15

I have decision paralysis in organizing my work and self-study flow. While working on one thing, I keep agonizing as to if that's what I should be doing and lose time doing so. I keep trying to let go of this mindset and I just fail.

How do I improve on this, how do I make sure that I don't lose time while trying to buy time by optimizing my workload? Is my workload too much? Am I trying to achieve a lot of things at once? But if I don't, I'll probably never get to where I have to be, yet chasing all of this means I'll be stuck in a spot for a long while, perhaps I let go of my dreams and just lay flat.

I try fixating certain tasks to certain times, I've cut down on a lot of things, creating a huge backlog that I might not go through in 10 lifetimes.

How do you make sure you do the things you have to do, when you have to do them and not feel like it's a waste of time you should put elsewhere even after you've decided that the task at hand is paramount?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

By doing less things and forcing myself to worry less. I'd wager that a lot of what you're fretting over is not absolutely vital to survival. If it was you wouldn't have time to fret about it like this.

Attempting to optimize your entire life in some vain attempt to maximize certain outcomes is a fools errand that reveals a significant lack of maturity and life experience.

There are plenty of people in the world who put far less effort in and will be more successful than you, and plenty of people putting in more effort who will be less successful than you. One of the most unfair parts of reality is that level of expended effort is not a reliable determinator of quality of outcome, except that putting no effort in guarantees failure.

There will be plenty of times in life where all the effort in the world is undone be factors outside of your control. There will be plenty of times in life where despite everything aligning against you, you will still succeed.

All of this is not to say that you should just give up on your plans and dreams, because you're nearly guaranteed to not achieve them if you aren't trying. What I'm trying to say is that you need to be open to opportunities outside your plans. You need to understand that personal plans you make for yourself are not some sort of contract with the universe guaranteeing certain outcomes if you follow certain actions. Don't steal joy from the present for some hypothetical future that may or may not come to pass.

The reality is that most people don't end up where they planned to be when they were younger, or even working in a field they studied for. Most people don't end up doing great amazing things or leaving a mark on the world outside the immediate lives they interact with on the way to the grave.

There's a very common saying, with permutations of the concept the world over: Man plans, god laughs.

If I had pinned the concept of my self worth to the idea of where I thought my life was going or where I thought it needed to go when I was 16, 18, 21, or even 25... if that was some true determinant of success or happiness... I would have killed myself ages ago.

I'm nowhere close to where I thought I would be, but I am proud of where I am, what I do for income, what I do for fun, what I have accomplished over the years, etc. While it may be cope, I honestly feel like I have a better relationship with myself for my circuitous path.

Another saying with concepts echoed in different forms: "It's about the journey, not the destination".

this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
15 points (94.1% liked)

Casual Conversation

2570 readers
387 users here now

Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.


RULES (updated 01/22/25)

  1. Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
  2. Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
  3. Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
  4. Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
  5. No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
  6. Respect privacy as well as truth: Don’t ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.

Casual conversation communities:

Related discussion-focused communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS