lines that make absolutely no sense, probably a slip of the mind and/or a typo. My apologies for those.
;__;
Edit: whoa, I get just as annoyed as the next guy by people who mention ratings in blogs but... hahaha five (5!!) 1-star ratings within a few minutes of posting this. Ouch, clearly my blogs are and/or I am really disliked or otherwise prone to being 1-starred :D I don't really blame you either, this is a pretty terrible read and my head kinda hurts right now so it's bound to be rather poorly written. Apologies, and maybe I'll be able to write something coherent, interesting, and/or worthwhile some other time.
 
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What I started doing was getting more and regular sleep again (waking up at 8am every morning), doing sports (i run 3-4 times a week now, and I feel great afterwards) and eating more healthy (learning to cook isn't only fun, healthy food will also bring back some of the lost energy).
Granted, that doesn't really solve any of the problems you've mentioned. I don't think there is actually anything that does. But it's a start. What I've also started doing (I know this sounds kinda strange): whenever I see beautiful women, I tell myself I won't ever get a woman like that by being a lazy loser. Women like the kind of men who have goals and get shit done.
Another little trick is to not at the final result and the total required work of whatever it is you have to do, it can be quite overwhelming. It really helps to break everything down into small work steps and tackling them one by one. And that's probably the best advice I can give you.
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I don't think I'm any better than you, I nearly avoided graduating from university simply by spending time on the internet reading other material and cooking. At the time, my issue was that I literally wanted to spend my time in that way more than I wanted to graduate. It was a quantifiable measurement I made every day for a long time: I would rather let my performance and grades suffer than enjoy autonomy over my time after class. I had 5 D's, 2 Incomplete grades, and 2 F's in my university career, all the while putting in great performances and getting A's in the classes that I "enjoyed". I managed to make the process far more painful than it needed to be.
Eventually, the urge to graduate and do something that I was really passionate about won out over my urge to hand around my apartment and read things online. I think finding a passion comes before, not after learning how to dedicate yourself mentally and physically to something. I simply Can't magically motivate myself to do things I don't want to do. So for me, finding things that I was capable of committing to was step one.
If you want to stop surfing the web, you can. But IF you are addicted to visual/intellectual stimulation without any clear alternative passion, anything short of taking the internet and television out of your home probably isn't going to help much. If you are similar to me, at least, then you will need to be honestly convinced that you have something better to do than sit on the internet. Failing this, you will sit on the internet.
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The way I see it, your biggest problem appears to be this:
"Each night I go to bed telling myself I'm going to go kick ass, and each morning I wake up telling myself the same thing, but inevitably it will be straight to bed eventually with yet another defeat ._."
Let's use a Starcraft analogy here. You're a silver player. You've just watched a mid-high master play a really cool game, great macro, awesome build, lots of drops and multi-pronged attacks. So you go queue up, and you say "I'm going to do all that shit this game." And you fail hard, and you say "Okay, that game didn't work out. But THIS game? All that stuff's gonna happen."
Can you see how this isn't going to work? The silver player should look at one aspect of the Master's game, and attempt to incorporate that into his own style. Maybe he wants to take a third fast like the Master, or he wants to drop the main while stimming into the third, or he wants to be able to do that zealot-stalker poke or whatever. But the point is, he needs to focus on ONE thing and work on that.
I'm sure you can see how this applies to your situation. Now the question is "What can I do that is the equivalent of macro in SC2?" What macro does is it makes every other move you make in the game better, because you have more shit to do it with. So the best comparison here is probably energy. More energy makes everything easier. A good sleep schedule, better eating habits or regular exercise are all a good thing to start here, but I would recommend picking just one of them. When you've gotten that down, move onto another one.
The road to Masters can't happen overnight, but you're trying to jump three leagues in a day.
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can you go to the gym ?
it has a pretty potent emotional impact that stretches into other aspects of your life
and helps break the cycle
yeah its true that we think (know) we are all geniuses and can do anything, but when in practice it clearly doesnt work, you do need to think a little differently. setting a target like "turn off computer at or before midnight" might work 30% of the time , but "turn off computer at 10pm" might never work once.
eventually you learn your sort of combo of rules. it might be "dont browse the net before you shower (or you will waste time and jerk off)", "dont jack off when you wake up and only every few days (or you will lose energy and go back to bed)", "go to the gym before doing any other jobs in the day (or you might not bother to go later)".
anyone else have rules like this? :/
the kinda good thing is once you've determined them, when you majorlly fuck up and get drunk or play a game for a week then you still know that if you follow those old rules you will feel better and be right back on track
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Estonia4644 Posts
i used to be a procrastinator like you
but then i took an army service to the... yeah
now i dont even have timw to think
i just do.
not sure im comfortable with the other extreme of the scale :/
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Hi Aerisky!
It's okay to be lazy, just get up for the things that matter!
My sophomore year is getting off to a great start because of that!
Smile more!
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Awww thanks, guys. Warming my poor widdle heart.
I didn't even ask for advice, haha, so thanks! That's why I didn't really give too many details about my situation or anything. As I was crying myself to sleep last night (part of it was remembering Bruce Almighty after having watched it earlier) I felt better and formed a harder resolve. gogogo~
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On September 16 2012 01:29 fusefuse wrote:
i used to be a procrastinator like you
but then i took an army service to the... yeah
now i dont even have timw to think
i just do.
not sure im comfortable with the other extreme of the scale :/
The army tries to sell that you learn discipline by going, but I'm not sure if people come back more disciplined then they left with. Like once you don't have to get up early do you still think you'll be doing the same things?
I'm definitely the same though OP. I wish I knew how.
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Hey man good luck with changing yourself. I gotta say though, I am a very lazy person and I know its awesome to relax. That's all I'm doing this weekend
edit: I 5 star'd. I get the same on my blogs too.
I have a choice that I can either rate someone's blog 1, or I can rate it 5. Both take equal amounts of work, but rating a 5 rather than 1 makes a person's day a lot m ore than when it's rated 1
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Estonia4644 Posts
On September 16 2012 02:56 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 01:29 fusefuse wrote:
i used to be a procrastinator like you
but then i took an army service to the... yeah
now i dont even have timw to think
i just do.
not sure im comfortable with the other extreme of the scale :/
The army tries to sell that you learn discipline by going, but I'm not sure if people come back more disciplined then they left with. Like once you don't have to get up early do you still think you'll be doing the same things?
to an extent maybe. surely out of spite ill do the opposite. but when i need to pull myself together ill know that im able to do so cause ive done it before. will see
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On September 16 2012 03:03 StateofReverie wrote:
Hey man good luck with changing yourself. I gotta say though, I am a very lazy person and I know its awesome to relax. That's all I'm doing this weekend
edit: I 5 star'd. I get the same on my blogs too.
I have a choice that I can either rate someone's blog 1, or I can rate it 5. Both take equal amounts of work, but rating a 5 rather than 1 makes a person's day a lot m ore than when it's rated 1
This. Looks like there's more 5's as time goes by. So that's always a plus :D
Spend some time with Courage Wolf if you're looking up that much stuff in your free time. Some of his memes are really motivational and get you in a more productive mentality. Maybe it'll work, at least it'll give you a nice push.
Best of luck 
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Thanks for all the advice!
Sentinel, Courage Wolf is indeed pretty awesome keke. So much badassery packed into a puny punch of pwn.
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Just test out diff things till you're happy .
Like i keep waking up after 6 hours cause thats when the sun hits me and this morning i actually got up instead of falling back asleep. Had time to relax before class, eat a bit, and enjoy before starting my day.
Now i'm in my lecture hall waiting for class to start in a relaxed mood. Esp since i finished phase 1 of studying last night and i have a good plan for the day.
Just keep to your plan, you can do it buddy!
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Stop being lazy and play more piano =)
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Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
...so break your job up into bite sized chunks with very short deadlines and focus on one chunk at a time
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On September 25 2012 00:51 OpticalShot wrote:
Stop being lazy and play more piano =)
I second this notion.
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I just but a website blocker on chrome for the times when I want to do homework. It helps, but I still find it hard to actually start doing stuff. I really need to force myself. I keep thinking about all the other fun things I can do  Anyhow, I am definitely improving, I just need to keep finding things that help me focus.
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On September 25 2012 04:02 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2012 00:51 OpticalShot wrote:
Stop being lazy and play more piano =) I second this notion.
That's actually one of the things I really want to get to...but...I don't even know :/
It's been almost two weeks since I wrote that blog post apparently (wtf?!) and my situation has only changed for the worse if at all. I'll try to keep on trucking...kind of fell ill a few days ago and it's making it that much harder now that bigger deadlines, once far away, are looming... 
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pnSFn.png)
