Reflecting on March 2024
On March 10, 2024, I set some goals for myself for this month. I wanted to achieve one goal and instill 3 habits. And I failed horribly. At first, I thought I should just delete that post and pretend that nothing happened but I will be lying to myself if I did that.
I had this same sort of episode before where I set goals for myself and I ended up abandoning them.
Not this time.
This time I want to stare back into my failures and learn something from it (damn its painful).
One protocol of this challenge was to not use social media and I did broke that protocol. Repeatedly. Staring into the abyss was painful. The boredom was real. I just couldn’t help myself but get to talk to people on Discord, Whatsapp and watch streams on Twitch and videos on YouTube.
This time I truly felt like I am a slave to these things. As ThePrimeagen once said on his stream
Liberty is not “being able to do whatever you want”. Liberty is the ability to exercise your will.
And I failed to exercise mine.
Once thing I learned is that no matter what, don’t use social media. That includes YouTube as well.
One of my biggest hooks is YouTube. The amount of time I waste on YouTube is unfathomable. I rather spend that time doing something productive and useful. May be write articles, read books, work on projects etc. My other time sink was Twitch. Recently a Ruby on Rails YouTuber started streaming on Twitch and I used to hang there quite a lot. I learned a lot about Ruby on Rails and how he approaches his projects, but I should have been working on mine.
Nonetheless, he inspired me to start streaming on my own. So I created my own channel and hopefully will be streaming while working on my goals for April 2024.
I am planning on making a comeback and try to complete this 30 days challenge. It is probably not that hard if you remove all the distractions.
For this upcoming Dark Mode, I am planning to have a long list of features to implement for NotebookBYC. This will push me to work harder and smarter.
In my next blog post, I will share my plan for the next Dark Mode. But for now, let me get gather my thoughts about this Dark Mode.
Reflection
My Mistakes
- I used to feel bored while eating. And to combat that, I turned to YouTube and Twitch.
- I used to feel bored when going to sleep and just staring at the roof.
- I dreaded working on my projects and working towards my goals.
- I only meditated once or twice during this whole challenge. I had hours to waste on YouTube but couldn’t find 10 minutes just to meditate.
- I wrote only once. And then didn’t touched my editor.
- I used to listen to podcast when working at my day job to pass time.
- I hated designing and want to get to programming as soon as possible.
How I am going to solve them
- Eat at the dinner table without phone.
- Either follow a strict routine or don’t go to bed unless fully exhausted. Don’t keep your phone beside bed.
- Stream working on projects to make them fun. Also eat your own dog food. Use your app to keep track of things.
- Meditate first thing in the morning or after any important meetings.
- Write about your day or thoughts using your own application.
- Don’t listen to podcasts during work. If you are bored, go out for a walk. Or write something.
- Go feature wise and implement what you design. Do one feature at a time.