/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10160445
I second this, literally me. Need help

>>10160445
to be successful in the highly competitive world of research, or anything, you have to be hungry for it to the extent that not succeeding at it is feels like not breathing. If you have thoughts like "I'll get to it eventually", "I've done enough I've earned a break", "I just need to chill out a bit first with some youtube", then objectively, you are not someone who suffocates with lack of progress toward the goal. You do not have that innate disposition, and thus you are not going to be highly successful. You might want to reject this truth. It's easy to deny until you actually meet somebody who is highly successful, upon which it immediately becomes clear that they are a different type of person to you. They have no experience of, not even a conception of the issues you describe and that you probably think they have "overcome somehow".

>>10160499
This makes me want to anhero.

Everything in life is competitive. I'm fucked.

>>10160571
>Everything in life is competitive.
not everything is equally as competitive. before you commit suede ask yourself why you don't that badly want what you think you want. you might find something like "because honestly i'm happy playing video games most of the time" "i kind of like just watching tv". If this is your actual nature, why not just be comfortable with it? Why not get a lowish level office job and turn your brain off, then go home and play vidya/do sci puzzles for 16 hours? probably just because of stupid egotism. You got the idea you were one of the best so you feel like you're not living up to it.. why do you have this idea?

>>10160445
Do a digital detox to the extent you feel necessary. Browsing 4chan would be unacceptable, but reading papers or .pdf books that are relevant to what you want to learn would be acceptable. Video games would be unacceptable, but doing something amusing for a while in reality would be fine. Using your phone for logistics reasons is fine, but anything else is unacceptable. (Replacing your smartphone with a basic flip phone would help majorly here)

>>10160585
what i mean is you're probably average so you could just embrace being average

>>10160445
Since we are so used to have stimulation all the time we can't spend 5 minutes before checking social media or emails or 4chan.

That fucked me so hard and caused me long periods of procrastination.

I try not to touch computer at home, go out and read books. It helps. Implementation intentions also helped.

>>10160585
because i'm not going to just take all their mock-sympathy and arrogant elitism like some fucking undesirable. They all make fun of me, this is not a delusion. I hear them talking about me sometimes in their sarcastic nasally voices.

I understand everything fine, I'm not dumb or average. I simply. can. not. fucking. function. I start down to work, and.... ZIP 4 FUCKING HOURS have already passed and i haven't finished the first one yet. Time moves like 10 times faster for me. In those four hours I don't really get stuck, or confused as much as everyone just assumes. It always feels like I'm thinking and making steady progress. I know, you will simply just reply and say smugly: well you must not be very smart.

I've always had this dream to do this since I was a kid, literally go fuck yourself if you want me to just give up on my dreams. I'm destroyed financially if I do as well, student loans and what not. I have zero fucking prospects inside my field and zero outside. Once you fuck up enough times, not one person will give you another chance. Doesn't matter that you are thousands of dollars in the hole,you don't have the GPA for grad school. I literally cannot think of a single thing that works as a positive on my resume. No connections, no experience, no grades, no nothing. Of course, they tell me I'M priveledged, that I don't need support groups or people literally paying for me to simply exist like women and "minorities"...

>>10160648
you seem confused - as in, your posts contradict each other but maybe the confusion is also part of the problem you're having with study as well. In OP you said you get distracted by youtube and have a fucked up "attention pattern" i.e. can't concentrate. In this post you say you do concentrate and work steadily on the problem but time zips past anyway.
Are you sure you're working on the problem for the whole four hours or are you kind of half-distracted and daydreaming at the same time but you don't remember what you daydreamed?

>>10160648

>>10160648
>ZIP 4 FUCKING HOURS have already passed and i haven't finished the first one yet
What are you talking about? Math problems?

>I'm not dumb or average. I simply. can. not. fucking. function
I hate to be mean to you because your overall situation sounds pretty bad. However, it sounds like you are overestimating your abilities.

>people literally paying for me to simply exist like women and "minorities"...
Minorites (and to a lesser extent women) have pretty huge leeway to beings incompetent in jobs. This I won't deny, and it's unfair. However, you should probably stop blaming them to cope. They at least have to be vaguely competent, while your description of yourself makes you sounds totally incompetent.

Overall you sound pretty miserable, anon. Good luck.

Losing track of time when focusing could be hyperfocus, symptom of adhd; executive function disorder. Get tested, medicated. You will likely see improvement in focus, organising yourself. Get checked for autism too, the conditions go hand in hand. Not joking.

>>10161385
>adhd
Meme disease.

>>10160445
Don't jack off

>>10161390
>Don't jack off
Fuck off retard.

>>10160445
Why is academic success the metric of this board? Why wouldn’t it be financial success?

Learning math well and being in debt and having a boss your entire life doesn’t see like the intelligent thing to do.

Modern academia is a fucking sham

>>10160445
You don't wean shit bro
YOU JUST DO IT

>>10161420
lmao. It's part of the whole depriving yourself of excessive stimulation strategy. Just try it.

>>10160585
What if you HATE wasting time but can't do anything productive either and you are mostly just locked into staring at the ceiling or aimlessly browsing 4chan?

>>10161466
because the aim of science is to describe the world, not move it or move in it

>>10162341
then you don't really hate wasting time. you just lie to yourself that you do

>>10160585
I will never be happy living like this.

>>10162636
"not happy" is exactly why you are living how you are. "not happy" is miles below the threshold of unpleasant required to justify the great effort it takes to change. thus you will always be not happy (unless some kind of external events conspire to force you to change, which would be a great blessing)

>>10160445
>>10160478
Me too. Addicted to novelty of new information I know I won't make practical use of. I realized I could only read 10,000 books in my lifetime at best and had an existential crisis last month. Currently on Amazon sorting through absolutely all the books in each related section.

>>10160648
You sound like you need professional help. I am serious. You aren't seeing clearly right now because bad cognitive habits are leading you to feel stressed in a way that you're not even cognizant of. This is why everything in your life seems inconquerable, you're in a mood.

>>10162633
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

>>10162676
lol thanks Karl Marx for telling me "the point"? presumptuous cunt much?

>>10162670
>I realized I could only read 10,000 books in my lifetime
oh no

>>10162681
What affordance does a description of the world provide, other than the ability to change it?

>>10162691
how stupid are you that you can't understand that doing something with knowledge is another field? well, i say stupid - I know you've decided your angle as a philosophical point of view, so, it's possible you're not stupid but rather evil (commie).

>>10162699
Actual retard.

>>10160445
just take drugs lol

>>10161466
>Why wouldn’t it be financial success?
Because this is sci and not biz?

>>10162634
>action ca't be discordant from morals
>obsessions/addictions/compulsions can't develop with insight
"no"

first time being on this board. I feel like a brainlet, and that's cause I am

>>10162742
I know that feel bruh.

>>10162741
his claim of hate is not really a moral stance in this case, in this thread we are dealing more with desire
>i did it even though i know it's wrong
is quite common
>i did it even though i didn't have any desire to
is quite rare, in this sort of thing. hence my thesis
>i didn't do it even though i wanted to => i didn't want to
or rather you didn't want to enough to overcome the various background hesitations, fear of failure/success, etc.

I work as a welder/fabricator in an extremely small 4 man environment. We always push the envelope with experimental metals and woods. I guess we all go home and think of things to try in the morning. There's no textbook. The drive only exists because we share it. I don't know how helpful that is. But it's real world.

>>10160648
>Of course, they tell me I'M priveledged, that I don't need support groups or people literally paying for me to simply exist like women and "minorities"...
fuck off faggot. your grades are not minorities' fault. you can't even spell "privilege." you are the nigger that you hate. whites and asians are like 80% of graduate students in the sciences. stop blaming other people for not being able to break out of the bottom 20% of potential grad students.

>>10160499
it's just lazy to chalk it up to human nature.

>>10160445
truth is youtube, news feeds, etc. are ridiculously addictive, and what makes it worse is it's basically impossible to avoid them if you work in an engineering field or science field since you're always at a computer. and as usual, online kids want to blackpill you into thinking you can do nothing about it. this issue can actually be fixed. the answer is in habit formation.
we can reduce the seemingly intractable problem of "where do i get focus and discipline" to "what are the habits conducive to focus and discipline, and how do i form them?"
i'd continue, but i don't spend more than 30 minutes on 4chan before i go to sleep. so, i'll post more tomorrow morning during my morning coffee.

>>10160478
>>10160445

>>10160445

I saw a post last week that suggested that there is a quick way to cure this problem. Someone screencapped this post and it's getting passed around. I thought I'd saved it but I can't find it, so if anyone has a copy, please post it. Essentially the gist of the post was that all of this mini-addictions are just tiny dopamine traps. We're constantly allowing ourselves small doses of novelty in the form of constantly viewing new, user-generated content, giving us a neverending stream of minor dopamine rushes. Since we didn't evolve in an environment where this degree of constant novelty was available to us, we don't have any mechanisms in place to allow our dopaminergic reward systems to neglect it, so this environment easily traps us in cycles of addiction. I guess it's similar to the way that some portion of the population can be suddenly turned into a mindless brainlet by exposure to a highly stimulating game of chance, such as a slot machine, but it seems to affect a greater % of the population. The poster added that all rat-based experiments on these sorts of learned reward-dependence models had revealed that the behaviour could be untrained in an average of 7 days by leaving the rats in an environment devoid of significant sensory stimuli. Based on this, the poster suggested that we could relieve ourselves of these addictive pathways in the same way. Apparently, if you remove yourself from as many (pleasurable) stimuli as possible for a whole week and then gradually reintroduce only the stimuli you desire to associate with pleasurable reward, you can easily retrain yourself to derive the same pleasure you would normally get from spamming yourself from things like studying math, reading books, or practicing the piano. The poster claimed that he had essentially forced himself to eat bland food, watch no TV, and stare at blank walls for several days and then slowly allowed himself to read. Apparently, he was able to easily enjoy studying afterwards.

>>10160499
this guy is one of those faggots who comes on here to try to make other people feel bad so he can feel better about himself. He's probably failing out of first year cognitive science courses right now.
>>10160571
you can occasionally watch youtube vids and still be a successful researcher.

>>10162729
lol I was gonna say that

>>10160499
> You might want to reject this truth. It's easy to deny until you actually meet somebody who is highly successful, upon which it immediately becomes clear that they are a different type of person to you.
this is useless to think about. With that attitude, you'd basically never accept moderate academic success. If you constantly compare yourself to the most successful people in your field, you'll never be motivated to achieve local success, which you need to before you can even think about stepping up in the field.

>>10162939
>feel better about himself,
No, it's because of that that I feel good. I was greatly relieved to be unburdened of the illusion that top-flite people were "like me, but pushed through their bullshit" and realise they have a totally different disposition. It's true i'm kind of left without new, more appropriate goal and am neetcoasting, you could say that's it's own problem, but I definitely don't feel bad. See the follow up post.
If someone's problem is just impulse control or whatever, that's fine maybe detox will help. But a lot of people could do well to try this: Consider that I, anon, don't believe you are addicted to distractions etc., I propose that instead, you just don't want to be a top researcher bad enough to choose concentrating over pleasurable activities. If you want to prove me wrong, go and concentrate on your work for 1 hour. If you find yourself giving up, at that moment ask yourself whether you're giving up because you've got "widthdrawls", or whether you're giving up because "haha fuck it, i don't actually give a shit". Just try to catch your thought at that moment

>>10162948
but you just said what I argue? I am telling them not to compare to themselves to the top people

smoke weed everyday

>>10162670
WTF. 10,000 books is a lot. Why are you worried?

>>10160499
This guy makes it seem like some kind of predestination shit but for me it was kind of like this.
You have to keep in mind the image of you sitting on your ass, staring at a screen, laughing like a toddler at dumb meme videos while there's a pile of unfinished work behind you that one of your classmates who is three years younger than you is already finished with. You have to understand how absurd it is to enroll in college education, take all these classes and set up these goals for yourself, and then just waste it away to indulge in a few extra hours of childish entertainment a night.

We should honestly make threads like /fat people hate/ on /fit/ except here it's procrastinator hate. Just post all the statuses and tweets of people wasting their own or their parents money enrolling in a degree and pissing it all away for fucking memes, and then post videos of people complaining about the thousands of dollars of student debt they're in or how they're "unemployed with a STEM degree?! how could this happen :O"

Understand the trajectory you are on and how grave the consequences are. The trouble is you don't realize how pathetic you are until it's too late. You have to visualize your future failure.

>>10163058
can't think of a societal change more costly to life satisfaction for individuals in the west than the abandonment of shame

>>10162966
So, I am probably not what you would describe as a "top-flite" researcher. I'm a first-year PhD student. I've had moderate success in research in my discipline, and I had top grades at a very bad school in my undergrad. So I am okay. And of course, I do tend to allow myself to waste time sometimes. But that is not to say that I don't have any idea of what the experience of being a "top-flite" scientist would be like. I've certainly experienced periods of better discipline, like when I was pulling data together for a paper I coauthored, or when I was taking one class I particularly liked in my bachelour's and teaching other students on the board, or when I was writing my thesis. During some of these events, I experienced a sort of fleeting clarity. Now, I'm not like that, all the time, but I can certainly imagine what it would be like, and I know for sure that the satisfaction that living that experience provides is more concrete than the temporary pleasure that dopamine traps like TV and vidya provide, and I know that if I go long enough without feeling it, I spiral into depression. That doesn't mean I can't let myself watch a movie or two. It just means that the preponderance of my time needs to be spent doing useful shit, and I can't let pleasurable habits spiral out of control.

>>10162975
but what I mean is that performing like the top people is an attainable goal if you allow yourself to be comfortable with your local level of success at every level along the way, so that you can surpass it.
>You do not have that innate disposition, and thus you are not going to be highly successful
not necessarily true./ You are not going to be AS successful. But you can be locally successful, and you can work your way up from there. People without the "innate disposition" can achieve many of the same things over time with discipline. And the absence of the feeling of satisfaction that comes with success is more and more painful the more times you experience the feeling, so eventually you just gain that disposition.

I don't even have the self control to sit down and read all of that

>>10162880

>>10160585
Wrong. Accepting your shitty nature and all that it will bring is at least as hard as changing yourself.

>probably just because of stupid egotism.
gj insulting him for no reason.

>>10160445
I’m surprised no one suggested LeechBlock yet. It blocks useless websites for a certain period of time so you can stay focus.

As for mobile, just spend a few dollars for website block app. Don’t be a stingy fuck. We all know your self-discipline is shit.

>>10161466
Why do you pretend that academic and financial success are somehow mutually exclusive? You probably just fell for one of those dumb memes people use to justify sucking at their field like "Bill Gates was a dropout".

>>10163113
Found it on /sig/ over at /fit/.

>>10163777
>>10162936
>meant to reply to this post.
I found the post I was talking about

>>10162880
Is the TL;DR of this
>just dont do negative habits cold turkey

>>10163777
Has it helped anyone ?

Hey OP try changing your diet to low or zero carbs. I only eat meat and it's comfy as fuck. I sleep only 5.5 hours and feel completely rested. It's the simplest diet to have, and it's healthy too. Just eat some beef and some organ meats once a week or so. You get more time since you eat the same thing every day and you can also eat only one meal a day.

Also exercising every morning. You can do only 20 minutes light exercise and it'll improve your focus throughout the day and your fitness.

You can also try meditating. Just sit down and focus on your breathing for 15 minutes. It's a proven method to increase focus and remove brain fog.

>>10163852
idk. It's kinda extreme, so I figure not a lot of people have tried it, but it IS exactly what the OP was asking for, so I figure it's relevant anyways.

>>10163777
>>10163780
Funnily enough the image has already been posted, right above the post you replied to.

>>10160445
It takes a choice, choice takes willpower.

>>10163777
>>10163780
https://youtu.be/vl-44jDYDJQ

24 hour "dopamine fast"
then wake up the next day with proper habits

>>10163855

. I only eat meat


enjoy your colon cancer

>>10164152
thx. This is a good summary.

>>10163010
I spent 8 hours on Amazon last night and found 500 I would like to read without even trying.

>>10164222
>I spent 8 hours on Amazon last night and found 500 I would like to read without even trying.

Work on your priorities. Sounds like you want everything at once.

>>10160648
Sounds like adhd to me. Get tested asp.

>>10164222
haha i bet you can't even finish a single one

>>10164323
>amazon
Buy used you faggot.
Also this >>10164323

>>10164433
>>10164222

I simply removed myself from Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Then put phone and computer on priority alerts only, forever.

>>10163855
>I only eat meat
You're going to die.

>>10163855
>you can also eat only one meal a day.
Why would you do this.

>>10164562
So long as you don't eat a lot of sugar during the meal, one meal a day eating makes you feel super good. The fasting is super nice.

>>10164222
I can tell by your enthusiasm to read 500 random books that you've read less than 100 books in your whole life.
As someone who used to read 80-100 books a year (MS and HS), stop this shit. 90% of books are crap. Please tell me why you want to do this, and what types of books you want to read so badly.

>>10164575
I know some people enjoy intermittent fasting, but you will die of a vitamin deficiency if you don't eat fruits and veggies.

>>10162880
literally a secular hajj

>>10163600
This

Browser extensions and such tools are the best way to deal with this in my opinion.

I highly recommend a Chrome extension called 'Distraction free YouTube'
Basically you can hide everything you want and and only be able to search for and watch videos. No recommended feeds, trending feeds, related videos on the side or at the end of every video or even comments. It's so good.

Last summer I started to use the extension and also slowly deleted/blocked all social media apps in my phone and I had never felt so relaxed and calm in a long, long time.

Picked up reading books again after 2 years after realizing how much more free time I had.

>>10160571
I'm in the same predicament. I ignore most power struggles and am incredibly detached. If I dominant someone it's generally because I'm simply superior and doing my own deal. This is the core of my battle with other people, and other structures. If I see something being done wrong, I fix it. If I need to gain control of other people, it usually doesn't happen. I'm not a leader, and though historically people leaned on me heavily and rallied behind me, that's a thing of the past.

I'm bad at direct competition and maintaining interest and energy in power games. In fact, the perception of direct competition or externally imposed demand causes my output to change or decrease.

I can only imagine this trait will make forming a relationship with an attractive woman highly unlikely. After high school women don't pursue unless you're part of a group or local social ecology and all those dynamics. Which I'm not, and never will be.

>>10163851
More like, do no habits but those essential for survival, and after a while slowly introduce only the positive habits back into your life.
Your reward center will accommodate to the new norm, and the end result will be that you are a more successful person with less compulsion towards the poor habits.

>>10164755
Who are you and why are you me about 3 months ago?

>>10162675
K, so can someone tell me what the fuck a mood exactly is?

>>10164774
What changed?

>>10164829
Left my home town to a good college, met some good friends and applied what I knew about not being autistic. Now I'm trying for a girlfriend and grinded 2 months of physics in 3 nights. Not to mention the constant development.
What changed was how I go about my social image.

>>10164562
The reason we eat 3 times a day is cultural, not biological. It would be hard at first but once you got into the habit one meal a day is perfectly healthy.

These are some of the most genuine replies (for the most part) it has really calmed my nerves on 4chan and that wasn't even the point of coming here...glad I stumbled upon this thread.. hope everyone is striving towards their respective goals and reaching the top of their fields, what ever they may be! Let's fucking gooooo

>>10165157
gotta agree. very comfy thread

>>10164867
I've been on 2MAD (small lunch at work + dinner, no snacking) so long I can't even eat breakfast anymore.

>>10164433
Not him, but amazon is useful if you just want to check out some reviews or look at recommended books, even if you know you're ultimately gonna pirate.
>buying
lmfao

How the fuck do people manage to focus on one thing?

In my head it's like several ideas are trying to come through so a congestion happens and instead I do nothing.

Like I will be thinking "hmm I want to learn some medieval history", "I always wanted to read the bible", "I want to learn some art history", "this book on psychology looks interesting", "i want to learn about the history of the samurai", "architecture interests me", "these pop-sci articles on biology look interesting", "learning finance might be useful", "I want to learn how to play fighting games in depth", "this self help book has a lot of good reviews", "robotics looks like something fun to get into", "I really want to try out some VR games", "man I really feel like playing some obscure retro games", "I have yet to read all these classic novels", "I should read up on nutrition", "I should learn how to cook", "i feel like learning in depth about japanese pottery", "I should read some books on cinema so I can appreciate movies more"

I feel so overwhelmed that I default to browsing imageboards, playing some mindless multiplayer fps or re-watching sitcoms just to keep my mind empty.

Everything seems like it has potential to be very interesting to learn in depth. But you can only focus on a few things. HOW DO YOU DECIDE? I feel like if I focus on one thing I miss out on something else. When I get myself to read about one thing my mind jumps to something else.

>>10160445
>at least moderately intelligent
stopped right there
if that's your assumption for the rest of the post, the whole thing is falsehood and a waste of time

>>10162880
Be careful if you are doing this because it can be extremely dangerous for your mental health. I tried something similar 2 years when i wanted to "deprogram" myself in order to get rid of bad habits and then "reprogram" with good habits. I ended up not knowing what i wanted, what i liked, what i was afraid of, why i was living, what defined my existence. I became completely apathetic to everything, wasted large amounts of money and time in things that didn't bring me satisfaction, i had absolutely no drive to do anything not even the things i used to like. I thought about every action i was doing like i was in manual instead of automatic and going through the day felt like a nightmare. I could barely write coherent sentences. My body was affected too, i felt constantly weak and i gained a lot of fat. My skin quality went down a lot too. The only thing i was feeling was my brain burning and my body constantly feeling at unease. At the worst part, i was on the verge of total personality collapse and i had to manually recreate the routine i had before to heal slowly. Now i would say i'm 90% back to who i was before, i'm not combating my bad habits by finding substitutes. This has been the most horrible thing i've went through and i'm pretty sure nothing in my life will ever compare to that unspeakable horror. It was pure pain and this is something i do not wish on anyone, not even my worst enemy. I endured my father dying, i endured bulling and loneliness at school, i endured several break-ups, i endured a car accident. But this, THIS is something i could not endure. So i understand perfectly you guys want to get red of bad habits but seriously avoid, avoid touching your brain structure because that thing is no joke and i know a lot of anons would have killed themselves at least a dozen times if they went down the same path. DO NOT DO THIS

>>10160499

>hey, people that are into the things they are interested don't need to focus and being self-disciplined, for them is just a hobby :)

I will take this with a grain of salt.

>>10165361
Dude that whole image is basically "Change your environment and remove negative influencers". It's not some MKULTRA self-deprogramming routine.
If you spend all your time inside, on the internet, spend 7 days staying away from your house by finding things to do. Or remove your internet if you have no real self control (I've done this in the past).

>>10165376
I did all that stuff and even more though, i really don't know what went wrong tbqh. I never did drugs, i don't smoke and i barely drinked. That shit was insane

>>10163777

Trips convinced me to give this a try bc why not.

I will post the results and a little log in /adv/ to keep things on topic, though.

>>10160445
>aspiring scientist
I actually want money so I'm doing a health course that relies on nothing more than experience and rote memorization.

>>10160648
There are grad schools worth going to that will accept you. Do well on the GRE and apply to dutch schools. They are very liberal with who they accept and are good schools. Or go do a cert at the Harvard extension school or a grad dip at the LSE or University of London. Just stop thinking you deserve to do some fancy degree at MIT or ETHZ. It sounds like you also have an ego issue and are upset because you think you deserve to go to some amazing grad school or have a highly competitive job. Most people have way more respect for STEM students who try hard (regardless of ability) and go to the best school they can get into, even if it's some mid-tier state school than someone who may have a higher IQ but is a child emotionally.

>>10160445
Focus on one thing only.

Tunnel visioning on one thing sacrificing everything else makes you successful.

So basically be autistic.

>>10165336
I have the exact same struggle. You literally just described how I feel every day. I try to fight it and pick and focus on one thing but find it highly diffficult. Any advice?

>>10165336
So many directions, I feel so pulled apart. So many distractions, I feel them split my heart.

Which I why I'm sitting here refreshing, paralyzed in motion.

>>10164590
Tell me one nutritional deficiency you would have eating only beef and beef liver occasionally

>>10165336
Take up meditating. Every day sit down, close your eyes for 15 minutes and focus on your breathing. Increase by 5 minutes until you're at an hour every week. 15 minutes is NOTHING but you will notice your focus improving after just a week.

I would also suggest some exercise after the meditation for at least 20 minutes. Exercise of only 20 minutes has been shown to improve your mood and focus and reduce brain fog throughout the entire day.

Like I said above you can take up a carnivore diet. I don't think the diet directly helped my focus but it did make me feel rested after less sleep (about 5.5 hours), made me lose weight and cleared up my mild acne, all of which improved my state of mind tremendously.

>>10165371
i didn't say anything like your greentext faggot. I said the people who are the top achievers have a disposition where there they start suffocating if time is passing without them working on achieving success

I hate studying/working but I also hate being a useless NEET or mediocre human being, what the fuck is wrong with my brain?

>>10165392
>>10165361
you should try meditating cause your mental shit sounds fucked up

There's some teaching in Buddhism that goes "discard your opinion of yourself, because it matters the least." The only person who is gonna ask you how you think of yourself is a therapist, so it really doesn't matter

>>10165803
Your hate is overwhelming your determination to do something about it

>>10165336
>>10165489
Most likely a consequence of a lack of direction or purpose. You need to have a life goal - something you care about. Then you'll start prioritizing the information important to your plans. Also may stem from ego and the need to be perfect and "know a little bit of everything." Accept the fact that everyone is always more naive than they think. Focus on your niche, do the rest during free time, and surround yourself with a good team to learn from and to compensate for your weaknesses

>>10162990
>smoke weed

I find it helpful when the sleep deprivation kicks; when you're so burnt out and the thought of just calling it a night begins to detriment your productivity.

The way I see it, yes you're not at peak concentration while high, but the vasodilation wakes you up, and it perks your enthusaim towards another 2 hours of studying before calling it a night--as long as one abates getting derailed

>>10165803
>I hate studying/working but I also hate being a useless NEET or mediocre human being

Woah just like literally everybody you worthless retard?

>>10166273
thats pretty hurtful

>>10165361
I kind of had the same experience, but ultimately I think it was good. That ego death experience you describe made me realize I have a severe personality deficiency, if not a full blown personality disorder. Gaining awareness of it is allowing me to slowly take steps towards improving it.

>>10166281
I'm sorry if it offended you but I just wanted to bring you back to reality. None of us want to be mediocre, every single human being on the planet has ambitions, passions and dreams of his own. Yet despite this, our own inherent laziness dooms us to suffer from our inability to achieve our dreams.

One of my favorite quotes of all time from Napoleon :

"We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual, he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost."

Being lazy (idleness) and having expectations beyond ones capacity (distrust of self) is a recipe for disaster, it's how you become no one. Who was Napoleon? He just just another commoner not even born on the French mainland, yet it took him little time to become Emperor of France and the greatest European conqueror since Charlemagne himself since 1000 years ago. Idleness and distrust of yourself are your two greatest enemies.

>>10166254
>Most likely a consequence of a lack of direction or purpose. You need to have a life goal - something you care about. Then you'll start prioritizing the information important to your plans.

WELL THAT'S THE PROBLEM
but how do you find direction or purpose?

Actually, better advice is to jack-off then eat your cum. It is proven to be 900% effective in case studies on men's health.

>>10160499
I believe this is true as well. I noticed it a few years ago when I saw my fat body in its worst form (at my heaviest, just out of the shower); it was like an immediate switch - I NEEDED to lose weight. For at least 8 months after that moment, weight loss was the dominant thought in my head, and I did everything right to lose the weight. Probably overkill on exercise, no cheat-food at all, and it was all extremely easy. My previous attempts at weight loss felt like an exercise in discipline, but this time was different. There was something driving me, and it wasn't willpower.

Now I believe that all great successes come from some kind of 'drive' that is much more than discipline. Discipline is something you have to always stay conscious of, and your mind is always screaming at you to take the easy way. No one can realize their full potential through just discipline.

The question I have now is how can we recreat the driving possession that finally made me lose weight, but use it to help in other areas of life? The more I think about it, the more it seems that there needs to be some kind of discomfort. A discomfort so great that it lights a fire under your ass. For myself, I feel like I need to hit a new low in life in order to push myself forward; where I'm at right now is too comfortable and there isn't enough incentive to strive.

So how does one hit lows that are low enough to create motivation, but not low enough to ruin your livelihood or relationships? And is searching for new lows even healthy? Someone please respond with their thoughts on this theory, it's been on my mind for a while and I cant really discuss it with people in real life.

>>10166428
I know exactly that thought process, I was just thinking about this the other day as I was in my childhood room. I think there is something to the comparison of "searching for lows" and "searching for highs". Yeah, maybe lows are what give you that drive, but should we be trying to really just maximize that? seems to me we should learn how to ride that wave when it comes -- no force at all, just effort.

>>10166428
>seeking lows
I think you're onto something anon

>>10165803
>I also hate being a useless NEET or mediocre human being
no you don't! stop lying to yourself! "search your feelings" you want to hate it but you don't (or you would just start working). prove me wrong

>>10166631
>people always act in accordance with their feelings
>people can't have contradictory feelings
Those are some pretty big assumptions to make.

bump

>>10165336
I used to have this exact problem. I solved it only in the last year. The key is to reign that stuff in. You have limited time, and nowadays when I get those ideas I simply think whether I have enough time to do them. Since I started uni, I don't. I still get those "urges", I just don't act on them.

At first it was scary, because I thought I'd "lose" my innate interest in most things, but I haven't. Also I had to face the truth that even though I was interested in all these topics, I never got anywhere with them.

>buy dumbphone
>leave smartphone at home
>go to library or university to study
>avoid using laptop whenever possible due to distractions
>get shit done as fast as possible
>go home
>procrastinate until tomorrow

>>10166428
>but use it to help in other areas of life?
I've found the key is to really enjoy that process (e.g. weight loss) in and of itself. That is a driver. Discipline does not last long if you are completely averse to the task.

downgrade your shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxSbCdO-rUQ

>>10160571
Then only compete against yourself. Strive to be a better man than you were yesterday. Each day improve.

>>10160499
You're literally typing this on 4chan. Where do you see yourself in your analogy?

>>10168631
This is a bigger community than you think.

>>10168631
i'm a coasting underachiever who has met high achievers.

>>10163777
>>10164152
I personally think that a 24 hour fast is not enough based on what I lived when I did a water fast for 7 days to reduce my sugar addiction. One week was enough to cut my intense cravings but I still wanted to eat sugar so if 7 days was not enough for a simple drug like sugar I think that 24 hours would not be enough at all for anyone trying to reduce their problems coming from multiple addictions. My plan is to fast for 7-14 days while applying the dopamine abstinence. I will only read, write, do some mathematics and exercise after 2 days of pure boredom. My goal is to make myself enjoy reading more and work better. I will post about this when I get the results.

>>10164562
>humans always ate three meals a day before industrialization

>>10168631
>>10168960
also i don't know what the fuck you mean by analogy. It's a direct description of the fact that there are people out there who, if they get tempted to waste time (doing something that doesn't further their development), immediately get a vision of someone competing for their same position in life who has the same knowledge skills and aptitude as them, but at that moment is not wasting time but feverishly working at the dream. They immediately think "i need to smash that person, I'M the one, not them" and they work. Other people, like me, and OP, don't think of that. Undeniably this is either because we have a secret delusion that we'll just get there anyway somehow, or because we secretly don't really care if we get there. We are type B personalities "if people need me i'll join in i guess" assuming we are like the Type A people described.

>>10164590
I still eat my fruits and veggies. I have an apple, an avocado, and a salad for breakfast around 3 pm usually, then I eat a big healthy dinner with meat at 6 pm, then I fast the rest of the time.

>>10169017
having said that, there are some possibilities, as other people in the thread have offered, to kind of be forced into acting type A by circumstance or even tricked into it by mere context: Encountering high achieving women in school made me feel inadequate so i became competitive. for a decade i convinced myself that I was driven until I started slacking again and recognised I'd just been pretending but the fact is while i was acting as a competitive person i did accomplish the things a competitive person does lmao

>>10169038
are you even getting restricted calories with all that food?

>>10160445
Meditate

>>10160445
I'm convinced that some people are just harder workers than others, and that conscientiousness is an inherent trait like IQ. People who are low in it will constantly wonder how they're going to make themselves work, while those high in it will just tell you to get over it or shitpost because they never had the problem in the first place.

>>10169799
anecdotally as an adolescent i was pretty mediocre academically partly due to a complete disinterest in school but by high school i shaped up. nowadays im struggling to regain the habits i built in high school

>>10169799
In that adoption study parents ware not instructed how to behave to niggers and whites and even school hasn't been. Nothing cut out the enviromental factor.

Also with same genes your brain can develop different at early stages due to some mediator being present.
.......


Also focus comes with interest naturally, if you have to force yourself it's not stuff for you, find something different

>>10160445
Check if you doesn't suffer from dopamine deficiency

>>10170096
is this even english? the only part i can follow is
>Also focus comes with interest naturally, if you have to force yourself it's not stuff for you, find something different
which is the kind of shit idea that leads to ruin, because making a living from anything, even your 'passion', still involves boring parts and if you're too unconscientious (yes it is an innate personality trait once you're an adult, nature or nurture irrelevant, that's pretty fundamental and hard to change) you won't want to do those and you'll keep looking for something that's exciting all the time which doesn't exist

>>10169799
This. People have always said to me, "oh you're so smart, must be easy for you." Meanwhile people who can focus leave me in the dust. I'm flat out amazed at anyone who can concentrate on any task for 8 hours.

>>10170106
No it doesn't involves casting random focus.

>>10170157
please don't post until you have learned better English

>>10170165
Can you state in syntactical and speech act analysis what is wrong with my English?

>>10170203
No, because I can't even guess what you were meaning to write. This is not the place, go buy some sessions with a tutor. Take your meds, too

>>10160445
Track your time. Google "pomodoro", and skip the long breaks.

>>10170217
You look stupid, stop it.

>>10162880
I don't have the attention span to read this. Am I still gonna make it bros?

>>10170892
>>10163326
>move all your personal belongings that define you outside of your room
>meal prep for 7 days worth of food
>put away electronics including your phone
>spend the next 7 days mostly in your room
>doing nothing but reading intellectual books and meditating

the idea is to reset your pleasure receptors in your brain. Deprive them of signals, then at the end of the 7 days you do the things you've wanted or been meaning to and you'll get pleasure from doing it. (coding, playing instruments, going on hikes, reading, etc)

I did this and it really did leave an impact. I enjoyed programming and no longer had a desire to play vidya or binge read manga. I fell back into playing vidya tho when a friend came over a week later...I'm going to try and do it again

>>10168890
>>10168960
>>10169049
What area do the people you meet work in? Is it business, education or something else? I hear about these hard working people all the time but it feels like they're some unknown group of people out there and all we know about them is some vauge statements.

>>10171467
the people i'm thinking of are a few doctors/surgeons, a lawyer, a professor, a head of school (as in school of math within a university), a political advisor turned commentator. Even in sleepy laid back countries there are people doing things with relative intensity

one of the dopamine fast plans in this thread says you should only do x things which includes reading. the other one (the video) says no reading. I think unless reading is something you hate and want to get better at, you should avoid reading because that's a very pleasing activity once you get on a roll.

>>10172304
Why is a doctor or surgeon trying to work hard by being the best? As long as you're good at your job what need is there to work hard and fear the other person in the world who might be working when you're resting? If it was business then that would make sense to increase profits and with being a lawyer is very competitive. but how is being head of school or commentator require you to work harder than your competitors? What's the end goal?

I've had good luck journaling, identifying problems, causes, and treatments.

I aim for incremental goals and daily note the successes and failures. Reduce the negative, problem causing behaviors gradually, increase the treatments gradually, and make reflection on these things a daily habit.

>>10172354
you idiot. if you don't work that hard, you don't get that job, someone else does. It doesn't mean you have to "work harder" by cutting into the patient really fast or something. It means studying the newest techniques while you're not cutting, etc. You start as a junior and if you develop your skill and technique you become the senior/head surgeon. If you coast like your fucking stupid ass recommends, you stay at the same level and you get fired because you aren't up to date on procedures.
You are right that there are jobs that are not as competitive as others
- of course you don't have to be a type A killer to have a job at all. I am just saying that people who aren't that driven should stop beating themselves up about not working as hard as that people who fucking hate going to bed because it means they have to stop working

I have no self control so I blocked YouTube by adding it to my windows host file and disabling it on my phone. I would always stay up past midnight mindlessly watching YouTube if I had not blocked.

>>10173686
Can you give more examples of hard working people you've met and what their working habits are like? I like hearing about these people; they're very interesting.

I'm not the best on the subject and I am just starting on this, so disregard my advice if you want.
I began writing down goals for the next day every day at night. At first I couldn't meet those goals because they were far too much for me. Those experiences helped me identify my own (current) limits and come up with more realistic and concrete goals.
I decided not to be too hard on myself either: I was making a genuine effort to improve, so there was no point on being harsh on myself just because I wasn't doing everything perfectly. My reasoning was that slow steady progress was much better than nothing at all. Ideally you would get fast and steady progress, but I preferred to settle for something that seemed more doable.
My daily goals right now are simple stuff like "read the chapter on joint distributions" or "finish those proofs in linear algebra". I spend around 6-8 hours a day on them and get to fuck around for 3-4 hours at night if I managed to meet the goals of the day. I think that when you are just starting it is important not to give up those kind of things entirely (social media and youtube in your case), but to make sure that you are doing them after all your other duties. You need to reward yourself after having worked harder than usual (with moderation), even if some anons will say otherwise.
Working on those daily goals has become part of my routine. I get out of bed, take a shower, eat breakfast and get to work on the first goal that is on my list (the list is on my phone), which is usually the hardest. I keep working on those goals and finish all those tasks at about 6:00 pm. I check my mail, plan the next day and get to do whatever the fuck I want before 10:00 pm, which is when I go to sleep. Making these things a routine is pretty important too I think.

You have to continually improve, look for ways to be more productive and think of longer-term goals too. I can't say anymore because this is already pretty long and looks like a blog post.

Quality thread this is

>>10173766
>their habits
well my thesis in this thread is that personality (or temperament) is key, habits being downstream of that. though I've since moderated it to
-personality, beliefs, circumstances, context-
in approximate order there of least to most mutable

>examples
the political commentator, a person from my school, has had three careers that each on their own would make a notable life. Their personality is Tracy Flick's. This person is on tv all the time talking blahdy blah, society this, moral imperative that, but personally they are a success obsessed cut-throat with no real beliefs. A person with a similar but not quite the same over-achiever personality is a surgeon. This person says things like
>in my final year at uni i saw my friend who studies computer science doing their project and I thought, lol, i could do that so much better, so I thought it would be a fun challenge to see if i could do their assignment in a day and still do my own assignments and still get top marks
Don't get this confused with procrastination. This person augmented their workload to 'add challenge', so that they could show off to themselves how capable they are. They essentially get cummies off being the best - the more challenge there is the more they can get off. This person is only in medicine and particularly their chosen speciality because it was the hardest career they could think of

make what you will of the fact these are both women, and both vaguely/partly from cultural backgrounds where status is a thing that people actually give a shit about

>>10173766
>>10174539
Someone who did NOT have overacheiver personality but does their unending work because of beliefs and perhaps context is a family member who was a doctor and served their area as the only doctor for something like 30 more years than the retirement age of my country, (several after the life expectancy in fact) and i believe this is mostly due to "protestant work ethic". In this age it's kind of hard to imagine someone having a genuine ethical belief they act on let alone one that idleness is unethical, but i think that was the case. Also, because having *taken up the responsiblity* (circumstance) there wasn't someone else around who could do things that needed to be done and that probably made this person step up. I don't think they loved the work (or the patients) enough that they were doing it for of pleasure. when another doctor was finally hired and they could finally stop, this person said they never after had a single thought related to medical practice 'it's like i never did it'. Despite being an example to everyone around of an extremely diligent worker, this person has expressed lament and perhaps jealousy that, for example churchill wrote a series of history books in a month (or thereabouts) while being the prime minister of a nation at war, and this person hadn't written any books yet.

this is why when some faggot on here says "but i HATE the idea of not being useful", i don't believe you. You are not like this. Yes, people can have contradictory actions and beliefs if there's something else getting in the way (usually fear), but equally likely that your belief is a sham, and wouldn't hold under any actual test. This is probably down to the fact that because you don't move in the world and among people there is no one to laugh at you for that. Imagine, someone you regard:
>he says it's wrong to waste time but he does exactly that lmao

>>10160445
I keep shitposting on /sci/ and I don't know how to stop.. /sci/ has become my addiction :'( Anyone knows how I can break this addiction pattern?

>>10174550
and i just want to add a little anecdote. there was a car race thing i was at and the driver would always come second, which was impressive but he got really bad times on time trials. He said "i need someone to chase!" this was why he always came second too, if he got into the lead he would just start daydreaming and take his foot off the pedal. I think the achiever psychos i mentioned are different not just in personality but that they had a specific visions. 'I want this exact job and i know i need to do this, now, today if i'm going to be the one that gets it'. others have a vision like "i guess i'd like to be a scientist after i graduate"... you're doing the time trial

>>10160445
fuck the normies, go on like Christopher Langan

>>10174555
Just turn off your eletronics brah

>>10174560
>>10174550
>>10174539
Fuck, I wanna be like this but can't. The situation I live in at the moment won't allow it! I live in a 3 bedroom house, that's really 2 bed (I sleep in a mini room that I share with my brother). I have no space to work, no time to learn and just a bunch of mental issues that have caused me to act as such.

Is there any way I can become a workaholic like this. I already have a purpose but just can't execute the actions in order to achieve my goal.

It's a sad life, huh.

>>10175173
if you were one of those people you would probably work around your obstacles.
>It's a sad life, huh.
cringe. you wrote these excuses why you won't make your goal. The fact you know you won't achieve it means it is not a goal, it is a fantasy. That's the difference

>>10160648
you might very well have adhd dude. that sounds exactly like how I was before I was medicated on 20mg adderall xr

>>10171057
So how long did the effects of your self-deprivation last? Sounds like just a week, which makes going a week like that unworthy

>>10160445
i started sucking dicks

>>10160499
>It's easy to deny until you actually meet somebody who is highly successful, upon which it immediately becomes clear that they are a different type of person to you.

i'd say this is just world fallacy at its finest. you think that people who work very very hard toward their goal succeed? there's plenty of people who happen to hate whatever field they work in, but they just happen to be highly gifted in the particular set of skills that are required. it's very romantic to think that people that are successful in something are completely engulfed in/in love with what they do.

>>10176996
>completely engulfed in/in love with what they do
not what i was saying. read the rest of the thread

>>10171057
It takes ~50 days to 3 months to form a habit.

>>10174539
>This person is only in medicine and particularly their chosen speciality because it was the hardest career they could think of
In other words, the person you describe is not as bright as you imply. In comparison with mathematics or physics, medicine is very simple and straightforward.

>>10176996
> it's very romantic to think that people that are successful in something are completely engulfed in/in love with what they do.
In academia, it´s a fact. For people employed in any other area of the workforce, it may sometimes be an unreasonable assumption.

>>10177109
oh my god shut uppppp. This thread is about being motivated and disciplined not a fucking IQ competition. Do you ever give it a rest?

>>10160445

So I'm at IQ > 150, but that does not mean shit unless it's actually used. On top of that with high IQ comes boredom etc, and hence a propensity to hop around various things.

The need for building discipline is something that takes time and conscious effort. I think in many ways its like going to the gym - one does not follow schedule unless some noticeable change is seen, and even then one has to build a sense of discomfort when schedule is interrupted.

One of the first things I personally did was delete most social feeds, especially the ones that needed accounts. For e.g. facebook, where my posts are linked to my name, make me feel a certain anxiety as if I were responsible of explaining and responding to everyone who interacted with content I generated. Whereas reddit is fine.

Surround yourself with the topic of interest, not just study it. E.g. if reading neurosci, observe behavior and recollect and associate neurosci concepts with them. while doing group theory watch tiling patterns and try to fit them into group structures, while doing deep learning, try to fit situations in life into high dimensional optimization spaces etc etc.

Have at least two topics and juggle if you need to. You will get bored doing only one and would need to give yourself some time for stuff to sink in.

Constantly keep reminding yourself of stuff you __HAVE__ to do to the point that you find yourself doing it just to shut yourself up.

>>10164222
You will realize that after a while you will be reading the same information again and again. Go look at a subfield, a lot of books reference other books and summarize the important points on a particular matter.

My parents pushed me into uni straight out of high school. I was always an absolute shit student who got good grades.

In university these shitty habits eventually caught up to me and I dropped out in my last year. I took 2-3 years off at a shitty restaurant job focusing on music (of all things).

It took me those 7 years to finally get a deep intrinsic focus and determination to make something better of myself. I'm going into computer science next year and I don't need a course to tell me to study. I'm studying before school has even started because I see the bigger picture. I am also motivated by the fact that I want to start a family and want to be a solid foundation for my girlfriend. Being a parasite sucks.

Basically, at some point you become so sick of being a low-life that you just do it. It feels good to get a coffee and study because I know where its taking me. Side-note I had to quit 100% weed and video games to get to this stage.