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Hey, it’s been a while.

And that’s what I want to write about today. I’m nearing the end of my high school career. I’m having prom this weekend. There’s two more days of school left next week and today is probably the last day I’ll see some people.  And I’m graduating in exactly two weeks.

Yet I still haven’t found the breathing room to sit down and blog. I want blogging to be something I enjoy and want to do on my free time, not something else that’s on my to do list that counts as “work”. I always have the ideas and thought map planned out for the blog but I never find the time to act on and complete them. That’s why at the time of writing this, I have three [WIP] blogs that, in the past, have just stayed that way every day and just pushed, pushed, and pushed.

And it’s not just a thing I have with blogs. It’s with the IYRC as well. And my linear project. And to some degree, with my Physics projects or even the letters I’ve been meaning to write to my teachers. Maybe that’s why I felt the need to overhaul my task organization system. But even that is something I keep pushing day after day.

I don’t think the overhaul is necessary. I just need a better understanding of what I’m capable of accomplishing. What I mean by that is two things:

  1. A day has 24 hours but not really
    • I can’t spend every waking moment doing work. That’s not possible. If you don’t believe me, give Deep Work by Cal Newport a read.
    • There’s school and the schoolwork that comes alongside it. There’s sleep and spending time with friends and family. There’s a commute. There’s a girlfriend. There’s meals and washing up. There’s working out. All of these little things add up and leaves me with less free time in the day to work on other things. But I don’t seem to understand that and make a habit of over-scheduling every single day.
  2. Projects that cannot feasibly be completed in one day need to be broken down into digestible action items
    • Take my Linear Algebra project in comparison to my Physics project for example. On my to do list, I always had “Linear Algebra project” as an item as if I could treat it like any other simple task. But with my Physics project, I have it broken down into a variety of action items that I can actually complete in one or two sittings.
    • Because of this, I’ve yet to start working on the actual content of my Linear Algebra project even though it was assigned over a month ago and people have already been giving final presentations. I mean I’m still going to get the project done but only because I have a set deadline. There are going to be many holes along the way that I won’t be able to go down and explore thoroughly simply because I don’t have enough time to incorporate it into my project. So for any meaningful learning and self-directed research to happen, I need to reinvent how I approach them.