December 2023 - How I lost half my brain cells in 30 days

November did not live up to my expectations because of one thing: productivity

For some people, productivity is an amazing ideal everyone wants to achieve. But I’m starting to realize that productivity is more like a disease constantly chasing you.

At school or during meetings, people come up to me and ask me: “Wow you’re doing cool stuff, how do you stay productive during all this time.” And I give them the regular answers: get rid of all your distractions, don’t do activities that suck you away from your work, blah blah blah. The reality was that none of it was working for me.

Removing distractions is something I always struggled with. In my first attempt to remove all my distractions, I installed blockers on my main browser I use on my computer. It worked for a couple of days, but I then realized I could open Microsoft Edge and visit youtube.com without any hassle.

Not that great of a solution…

So then I went on every browser and installed blockers on my most visited break sites. But even that didn’t work once I found a new site to browse videos on. One time, I even installed a NEW BROWSER to watch youtube on.

I even went as far as blocking IPs of certain sites, setting up restrictions on my phone, deleting my phone’s app store, and so much more. But in the end, I always found myself back at the same place: unproductivity.

I don’t know if I’m just nitpicking at things when I am relatively productive, or if I have an obsession with breaking rules that I set for myself, but I’m finding it harder and harder to block my distractions and stay productive.

It was even worse for me when I started adding on a BUNCH of new activities and things I wanted to pursue onto my field of thought. Internships, passion projects, personal research, school clubs, and so much more. I became overwhelmed and did not feel like doing anything at all after a certain point.

I feel like I’m breaking, but the funny thing is that I know it’s completely my fault.

What’s even funnier is that I don’t want it to stop.

I want to reach the epitome of a perfect day, where I’m working on a bunch of things and being successful at them, and I’m being productive throughout the whole day. I know that can’t be true, but it feels like I can achieve that.

Overwhelming yourself leads to a lot of harm. While you may think it will make you more productive, it only makes you more fatigued and less willing to do things at a certain point.

Sooo… Don’t be like me 😅

I lost half my brain cells already, so if I keep this up I’m going to lose my brain by the end of next month

Do yourself a favor and keep your brain cells - stop fussing about productivity and prioritize what you think is important instead of taking on so many things.