Addressing FOMO
Hey! If you’re reading this, you’re cool and I consider you my friend.
I plan on reflecting on my experience each week and condensing them into key lessons to share in these weekly posts.
These posts will follow the format 3G Keys where you can get catch a glimpse of my reflection process where I structure my learnings into three practices: gratitude, growth, and giving, or you can skip right to the TLDR key summary of these learnings at the bottom.
I’m grateful for ...
Dumbing down my phone
When I pick up my phone, I feel a strong urge to check social media for new messages. The thought that there might be new messages waiting to read on my phone became a source of social anxiety for me.
I found myself checking my phone at the hint of boredom. This often leads to disappointment when there were no new messages to be found. As an experiment to dial down this anxiety, I uninstalled all social media from my phone.
After removing access to social media from my phone, I found myself more intentional with how I use my phone. By uninstalling social media, I uninstalled my unproductive phone habits.
Now I only use my phone for two things: calling and listening to music, and I don’t regret it.
Defending the last hour
I wake up more refreshed when looking at a screen is not the last thing I do before sleep. The quality of sleep is important to me, so I’m going to prioritize getting the best sleep I can.
I’ve set a rule for myself that I would take 60 minutes just to wind down before sleep. Instead of looking at a screen before sleep, I would read a chapter or two, and jot down any lingering thoughts on paper.
These 60 minutes are usually the most reflective and relaxing part of my day. By setting this rule, I set clear expectations for myself that I don’t have to worry about work or any social obligations until the next day, and I don’t regret it.
Morning walks
I feel more refreshed and motivated to do work after getting some light exercise and sunlight in the morning. I find these morning walks to be an excellent opportunity to clear my mind and think. They’re also a great way for me to get comfortable with my own thoughts.
I don’t bring my phone with me on these morning walks. This helps me get used to boredom, which I found to be a valuable skill to have when it comes to staying focused and not getting too carried away by distractions when I’m working.
I am growing by ...
Limiting my open-ended text messaging
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against text messaging. I think they’re an effective way to exchange information and arrange for meetings. But they don’t provide the nuance and complexity from a live conversation, whether that is over a phone call, a video call, or in person.
Can a bunch of text messages add up to one gulp of conversation? For me, that’s a definite no. Text messaging is a terrible substitute for conversation. I am not anti-tech, but pro-conversation. I limit my text messages to just sharing information and scheduling time for conversation. That way, I can spend more time on the conversations that matter more to me.
Having Conversation Hours
In the spirit of prioritizing conversations, I set up an office hour-like schedule for myself to have conversations in the evening, after work.
The main purpose of defining these specific blocks of time just to talk to people was to have more conversations. After two weeks of experimenting with this approach, I found myself in an environment where interesting conversations were more likely to happen.
I let my friends know when I was available for a chat, and I always had a conversation to look forwards to after work.
One tool that helps me set up these conversations this scheduling software here.
At first, I thought scheduling conversations would take away the spontaneity and make them feel forced.
That turned out to be less of an issue than I thought because people are busy and appreciate being free of the administrative burdens of setting up a conversation. In the spirit of having more conversations, feel free to set up a time to chat with me here.
Learning with problems to solve in mind
This week, I was reminded of how little I know. I was introduced to new concepts and technologies needed for work, and I felt overwhelmed by the amount of information available online.
There were so many articles and videos on the subject, and I felt that I would do a disservice to myself if I tried to solve problems before understanding the context of the problem inside out.
My initial problem-solving approach was to read as many articles and watch as many videos on the subject to understand the context of the problem before trying to solve it.
This approach was flawed. I was not prioritizing my time effectively by learning a load of unnecessary information. Considering the time constraints, I lost scope of the most important part of the problem-solving process: solving the darn problem.
This was not working, so I decided to experiment with a problem-centric approach to learning.
I wanted to prioritize learning only the material necessary to solve a specific problem. I scoped out which topics and concepts were worth exploring from people with more experience. This gave me direction in what information was worth learning to solve the problem, which helped alleviate the initial information overload.
I am giving by ...
Scaling up my writing habits
I want to apply an agile methodology in developing software work. Agile essentially means breaking down a process like software development into phases. In software development, these phases include planning, designing, building, testing, and reviewing.
I want to get a better understanding of which topics or concepts that you find interesting. Shoot me an email here or schedule a meeting with me here, I’d love to chat.
Saying No
This year, I let a lot of people down. I took on more commitments than I could handle and set high expectations of myself that I could not fulfill. I managed my time poorly, but I managed my priorities even worse.
I burnt out at the end of each semester in my first year at Waterloo. I ended up saying yes to many opportunities and found myself making compromises in my commitments halfway due to time constraints.
I’m not proud of the quality of the work that I put in, and I let a lot of people down by being inconsistent with the expectations I set out for myself.
This summer, I’m going to slow down and take on fewer commitments. That way, I can focus on fulfilling the few commitments and put in work that I’m proud of showing. I’m going to l say no to the things that I can’t commit to fully, so I can say heck yeah to the things that I can.
This clip here captures the sentiment.
Simplifying my code
This week I learned that the ratio of time spent by a programmer reading code to writing code is normally 10 to one. That’s because they’re constantly reading old code in order to write new code. I think this applies to writing as well, so I’ve decided to help myself, along with other people out by making my code, and writing as readable and simple as I can.
TLDR
My key learnings for this week are...
Experiment
The failures that I regret the most are the ones that I half-ass because those are the ones that end up costing me the most time and effort. This summer, I want to commit what I’ve learned to practice, and that begins with experimentation. I want to fail fast, and fail cheap by experimenting with new practices, like limiting my open-ended text messages or testing out ideas in this article. That way, I can adapt the best parts of these practices into a habit, and discard the rest.
Saying no is a learned skill
One thing I wish I was taught more of in school was how to say no to potential commitments more gracefully. Considering my time constraints, I have to say no to a lot of things that I would half-ass so I can say heck yeah to the thing that I can commit fully to. I’m not saying no to be rude, I’m saying no to be real.
Keep it simple
One thing that stresses me out is when things are overly complicated, whether that’s in scheduling a conversation, not knowing what material to prioritize when learning a new programming language, or having too many commitments to fulfill. I’m going to keep things simple for myself this summer, by saying no to opportunities, learning material, and social media, so I don’t lose scope of the things that matter to me.
I hope you learned something new today.
Resources mentioned:
Kevin Hart on Why You Should Never Do Anything Halfway
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