Anonymous asked: im so inspired by your work habits im like trying to implement some of the same things
Nice!
I’m gonna give some advice now about this kind of thing; I’m putting a caveat here that says that it seems to me that people’s experiences wrt productivity schemes vary quite wildly? and therefore I don’t know how applicable all this will be to your situation.
It should be noted that like, while i think i’ve finally found a system that works for me (at least it’s been working for somewhere between two and three months) I’ve gone through many many other systems that seemed like they probably would work but didn’t… so, well, it’s possible that you will also have to go through a period like that.
To that end, here are some general things that I noticed while searching for a good system for me:
- as implied in that post about how the system fails gracefully, I think it’s important to think of your system as needing some level of fault-tolerance. Exceptional events like being sick, having to do some bullshit suddenly, having your sleep schedule disrupted, just feeling bad for no clear reason; these are things that just happen and sometimes it’s not going to be entirely clear to you that they happened. You need to make sure that you don’t end up in a guilt-fueled depression loop by the demands your system puts on you, or with just an ever increasing pile of obligations that you will never get to.
- it was important for me to pay very close attention to the guilt I felt; it can extremely easily become counterproductive and contribute to decision paralysis and putting things off that really should not be put off
- personally, i’ve found that doing more things than could reasonably be expected from people (e.g. working 10-12 hours a day most days on 10 different masters classes, at least that was hell semester…) does help a little with the guilt? like, if you do poorly on a thing one day, you can just shrug and be like “well, what do you expect, this is impossible”, and go on to the next thing. Setbacks are inevitable, and setbacks always feel like failure, so finding ways to move on from failure as quickly as possible is important.
- i’m kind of in love with this system right now because it’s the first time i’ve had like, actually reliable functionality with no support system (no academia, no nearby peers, no nothing) so it’s easy for me to think it’s the best thing ever. But: there might be better ones, and I wouldn’t know.
- Take everything here with the following grain of salt: this has only been working for 2-3 months. This is more than usual for these systems and I genuinely think it might be able to work for years, but I don’t have those results yet, so… yknow, have the due skepticism.
- fiction seems to do a fairly efficient job of providing ways to restore normal function under situations characterized by a broad class of feelings. downside of fiction being that you need to constantly insure a certain amount of novelty and also the precise effect can be unpredictable. one needs to develop an intuition, which is annoying.
idk, i’m a flesh robot, right? a flesh robot with feelings, feeling that can affect my eventual functionality. Thus, those feelings must be attended to and handled as efficiently as possible, because time is finite and i am probably going to die before the century is out.
what if i… got a good night’s sleep… a buncha nights in a row??
5 things only people who are perscribed to Vyvanse/Adderall understand
Moralizing not endorsed but the description of how it feels is spot on.1. Being physically, but not mentally, hungry.
You hear your stomach growl. You know that you need to eat so you head to your pantry. You scan everything in it, but nothing appeals to you. On a good day, you might find something that interests you. But after a few bites, you’re already full. When you’re prescribed Vyvanse, every day is a battle of forcing yourself to eat, just so you can take in the calories you need. Many may think this sounds ideal, a simple way to suppress your appetite and lose a few pounds. But when your ribs start to show and your doctor is hassling you about being underweight, or when people ignorantly assume you have an eating disorder, it’s not so fun. Vyvanse makes us completely repulsed of something so simple that we once loved: food.
2. Being an asshole.
For those who take Adderall/Vyvanse recreationally, it can make them feel unusually talkative and social. For us ADD/ADHD-ers, it calms us down, and sometimes even makes us the opposite of social. If we’re trying to get something done, don’t take it the wrong way when we come off as an asshole for not wanting to be social with you. When we’re focused on something and you’re repeatedly clicking your pen, please don’t take our death stare the wrong way. We’re just irritable because you’re distracting us from what the Vyvanse is telling us we need to do: focus.
3. Hyperfocusing on exactly what we’re not supposed to be focusing on.
For those of us who have ADD/ADHD, Vyvanse doesn’t magically make us limitless. Sometimes although we are able to focus, it’s on the wrong thing (Example: Me writing this article during class). Whatever it is that we are hyperfocusing on, has to be perfect. And this can take a while, distracting us from what really needs to be done. For us, overcoming distractions and ADD/ADHD is more than just taking a pill a couple times a day. It also takes serious willpower and learned cognitive behavioral skills in order to filter out the loads of irrelevant stimuli that flood our brains.
4. Becoming a zombie.
You’re not really sure where your personality went. You’re not really sure when the last time you smiled was because you’re feel so serious. You’ve been intently staring for so long that you remind yourself to blink. Your jaw is clenched. Someone may ask you if you’re okay or if you’re in a bad mood. You’re fine of course; the Vyvanse just makes you feel flat.
5. Being physically, but not mentally, exhausted.
Your body is sore and your eyes burn. Lying down feels so good, but sleep is out of the question. Your eyes won’t stay closed and your mind is still alert. Every day requires strategically not taking your meds too late, otherwise you will be miserable come bedtime, staring at the ceiling for hours. Naps during the day? Say goodbye to those.
Basically, we just want you to understand even though you maybe never will.
Vyvanse isn’t fun. Dealing with all of the above almost daily isn’tideal. And dealing with a real ADD/ADHD diagnosis is FAR fromlucky. Vyvanse isn’t a drug to joke about or buy in the library. It’s a medication that helps struggling individuals every day, and despite the negative side effects, we need that help
Wonder if 10 hours is enough time to learn ring theory
Guess we’ll find out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Galois theory final in 14 hours yay
god be with you
how goes the toil
"life is a succession of long and empty hours in need of filling. biology occupies some of them. culture is the irradiated mutant that emerged from the rest. culture isn’t necessarily interesting. culture, in fact, is often very boring. but it is something to do. it is a handy, prefab scaffolding for the bridge you have to build over the chasm that separates the beginning of your life and the end of it. it saves you the trauma of looking down.
i think of ambition not as a need for power or status, but as a form of insanity that renders this scaffolding invisible. ambition is sensitivity to boringness, and the compulsion to do something about it. it is the arrogance to defy entropy. ambition doesn’t necessitate unkindness, but it usually means forfeiting the comfort of easy, palliative things. entrance (2012) is a very successful horror movie about this act of forfeit. it’s about the fear that noticing and renouncing boringness is inherently monstrous. it’s about the time you realized you no longer had anything in common with your closest childhood friend, and couldn’t help feeling that this made you somehow evil."
Wonder if 10 hours is enough time to learn ring theory
Guess we’ll find out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Galois theory final in 14 hours yay
"
Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one’s lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television.
I speak from experience. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the age of television. I was trained to be bored; boredom was cultivated within me like a precious crop. (It has been said that consumer society wants to condition us to feel bored, since boredom creates a market for stimulation.) It took me years to discover — and my nervous system will never fully adjust to this idea; I still have to fight against boredom, am permanently damaged in this respect — that having nothing to do doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The alternative to boredom is what Whitman called idleness: a passive receptivity to the world.
So it is with the current generation’s experience of being alone. That is precisely the recognition implicit in the idea of solitude, which is to loneliness what idleness is to boredom. Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is grief over that absence. The lost sheep is lonely; the shepherd is not lonely. But the Internet is as powerful a machine for the production of loneliness as television is for the manufacture of boredom. If six hours of television a day creates the aptitude for boredom, the inability to sit still, a hundred text messages a day creates the aptitude for loneliness, the inability to be by yourself.
"William Deresiewicz, ‘The End of Solitude’
quoted in Vivek Haldar’s blog
I love my friends, and adderall
Painting, Kendall College of Art and Design
“Speeders: a collection of stories and images”
(Source: lolmythesis)
Today was a good day. I did a long overdue problem set, sent emails I needed to send, possibly found a job for the summer, went to a professor’s office hours to talk about their research (trying to characterize a certain class of pure, positive braids) and woke up before 1pm.
*fingers crossed* for tomorrow
In other news Lackenby’s notes on Topology and groups are somewhat lacking in rigour, but are fine if I don’t worry too much about formalizing everything on my first read through. Definitely need to supplement with other books. There are a couple of proofs further in that I’m excited for though.