This was I question I would constantly answer yes to when I asked myself. No matter what I did during the day I would always answer 'yes'.

Now for the old me

This answer lead to many instances where I overworked myself, get overly stressed or feel utterly worthless. It's an issue that I have managed to resolve to a certain extent and I no longer beat myself up about not doing work I believed I should have completed. But I believe this is an issue a lot of people will have but in a different guise.

The main issue behind this is the issue with time. The fact is that I don't mind watching multiple hours of Youtube or Netflix, spending days working on a project, hours reading a book, spend my evenings doing school work, focus solely on practiving my instruments, the list of activities is endless. The issue I realised is that I felt that I should be able to all of these activities to there full extent within the finite time I had alive. (In fact it was worse than just my lifetime, I felt I could be at a near expert level)

The problem is that given the free time I have, or just in general the time I have, I could be excellent at any one skill that I enjoy pursuing. So clearly I should be able to excellent at all of these skills that I put some amount of time into. But of course this is not the case. So I was constantly comparing myself to a version of myself with infinite time, but it was always myself so I felt I had let myself down. That I had scuandered some amazing potential. So no matter how much anyone would praise me I would assume what I had done was baseline and that I could always do better.

Into the new

So over the last year and a half I have been improving myself, mainly mentally, but this issue of not being able to do as much as I feel I should still haunts me. But now rather than beat myself up I am starting to realise my limitations, my achievements and my potential.

The reason this is the topic for this week is becuase I have basically spent the entire week almost constantly revising (rather memorising becuase I don't know how to revise). This has meant fairly full days of reading, reciting and revisiting topics and textbooks. But of course I can't to this constantly through out the day I have to breaks. Sometimes I just can't revise I am too mentally tired or saturated. But either way it brings back to the fore front of my mind the fact that I putting in a lot of time is that worth it?

The main thing I realised was that I wasn't annoyed that I had watched Youtube instead of reading, or played an instrument instead of completing a project. It was rather that I hadn't done both, or all four. The issue was I didn't have the time! I just do not have the time.

I can either try and keep doing a whole plethera of activities at a mediocre to decent standard or try and focus on a handful and make them excellent. I am sort off forced to become excellent at academics, or rather there are large systems in place to make that very easy so I have become very good at academics at the expense of some of my time.

The Answer

Yes, yes I am. But how? I have decided to always want to be great at everything I set my mind to, but I have set my mind to many things so I bounce between them. This means that in some context of an activity I am being lazy by not trying to complete that action. So if you were to follow me during a day I would be always trying to do something, I will be busy. But I won't be necessarily focused on an activity or project at hand.

The Solution

I see one solution: give up on something. (there is another later on)

It's just that simple and is what I basically need to practice: letting go of an activity or anything I don't have the time to spend on. Personally that's very tough and is why I have been thinking about it a lot recently. Becuase of poor time management I have had to give up on all my projects for the week to focus on revision. But even then I still need to relax, unfortunately a lot of this has been through Youtube and the Internet so I have gotten carried away a few times. But also, importantly, there is only so much revision I can do in 2 weeks and I am close to the limit.

It's a classic example of PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH becuase I have posted on this forum multiple times: find your limits, schedule in breaks, etc. Which I myself don't do very often. My time management is fairly solid but I don't know myself enough to really utilise it. I only recently discovered I can't do more than 7-8 hours of intense work thanks to the amount of revision I have been doing, that I need roughly 8 hours 45 minutes sleep, that I can work for 1 hour straight with 15 minute breaks and that I normally require 7 glasses of water a day. All of these are rough but by constantly keeping tabs on these activities I have found some of my limits.

So that is the hidden second solution. Understand yourself, only you are able to trully know who you are. When you trully know yourself (I don't know if this is possible but it is what I am aiming for) then you can focus on what you want to do most and how to manage your time effectively becuase time is the only currency we can only spend, so spend it well.

Stay healthy.