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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2473 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski: what does it mean to work hard?

This is gonna quote and mirror cgod a bit, then kind of go in it's own direction.

    Getting started is the hardest part.

This is gospel, right here. Take it one step further. Stopping is easy. Restarting is harder than starting in the first place. Once you get going, DO. NOT. STOP. You can slow down. You can take a break. You can focus on something different for a bit. But always, always have the expectation of work in your mind. The longer you stay at idle and keep yourself in an idle mindset, the harder and harder it's gonna be to start again.

    Time spent being depressed is worthless time.

Time spent being negative anything, when you're not working, is worthless time. Don't stop working because you're depressed. Don't stop working because you feel overwhelmed. Don't stop working because you're angry at your boss or your teacher or your co-workers. These are all excuses. You're gonna be depressed, overwhelmed, angry, whatever anyway, so work it off. There's actually a good chance that working will help alleviate your mood because it'll take your mind off of things.

My Own Shit

You asked . . .

    How do I make big goals that much more appealing than the small-minded ones?

Break Shit Down a Bit - True story. I cannot eat a personal sized pizza by myself if it's not been cut. I've actually tried. Take the same pizza though, cut it into four slices, and suddenly, I can down that shit no problem at all. Work is very similar. If you have a task at hand, break it down into understandable parts, each with their own start and finish. Do each part to completion, then start on with the next. What was once a single four hour job is now four one hour jobs, and let me tell you, it's a lot easier to do four one hour jobs than it is to do one four hour job.

Apply this philosophy to EVERYTHING. School. Career advancement. Personal life. Finances. Physical health. Set realistic goals. Smash them. Set more realistic goals. Smash them again. Turn into the mother fucking Hulk of getting shit done.

Be Satisfied With the Work You Do, But Never Be Satisfied With Yourself - Imagine yourself making a wooden chair. Imagine how your first chair is gonna turn out. It might be uneven, have rough cuts, and a shit sanding job. Halfway through making your first chair, you're already gonna know it's gonna turn out to be crap. Finish it anyway. Getting it done is important. Learning the steps is important. By building the chair, you begin to understand the chair and the wood its made of and the tools you used to make it. Now imagine yourself building another one of the exact same chair, and another, and another. You'll become familiar with how the chair is put together and find quicker ways of getting things done. You'll get better at measuring, sanding, cutting. You'll know your tools and what makes them good and what makes them difficult to use. Know your process inside and out and always be satisfied with the chairs that you make, but never be satisfied with the job that you do. Improve. Improve. Improve. Once again, apply this philosophy to everything important.

Look at Your Work Like You're a Teacher - Remember when you were teaching that one guy Russian? Shit was hard, huh? Suddenly you were looking at your native tongue in a whole new light and you were questioning your abilities to teach it. Know what you were doing? You were familiarizing yourself with your own language in a whole new way. This whole philosophy applies to work. Go back to the chair. When you're building a chair for the first, second, fifteenth, and twentieth time, talk yourself through it. "I'm holding the sander this way because x. I'm cutting the wood this way because x." This will make you look at your work in a new light and also make sure you understand what you're doing and why. By doing this, you're familiarizing yourself with it, allowing you to be more efficient and effective at what you do.

Give Yourself a Hard Time, But Go Easy on Yourself - You're gonna make mistakes. Take them personally. Be disappointed in yourself. Vow to learn from them and improve yourself to keep from making the same mistakes again. Don't hate yourself though. Your mistakes are your way of knowing there's room for growth and in that room for growth you can fit the entire world. Embrace the world. Embrace your personal growth. If you're too hard on yourself though, suddenly your perception changes from growth being about how great you can be and starts becoming something you're afraid of.

One last thing? You're full of doubt and worry and shit and that's cool. I'm full of doubt and worry and shit too. That's part of being human. Know what else is part of being human? We're all amazing. I'm amazing. You're amazing. Every last person on this God given planet is fucking amazing. Part of your amazingness is hidden in your ability to work. Find your amazingness. Embrace it. Bring it out in the open. Be fucking awesome. Then give it back to the world.





user-inactivated  ·  2473 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    You're gonna make mistakes. Take them personally.

You know, I'm not going to. I've already told a story about how my self-perception improved lately somewhere in this very comment section.

Just yesterday, I've finally finished putting the wallpaper back up (it unglued a long time ago, and I'm leaving the apartment for good soon, so no reason to leave it the way it was). It doesn't fit perfectly everywhere, but for the first time? It's pretty damn good job I did. I'm not particularly proud of the result, but it's good enough the way it is, and I'm glad I did it.

Does it mean I'll stop improving in DIY or any other field? No. Never. Not on the blueprint, not in the plan. But it shouldn't prevent me from enjoying the results of my work, either. Taking the failures personally and leaving successes in the background is what prevented me from improving and doing better before.

I appreciate the rest of what you said. Especially the part where you say "Talk yourself through the process, look at it at a different angle". I think it's important to do and quite a good approach to learning. Thanks for sharing that - and everything else that you've said. And thanks for believing in me.