your friends think about you, y'know? they smile and think about goofy shit you've said. they pray for you. they smell your perfume in a shop and think of you fondly. they tell anecdotes involving you to strangers and friends. they remember the way you hug or bite or high five and want to repeat it with you. they love you. i promise.
sometimes you run into something that just overturns your understanding and builds a new, more coherent picture. this is one of them.
they taught us about diffraction theory at uni - Fresnel, Fraunhofer all of that, we did experiments with lasers - but it never occurred to me to analyse lenses in terms of diffraction. it makes so much sense now! i was never entirely satisfied by the ray approximation to light, so seeing what's really going on in the lightfield and how you can use a diffraction plate as a lens, with each ring contributing higher order Fourier terms to the image, is like. crazy cool.
The only acceptable ads should be shit like "groceries on sale" and "free event at the local library"
"If you don't like trigonometry you'll suffer"
self-flagellation and self-bullying are all bad motivators for change BTW. it can be hard to escape from a spiral but genuinely u have to be nice to urself or nothing will change
(who massively struggled with any school related studying for years)
Finding out when I can focus best. I can't think by daylight. I need it to be dark outside to study. Therefore I study at night. If you can study at the time of the day you can focus best, do that. It doesn't matter if everyone else gets up at 5 am to do their ✨perfect productive morning routine✨. There's no one right time to be productive.
Stimming or moving while studying if I feel like it I can't focus (especially when I have to listen to recorded lectures for hours) when I don't move. I need to sit in my rocking chair and rock back and forth to take in any information at all. Pay attention to if you feel like moving when studying. If you're used to suppressing your stims, try to relearn stimming in a safe space if possible. The better regulated you are, the easier it will be to focus.
Nice distractions. Ali Abdaal once mentioned that he always studied with his door open so friends who passed by would come in for a little chat. You need to take breaks anyway, so think about somethings like that to make them more enjoyable. If you study at home or live alone, text your friends before you start studying, so replies will drift in while you're studying. TL;DR: 1. Study when you can focus best, you don't need to be productive in the morning if you're not a morning person. 2. Listen to your body and move if you need to move to focus. 3. Make your breaks nice, I like chatting with friends in between studying. Feel free to add what works for you : )
Nikola Tesla, painted by Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy.
planning:
watching productivity vids on youtube (my playlist in case you want to check it out)
monthly study plan
notion page to keep track
motivation:
personalised wallpapers
pinterest board
study affs every morning
instrumentals for chem, smooth rock for math
cutting out distractions:
disabling instagram
cold turkey website blocker
other:
talking to people who have been/are on the same journey and getting to know their pov
using a skincare band (to protect my hair from my fidgety fingers while studying, it sounds dumb lol but thats how it be sometimes)
"Wonderful Tesla oscillating tower...intended for radiating electrical energy in the form of high frequency waves propagated through the Earth itself."
The Electrical experimenter. March 1916.
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