I've found that when I'm busy and my attention is highly engaged, I work quite efficiently, and I don't even feel time flowing. I plan to clock out and then look at the watch—oh! It's already past eleven. I need to let things mobilize my emotions. Every day feels like a repetition of yesterday, with no passion, and I'm already three parts weary before even starting any task.
Some say a PhD is torture for the spirit, that if you can't think it through it's easy to fall into depression and self-destruction. Maybe it's the distress of stalled research progress, or the frustration of life not going as wished. At least on my end there's no anxiety, perhaps because I've completely flattened my mindset and no longer compare myself with others. Compared to undergraduate days, my daily trajectory is extremely fixed, and I have no opportunity to open my mouth and speak, which has caused my language function to gradually atrophy, and my words to fail to convey my meaning. My speech rambles all over the place, dragging in everything but the kitchen sink. Maybe it's because I have no time to read leisure books?
Another underlying reason for the good mindset is very likely that I've been deluding myself with concepts from psychology. On the cognitive level, I'm aware of things like the "flywheel effect" and "starting from garbage", just like hanging a carrot in front of a donkey's head to make it circle around the millstone. But the most crucial things still haven't been put into action. I think about learning Go, building websites, learning AI, reading papers, but just thinking about them deceives me, as if I'd already achieved the final accomplishment, while in practice I have nothing to show. I'm even worse off than that donkey—at least it can't eat the carrot but still keeps a hope, and so can keep pulling the millstone.
Things don't disappear; they only get worse along with the anxiety. Things you fret about, if not finished early, bring a psychological burden far exceeding the actual one. In this busy March, there really are quite a few things to do. I've put myself through the wringer, walking the line between being crushed by anxiety and focusing on the present, dancing between collapse and steady holding. Oh, speaking of dancing, I had originally planned to practice some dance moves to exercise my body, and also to have some talent to display, but in the end I deceived myself again that thinking about it equaled doing it.
Do the right thing in the right place at the right time, and eliminate as much as possible the negative impact from environmental factors. Especially the time from 9 to 11 AM is extremely brief and extremely precious. It's when attention is at its best, and there are few interpersonal arrangements scheduled, with no one to disturb you, so you can learn new knowledge. Don't handle any miscellaneous matters at this time! Things that don't take up much psychological burden should be done when time is least valuable, like after meals when the spirit is scattered.
Sigh, I don't know when I started getting carb-dizzy. After eating noodles at the cafeteria, I come back feeling dizzy and woozy, not sure if it's a digestion issue or what. My knee joints have also started to act up, and after squatting for a long time, it's hard to stand up. It really is like others say—before age 25 it's a free VIP trial coupon that earth online gives to people, and after that, all kinds of big and small ailments come one after another. I also don't know what it's a sign of when interest in things fades. I'm not interested in others' affairs, not interested in gossip, and unimportant things or things unrelated to me just go in one ear and out the other. I wonder if this is a manifestation of memory decline.
Many things only show their benefits after long-term commitment, like learning a new language, exercising, or reading papers. Just treat them as part of the routine. Even, to a certain extent, they will manifest a certain quality, imperceptibly changing one's habits. Only when reaching this externally visible stage can a thing be said to have shown signs of bearing fruit.
Interest-driven motivation is no match for task-driven motivation. Rather than setting "learn xx vocabulary words a day", it's better to directly set "produce a passage of text"; rather than setting "study AI algorithms", better to prepare some images and directly use various methods to make an image classifier; rather than setting "study the Go language", better to directly use Go to make a website server backend. This way you can also avoid the awkward situation from before of learning JS only to forget it and re-learn it again.