Personal

This was a tougher week than last week despite being sick. The busyness at work is in full swing and I had to deal with some other issues on the side. I’m a bit at the hard-to-imagine-this-possible point, concerning given it’s so early in the process. I don’t think I would find it fun if it weren’t seemingly impossible though. The current tactical approach is to put more into flashcards in Anki, for two reasons. First, finding the question, and understanding the answers well enough to put things into flashcards is a more active learning experience than just reading. Second, as mentioned elsewhere, for me a lot of this battle will come down to capitalizing on smaller time opportunities. Having Anki flashcards in my phone lets me use spans of time as small as 30 seconds. I was doing mini essays, writing a short essay after each section. This works much better than just reading but does not allow for as much review as possible.

I’ve noticed when it comes to burnout it seems like the greatest risk so far has been either overdoing it in the gym, or stumbling upon an unresolved emotional problem. The first is easier to fix: accept slower progress and scale back a little. The second, well I got nothing.

I’ve also noticed that having a meaningful project has made me more productive in other areas of life. One would think burdening yourself with loads of extra work would make it even harder to keep up with what you already have, and that’s definitely true. But in this case the “extra motivation” obtained from forward progress on a meaningful project pays for itself and extra motivation for other pursuits.

As a last note it looks like I’m at about 15 hours a week on this right now. That won’t be quite enough but based on the last few days of flashcard use that’ll be closer to 25 hours per week once those get into full swing.