Reddit mentions of The Influence of Seapower Upon History

> how much time I waste on stupid shit

This was my main frustration with myself back in uni and I have since developed a number of strategies for using my time better. These strategies re-enforce each other but fall into 4 categories:

1. Take care of your body and mind
   
   

• Have good sleep hygiene. I need 8.5 hours of sleep a night to be at my best. Figure out what that number is for you and follow through on it. An extra hour of wakefulness is a waste of time if it makes you 40% less effective the next day. Also, go to sleep and wake up at the same time every night. I find it useful to wear an $8 sleeping mask and play rainymood when I sleep. If I have a night when I'm feeling anxious or my brain is keeping me up, I listen to a boring audiobook.
  
  
• Exercise: Doing 30 solid minutes of exercise a day makes my brain better at focusing and helps improve my energy levels without caffeine.
  
  
• Food: High-protein and prefer whole-wheat pasta over white. An Instant pot or MealPrepSunday tactics are great for making healthy food cheaply and quickly.
  
  
• I find that doing Contra Dance rejuvinates me. Find a thing that does that for you.
  
  

2. Block distractions
   
   Use tools that make distraction less likely.
   
   

• Freedom.app is the most cross-platform. it costs money, but if you have a minimum-wage job, it pays for itself even if it only saves you 15 minutes of wasted time per month.
  
  
• On OSX, the app SelfControll is also useful.
  
  
• You can block the Hot Network Questions on StackOverflow
  
  You wouldn't put cookies in front of someone on a diet. Don't do that to yourself.
  
  

3. Make your tasks clearer
   
   

• When you get an assignment or problem set, quickly look through it and ask any questions that come to mind about how you would approach it. Draft an email with those questions and, if you think there are any that don't fall into "I can just answer this myself with a bit of digging", send those to the TA. Then don't touch the problem set until at least tomorrow. This helps you avoid procrastinating on something only to find that. ^(note: I never did this one in uni. This is a version of what I've done with contracting. Take with salt.)
  
  
• Part of the skill of doing a task is shaping the task to fit your brain. Notice the things that make programming make more sense to you and do more of them.
  
  
• List out all the things you don't understand or that scare you about a task.
  
  
• When you get stuck, writing out a clear question to a TA or coworker to unblock yourself. As you write, you might realize the answer.
  
  
• Keeping a notebook of thoughts as you solve a problem or debug something makes it easier both to come back to the task you were working on and to remember your solutions.
  
  
• Blocking out specific tasks on google calendar is a took I've used in the past that has been good. Just don't expect your time estimates to have any relationship with reality. The goal is to help you explicitly mono-task.
  
  
• For programming, Test Driven Development is a great productivity tactic as long as you have something clear to follow about how to set up a test framework/development environment. For python, This book is great. It also teaches web programming.
  
  

4. Build discomfort tolerance
   
   For a long time, I focused on categories 1 through 3. While those help tremendously, you still need discipline. For a long time, I thought "discipline" was yelling at yourself like you had a 10-inch R. Lee Ermey on your shoulder. Nope. Discipline means knowing the things to say to yourself to get yourself to do the right thing, then actually saying it, then actually doing it. The good thing is that you can, right now, figure out what you've got between yourself practice saying it.
   
   

• You might be afraid to get started because you suck at the thing. First, accept that you suck. If you are new to doing something, you do suck at it and that is totally fine. However, doing things you suck at is still really uncomfortable. You're going to have to say to yourself "I'm currently not very good at this, but its okay to do things I'm not good at and I can understand more difficult things that I think."
  
  
• When you get up in the morning, make your bed. It is quick and it subtly re-enforces to yourself that you are the sort of person who gets things done. Another thing that can help with this is keeping a log of the things that you learned so that you have more confidence in yourself.
  
  
• If you find that you are procrastinating on a task, then first ask "what is the impact of doing this assignment?". If it actually has a positive impact ("I'll understand SVDs better and its part of my grade", "I'll be able to get Julia the part of the project on time", etc) then just say to yourself "well, this kinda sucks, but this needs to be done." The Pomodoro Technique is usually good for getting yourself started.
  
  
• You will have a Saturday when you realize at 4pm that you've spent the whole day on Reddit. When this happens, do a few things: Realize that it wasn't the whole day, just the whole day so far. Enable whatever reddit-blocker you have. Then, go do some dishes to reassert your ability to do things. Then, on paper, write down 3 things you could accomplish that day. Focus for 2 hours on one of those things. Once you've done that, you'll be mostly out of your rut.
  
  
• I find this quote by an admirer of Winston Churchill really useful: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
  
  Lastly, I'll leave you with this link to a post on how motivation might work as a function of your confidence in being able to accomplish the task. Most of what I've posted above is really about increasing that confidence directly or indirectly. http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/07/guyenet-on-motivation/