Context
This is my last term of college, my last 4 months in school. And I'm off to a good start. I'm taking a light but non-trivial course load (12-credit, 8 credits of tough stuffs and 4 credits of meh), and I guess it is not much of an achievement to say I'm doing alright.
The difference is in how it's starting to look and feel in terms of my mood, energy and time. Sure the courses may have barely started, but never before have I complete every pre-reading before class, finish my assignments / responsibilities in time, and continue to maintain a great deal of activities in my personal life from reading books to writing essays, from gaming to watching NBA. And friends, workout, piano, staying alive, ...
The Single Greatest Cheat of All Time
I still haven't dedicate a blog post to the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walkers despite mentioning it in almost every blog or social media post as of late. Its impact so great on me, I am not ready to write about it. I'm still experiencing rapid changes and continue to adjust and develop, and its topics so wide and in-depth and concise, to write a summary of its most critical parts is to recite half the book. It's hard for me to come up with an elevator pitch outside of "Trust me, this is the single most impactful and life-changing book I've read" (Ignore the fact I've only read like 8 books).
Sleep is absolutely the best cheat of all time.
It's hard not to sound like a nut-case without all the hard evidence cited in book - not some 30-people trial study, but more like tens of thousands people study with millions of hours of sleep data carried by multiple independent entities / universities researchers all pointing to the same results. The simple idea is this: Instead of asking what does sleep help, ask - what doesn't sleep help? The answer so far is, practically nothing.
Hard evidence points to:
- more sexually attractive to people without knowing the reason (standard double-blind, I believe)
- faster learning for both types of memory (factual based like remembering someone's name, or skill based like riding a bike or playing piano)
- better immune system, cardiovascular system (even a single night difference with professional athletes), reproductive system, w.e system
- non-trivial lowering of risks in diabetes, cancer, heart failures, Alzheimer's, etc
- non-trivial reduction in symptoms or risks in depression, anxiety, ADHD, etc
- better social skills (in recognizing emotions and social cues, etc) and be less "evil" or deviant. Yes - people under sleeping are more likely to be bad teammates, leaders, or do selfish things. Not only a group correlation, but true for the same individual between good and bad sleeping days
- so much more...
Some people may think these are not surprising (we all know sleep is useful). But what many don't realize is 6hrs of sleep is quite significantly below ideal and humans are extremely bad at recognizing sleep deprivation. A week of 6hrs / night sleep will put us at the same cognitive performance and state as going 24hrs w.o sleep. The sleep debt continues to rack with no sign of slowing down - there's no "bottom", it keeps getting worse. At 2 weeks with 6hrs / night sleeping, it's equivalent to 48hrs w.o sleep. Research beyond that cannot continue because it is now recognized to be human torture same as water boarding and sexual abuse. To test subjects beyond that is absolutely not acceptable in moderns society, yet many people do much worse to themselves.
There's also a discrepancy between sleep opportunity and actual sleep. We need ~7 hrs of actual sleep, but to obtain that, we require ~8 hours or more of sleep opportunity (bed time) as it's normal to wake up a couple times during night, and spend time falling asleep.
Some people may think they have insomnia thus unable to sleep long, but 95% of those people I've met have a less troubled sleeping history than myself (blog for another time). The short answer is: most of the time, it can be fixed if you try hard enough following great sleep hygiene. Full dedication. That requires full motivation. And full motivation requires full knowledge of sleep's importance and functionality. Read the book.
The Second Greatest Cheat of All Time
This is a bit meta, since it is how I found the best cheat above and a few other cheats that are positively impacting me right now. Reading Books (or just deliberate reading, really).
I know I am (or was) one of the extreme reading haters, but it's curious that the modern society places such a low priority, or should I say, low social expectation and pressure, in the ability to just read some shit. Have you tried taking a course and complete all pre-reading materials before every class? Not just going thru the motion by scanning, but carefully reading line by line and stop or repeat until every sentence make sense. That class easy mode. Surely some people do but by far the minority. Why is it that we've been using textbooks since what, 6 years old(?) to 22 years old (or 26 for me...), yet few of us have ever carefully read the majority of content in any given textbook? Even in courses which are "useful" or "interesting". Rather we rely on "hacks" like lecture slides or highlighted portions of the book so heavily our sights never landed elsewhere. At least not mine in the past.
Some might say short-cut taking is a valuable skill in life, in which I've been pretty good at my whole life. But after 26 years of living and 20 years of schooling, I'm confident in saying everything would've been better, had I read some shit instead of skipping around looking for "key info" or "hacks". Uncovered topics in textbooks paint a more complete picture or provide context in understanding the concepts as a whole. Covered topics becomes easy to digest and promote further creative or critical thinking during lectures or discussions. Once you adopt the working style, everything tends to be more efficient and organized, thus it doesn't even cost more time with good management and focused work. Workload is not a good excuse. If it is too much, some prioritization may be required, but the core courses / work should still be done in the same way.
Taking "short-cuts" used to be a symbol of "smartness" during the old times, but in 2019, I think it's a symbol of "dumb". Information, courses, expert opinions, past experiences, best practices are all so readily available online there's not much to be smart about, it's about the effort in obtaining said resources and applying them. Most of which requires deliberate reading and / or comprehending first, then commitment and focus in application.
Taking "short-cuts" used to be a symbol of "smartness" during the old times, but in 2019, I think it's a symbol of "dumb". Information, courses, expert opinions, past experiences, best practices are all so readily available online there's not much to be smart about, it's about the effort in obtaining said resources and applying them. Most of which requires deliberate reading and / or comprehending first, then commitment and focus in application.
I want to say "Work hard, not smart", but it may be intentionally contrarian. A better description is to replace "hard" with "focused" or "deliberately" and forget about "smart" altogether, it is all but guaranteed if one work with focus and care in most topics today.
Other More Specific Cheats
This blog is getting long. I certainly have adopted a few practical strategies during this school term between the book Deep Work and other ideas which most high performers have done for years since high school or earlier (aka nothing special). To dwell over the details is maybe topic for another time. I truly believe should people sleep right (a key part of learning), and be able to read (with focus over extended periods of time), most can get thru the academic system like a breeze. Some people call it "the ability to teach oneself", but I honestly think it's the same thing as "the ability to read with focus for extended period of time".
If I have to name a few extra "practical" ideas, here are some examples:
- Be deliberate in time planning, including "relaxing" and "minor tasks". Know when I'm suppose to chill as part of the schedule without stress. Sleep schedule the absolute anchor of all. Calendar should be almost filled out without gap and carried out as such. Modify as needed, but try my best. Even for "relaxation", think deeply on the choice. Reddit, or a movie, or playing games, or reading, or playing piano? Once I start doing this, my Reddit usage / web browsing dropped significantly.
- Actively practice deep work without distraction a bit similar to meditation. Instead of trying to "think of nothing" and catch any wandering thoughts, catch any thought not related to task or a slowing down of thought into blank state and return immediately. 30 min of such is not only potentially more productive than 60 min of busy work, but it also develops the skill for longer focus which is studied to be a trained skill, not based on motivation / will (tho motivation helps develop it initially)
- An extension of first bullet point is to try harder to fill in all gaps, or even overlap activities to minimize "transitions" or time spent on "nothing of use" subjectively. Relaxing is fine, but did we use the best method of relaxation, the most satisfactory one? Continue to evaluate and improve. For me the biggest gap filler / transition overlap has been audiobook as mentioned in my other blog. I've recently started to take public transportation instead of driving whenever possible, because 45min of audiobook is way better than driving and parking 30 minutes doing nothing
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| Here's an example of my current week |
It look "fluff" since a lot of the activities are more enjoyable than tedious. But as I retroactively fix calendar after the day to show exactly what I have done, if I didn't legitimately blog for 2 hours, I shrink it down to how long I spent and put a gap for Reddit. This is literally how I spent my past week. White blocks being unproductive, otherwise useful in my mind one way or another. If anything, most audiobook during transitions are not included, as I've racked ~7 hrs of listen time over the 6 days shown. To some people this may in fact look quite unproductive with how much gap there is. Even after cutting lame web browsing down by about half it still looks too much, sigh.
Together they might sound "exhausting", but they are all developing skills which gets easier and more rewarding along the way, not a constant struggle. Unlike the "cutting" phase of a workout / diet plan where no matter how many times I've been through it, it's still a drag. Being able to accomplish more in games, reading, school work, music, and personal tasks make me feel so happy at the end of a day, it's hard not to keep going. Despite being more mentally exhausted before sleeping, I wake up feeling more energetic. Can't explain that.
Last note: I don't know if I should include this, but I suffer from anywhere between mild to moderate anxiety since a young age. I also suffered through a much worse mental phase over the span of 2 years at the bottom of my life. After recovering I had the tendency in relapsing towards self-destructive cycles mentally and physically - nicotine, alcohol, gambling addiction at various points, or simply, not eating for a few days cuz I "forgot". It's a background to contrast my current state. I was not a high energy, hard working kid 10 years back, not one even 1 year back. I did realize the problem and actively worked on it since ~2016 and got better. Yet late 2018-2019 has been the biggest difference maker... so far. Hope it sticks :)