Feb 2019: My Relationship With Time

The brain is an odd thing because it doesn't work as deterministically as a computer. There are different factors that have different amounts of importance, but we don't know how exactly they contribute to our goals.

I didn't start my channel until 2nd year of college, yet for a long time my goal was to upload every 3 days. A lot of people think I'm younger because this statement is already so unfeasible.

One reason kids can improve extremely fast at cubing is because their brain is different. But another reason is because of the amount of time they have. I know a lot of people who stop improving in cubing as they hit college years. I also stopped improving around that time, and it would be easy to just blame it on not being a kid anymore.

Take high physicality sports. Whether it's soccer, basketball, tennis or whatever, you only get a few hours a day to actually train before you have to stop because your body can't continue in a way that's still fun and useful. In that sense, adults and kids can improve at a relatively similar rate. That's not true for cubing, where (some) younger cubers can practice upwards of 8 hours a day. Anyone older than 17 or 18 just doesn't have that sort of time in most cases.

Part of growing up is losing a lot of your time to other people and to routines of the day. I am not at the age where I take care of other people, so here's a disclaimer that I don't know much about that aspect. But I've also felt a lot of my time being lost to school, work, transportation, food preparation, and probably other things I don't think about. So even if you have kids, or greater responsibilities than the sheltered guy writing this post, hopefully you can still find some use in it :)

When we're young, a day feels like a long period of time where things just keep happening. I could go to a friend's house for 2 hours and thoroughly enjoy what we managed to do. Now, waiting for 2 hours straight feels bad and unproductive, but it's not a gigantic amount of time and I could do it.

If you're a hyperproductive person and you actually spend most of your time doing things that tightly align with whatever goals you have, then you are making the most of your free time. However, this is very rare. In most cases, I believe that everyone has a lot more free time than they think.

Some people are very productive in the sense that you always feel like you need to be doing something, and what you do is always something that needs to be done. Usually this person will do lots of things, but often it's just things that feel productive.

A lot of people spend much of their time doing things that don't align with their goals, but continue to do them. This includes time-wasters like TV shows, but also includes tricky things like hanging out with friends, or not hanging out with friends (depending on what your goals are).

I wouldn't say I'm naturally very productive at all. In high school, I would spend more than 50% of my free time doing random stuff like watching educational videos on youtube. I learned some nice stuff about science and the brain, but also a bunch of stuff I never needed to know (and forgot), like quantum physics.

I also did things that felt productive, like finding tons of music and organizing my music very intricately. A lot of little things had a disproportionately small value compared to how I treated them.

So I started uploading videos in 2nd year of college even though I was studying computer engineering and had a full course load.

By this time I had been working a lot on my time management. Many times in the past I had stopped procrastinating homework and did it early, slept at 10-11pm, etc. I could keep it up for about 3 days at a time, and then stop because it was too hard. Sounds a lot like the new year's resolution gym membership?

I know that I don't have the urge to do productive things all the time, but some people do. I don't think either side is necessarily better than the other, because both sides can very easily lose track of chasing a goal. I feel like a lot of things in life cannot be quickly changed to what you want it to be, and instead you have to make the most of what you have.

Being lazy has some advantages. I clean my desk once every few months, even though I actually require a clean desk to film videos. I actually just push everything to the side, and there's always a literal pile of random stuff on the side of the desk that you can't see. And it's growing every day. There's tons of other stuff I just don't end up doing since they take time away from me. If you're the type of person who's always trying to do something, maybe there's something to learn here. It's unlikely that everything you do as part of your daily routine is actually necessary, or needs to be done as often as you do it.

Being lazy obviously has disadvantages; I don't do things as much as other people. But what I attempt is to get as much done possible in as little time as possible because my real problem with doing things is actually the time spent, not the effort spent. A lot of lazy people are perfectly good at applying effort when they really care, but just not on a consistent basis. Because of this, I've found techniques for video editing, studying, and daily routines that save very small amounts of time, but those add up. For example, I brush my teeth while putting on my clothes preparing what I need for the day. If I didn't, I'd lose a few minutes. Another example is when I study; I wait until the exam is almost here to begin studying to gain urgency, and then alternate studying and slacking off for about 20-30 mins each to make sure I don't lose focus.

I don't think it would be useful to point out all the possible things you might do that take up your time, since I'm sure everyone can do a good job of identifying it themselves.

I brought up the brain thing in the beginning of this post because it's important. The brain being worse at learning new skills when you're older; that's an excuse. It's a true fact, but it's still an excuse that doesn't cause any change or action.

Your brain is still an actionable and changeable factor, but for other reasons. It affects how you perceive the things you're doing. Kids are keen on setting goals, and enjoy working towards them because they set really fun goals. Sometimes this is reaching a certain amount of wealth in a video game, or beating their friend at a sport.

One reason I was able to make so many videos in 2nd year of college while working is because I always had those videos in mind somehow. The sight of my goal effected action. On some days, I would stay at school for 3 extra hours getting homework done early, just to avoid the afternoon traffic and increase the total amount of free time I had by 30 minutes. I wasn't a super productive person, and I knew I would waste much of those 30 minutes. But I wasn't going to waste all of it, and that's a start.

You can't have it all at once. I'm perfectly capable of sleeping at at reasonable hour and doing my homework early, but it never lasts for some reason. I can do it, and I have done it, but I also know that I can't keep it going. What I do know is that when I am driven by a goal, I make at least 1 little adjustment per day that shifts my time in favor of working towards that goal, and that adds up.

One last anecdote: I used to listen to so much music that certain songs would begin to represent periods of my life. I wanted to have a list of all these songs and what they reminded me of, so I would never have trouble going back to remember parts of my life. I thought that it would be really cool if I started earlier, but it was too late to start since there will be barely anything on it. Despite that, I began the list anyway. It's been 8 years, and it's a really long list.

The little things you do add up, as long as they somehow point in the direction you want to go. If they day consumes and overwhelms you, maybe it has to be that way. But do 1 little thing each day that moves you closer to your goal, whatever it is.