One thing I’ve noticed is that my behavior depends to a large extent on where I am and who I’m with. For example, when I went off to college, I learned to be much more patient and tolerant when dealing with other people. However, when I went home to visit my family, I fell back into my usual ways of finding my younger siblings annoying, and even snapped at a friend I had made in college during an IM conversation.
So you might try making a point of working hard whenever you’re in your dorm room (or your school library, or wherever) and try to establish working hard as a conditioned response to being in that place.
When it comes to wasting time on the Internet, I recommend you use a website blocker like this one that allows you to do regular expression blocking. This allows you to block a website’s homepage only, while allowing you to do specific things (like search for something you read) which are probably okay. (Example: reddit.com/?$ should block the Reddit homepage only.) It’s not actually all that painful to remove addictive websites from your life entirely if you replace them with nonaddictive breathers like Hulu. (Don’t underestimate the importance of rejuvenation. To be productive, a good goal is “distraction free work and guilt free play”. If you feel guilty when you play, playing may not actually served as a relaxing activity for you, which could make it very difficult to regain energy.)
My number 1 self-improvement secret is to spend time every evening thinking about how your day went and planning out the next day. You can even keep a queue of productivity ideas you have read about and try one out each day as an experiment.
A more general version of this is to “reset” yourself using the following procedure: notice that you’re being unproductive, plan a break and a detailed work strategy, take your break, then execute your strategy. I find myself “resetting” constantly, to the point where I no longer see myself as controlling my life and only as periodically shifting the steering wheel in order to stay roughly on course. (The evening planning session is a special case of this because the break is sleeping for the night.)
I’m sending you my Skype username in a personal message in case you want to chat further :)
One thing I’ve noticed is that my behavior depends to a large extent on where I am and who I’m with. For example, when I went off to college, I learned to be much more patient and tolerant when dealing with other people. However, when I went home to visit my family, I fell back into my usual ways of finding my younger siblings annoying, and even snapped at a friend I had made in college during an IM conversation.
So you might try making a point of working hard whenever you’re in your dorm room (or your school library, or wherever) and try to establish working hard as a conditioned response to being in that place.
When it comes to wasting time on the Internet, I recommend you use a website blocker like this one that allows you to do regular expression blocking. This allows you to block a website’s homepage only, while allowing you to do specific things (like search for something you read) which are probably okay. (Example: reddit.com/?$ should block the Reddit homepage only.) It’s not actually all that painful to remove addictive websites from your life entirely if you replace them with nonaddictive breathers like Hulu. (Don’t underestimate the importance of rejuvenation. To be productive, a good goal is “distraction free work and guilt free play”. If you feel guilty when you play, playing may not actually served as a relaxing activity for you, which could make it very difficult to regain energy.)
My number 1 self-improvement secret is to spend time every evening thinking about how your day went and planning out the next day. You can even keep a queue of productivity ideas you have read about and try one out each day as an experiment.
A more general version of this is to “reset” yourself using the following procedure: notice that you’re being unproductive, plan a break and a detailed work strategy, take your break, then execute your strategy. I find myself “resetting” constantly, to the point where I no longer see myself as controlling my life and only as periodically shifting the steering wheel in order to stay roughly on course. (The evening planning session is a special case of this because the break is sleeping for the night.)
I’m sending you my Skype username in a personal message in case you want to chat further :)