I am the laziest fucker I know, and I desperately want to change this
 
Last week I read danb's excellent post - How I Cured My Procrastination
and it inspired me to bring about some changes in my life as well  
 
I believe any engineering potential I have is being severely held back by my crippling laziness  
 
 
 
Why Now?  
 
-> I'm going to UIUC this Fall (yay) - I have 0 experience with the American education system or the job market, I cannot afford to be lazy, unproductive and unorganized  
 
I am going to be surrounded by people who are not only smarter than me¹ but also have a better work ethic  
 
-> No better time to start than right now - the way I see it, fixing my work ethic and curing my procrastination will also help me improve my physical health which has been a long time personal goal of mine

 
 
 
What I have going for me :)  
 
-> I have no time consuming hobbies - gone are the days when I'd spend 6 hours grinding chess and watching an endless amount of fantasy football videos. I barely watch 3 hours of television a week  
 
-> People around me - I personally know a few truly cracked and inspiring engineers, I have picked up some things through sheer osmosis  
 
-> Acceptance - I am well aware of the difficult lifestyle & behavioural changes I need to make, something I used to struggle with  
 
 
What I don't have going for me :(  
 
-> Brainrot - Unfortunately, I have replaced all the chess content with mindless ig slop. Zucks algorithm has turned my mind into mush, I spent 3 hours daily on ig this week, which is 3 hours too many if we're being honest    
Consuming short content has also fucked my attention span up, I can hardly go 10 minutes without reaching for my phone  
 
-> Lack of patience - If I am not instantly good at something, I quit.  
 
Although tbh, I have been making progress in this department (I recently put myself through learning vim motions even though it tanked my speed)

 
 
   
My plan -  
 
-> Consume better content, conciously - I have tonnes of book recommendations from people much smarter and more experienced than I am, it is in my best interest to stop wasting time on ig and instead just sit and read shit  
 

• Everything from danb
• Binge Karparthy's yt channel
• Designing Data Intensive Applications
• Reading list of 30 papers that Ilya gave to John Carmack [ source ]
   
   
   

 

-> Be extremely comfortable with my tooling - I was never picky about my editor. Only after I saw ThePrimeagen flying around in his setup did I make an attempt to address this.    
 
My current dev setup is not perfect, it never will be, but I like it

 
 
 
-> Resist the urge to reinvent the wheel - Identify people who you look up to, and mimic how they work/study. Popular examples would be -  
 

• ye
• ludwig
• yacine
• jason liu

 
 
 

I copied your cadence, I mirrored your style<br> I studied the greats, I'm the greatest right now  ― J. Cole – MIDDLE CHILD