What I've been up to (19/01/2025)

These last few months I've had to put on hold the Math From Scratch project because I've been studying for my last Autumn semester at EPFL. Even though I've only been following two courses, the amount of work is absurd.

I have also been making some money by tutoring students for maths and physics. Nevertheless, I've also been spending quite a lot of money on my travels, meals, driving lessons and going climbing with my friends, so I'm very thankful to my parents for financially supporting me. I believe I could have continued working on the website, but between the university's workload and my lack of organization, I've been unable to.

There are many things that I want to do and I've made a non-exhaustive list below. During the academic semester, when I'm supposed to be studying, I try to do the things which are unrelated to my studies only until after I'm up-to-date. That has usually been impossible these last few years at EPFL, since I've always seemingly been late, but it should have been doable this semester, since I've only been following two courses. Unfortunately, especially when I'm tired, I get a severe case of choice paralysis. My lack of discipline sometimes takes hold of me and I end up procrastinating, doing neither of the things which are on my to-do list, nor studying (actually, sometimes I procrastinate listening to news or Youtube videos while doing some other task, like cubing or gaming, some of which are on my list, but I keep pushing past my sleep hour or over a reasonable amount of time). This usually happens especially during my exam sessions.

Another costly thing that has already happened to me in the past (though fortunately not these last few months, as I now beware of it), is that I spend way too much time planning instead of doing the things that I want or am supposed to do. To counter this, I've found that sometimes going with the flow as opposed to rigidly planning everything, does work pretty well.

Fortunately, I am at least able to limit my indiscipline in a way that doesn't impact others who might depend on me, only myself.

I'm aware that at least some of my friends suffer from similar problems: they procrastinate when they should be studying. I've been thinking of some ways to be disciplined enough to do what I must when the time comes, being able to detach from the things I want in the short-term to achieve greater long-term goals, just like the Jedi, from the Star Wars universe. After all, a man can have anything if he's willing to sacrifice. For some things, we are able to put our distractions to the side, but not for others. I've realized that some situations in which we are willing to detach are when duty calls, like for when we must show up to a meeting, work, or when serving in the army. The common theme among those examples are that other people are impacted by our acts or in some way control us. Thus, in some way, these people help us do what we're supposed to, but do not necessarily want (of course, it's not necessarily that we do not want to study, but that there are other activities that we prefer over studying). Therefore, an idea to build our discipline is to get each other's backs and study together, although we must be careful to focus on our tasks instead of having fun together doing other stuff.

Something that one of my friends, who's in the same year as me but studying in another department, told me, was that in the past he didn't have the procrastination problems he has today. He told me that one of the reasons this may have happened is that before, he had other friends who followed the same courses as him and so, they could work together on the same things and help each other out, thus ending up motivating each other. That's why this semester, I'm thinking of unofficially following two of his courses to do just that. Normally I wouldn't, since my priority remains Math From Scratch and I'd be able to accomplish more things from my to-do list, but that way we can motivate each other and I'll have the opportunity to learn new things.

That being said, next semester, I'll have to follow 3 courses, keep tutoring, keep taking driving lessons and start following my firefighter training (that's right, I'm currently trying to become one). This will put my discipline to the test and if everything goes smoothly, I may have time to keep up with my other projects. I don't think you'll be getting any updates for the next 6 months; we'll see how it goes.