Thoughts, and the lack thereof

The problem of fragmentation

Premise: Chronically overworked, and sick of it!

After overworking myself sophomore and junior year, this semester I tried finally listening to my friends’ advice and cut down on my time commitments. Taking easier classes and cutting down on projects, my responsibilities for the semester became:

• Columbia Robotics Club
  • The club
  • MakeCU
  • CCBR project
• Research
  • Gang Lab - Binding library
  • Dennis - TuneBuddy
  • PhD. applications
• Violin
  • Columbia University Orchestra
  • Columbia Music Performance Program
  • Barrio Tango Orchestra
• Coursework
  • (nothing hard)

The continuation of my self-inflicted problems

…which didn’t end up being a lighter workload at all.

The problem was x-fold:

1. Mode-switching between research projects is hard enough—to remember everything in a codebase takes at least 30m of warm-up (maybe 15m if well documented)
2. Whenever I have a violin lesson, or a chamber coaching, or an orchestra rehearsal, it always derails the entire day—I end up getting the repertoire stuck in my head, my thoughts filled with thinking about what I did right and wrong and how I can improve
3. Coursework is a constant
4. Leading the robotics club means I have to always be on call: to members on my team, sponsors, Columbia administration, …
   1. MakeCU requires constant attention, and is time-sensitive
   2. I have to acquire funding for ccbr, lead meetings, and coordinate meetings with Caltech and Rutgers
5. Decision-making is a highly self-guided process for both research and robotics… I have decision fatigue.

Fragmented across so many responsibilities, I feel really overwhelmed.

Byung-Chul Han’s “serenity of an animal”

I think back to a book I read last semester, called “The Burnout Society” by Byung-Chul Han. There is a line where he describes the modern problem:

• What used to be “you should” is now “you can”. We become “entrepreneurs of ourselves”, overworking ourselves into self-enforced subjugation
• “In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside… One exploits onself.” (p. 19)
• Yet, we are “equipped with an ego just short of bursting…” if we didn’t, “one would at least have the serenity of an animal.” (p. 18)

This neurotic desire to achieve, and the idea that the modern human is so overworked and stripped of thought that he becomes effectively a mechanistic animal without the serenity of one—has stuck with me.

Desire for escapism and repetition

In my music humanities course, we were learning about modern music—and I thought back to Philip Glass and his repetitive, hypertonal works. In that vein, I made a playlist called “hold me”, trying to comfort myself with his music.

I just wanted someone to tell me what to do, to be held by my mom again, and have her soothe my worries with the cheatcodes to figuring out my life.

The solution…

Escapism and distraction: Dopamine farming

Last week, I was sick with the flu. To pass the time, I decided on a whim to download Balatro. I ended up playing Balatro for 12 hours straight that day.

It was refreshing, challenging, and addicting. Learning about the different joker abilities, various poker hand odds, money management—it was a whole new world to explore. Most importantly, it was wholly detached from the existential threat of phd applications, research deadlines, and MakeCU. In this world, lie round after round of bite-sized problems i could realistically solve—and the delivery of dopamine when I answered correctly.

But it was a fake world, with fake problems. I was distracting myself from my deadlines, from reaching out to MakeCU sponsors, from finishing my research projects, hell, from even asking my professors for letters of recommendation. Moreover, it was eating into my already overly limited time.

The real solution: A time-sensitive approach

Of course, the real solution is to face my problems head on. And to this end, I have two time horizons to segment the solution methodologies by:

(1) In the short term, I should…

• Improve my time management skills
  • block out time
  • set realistic time estimates and mini-deadlines to incentivize progress
• and construct an environment which is conducive to working.
  • set routines to initiate deep work and reducing the activation energy to starting
  • remove deleterious apps (like Instagram…)
  • ask friends to hold me accountable to the mini-deadlines I set

(2) In the long term, the solution is simple.

• Limit the amount of projects I take on at once,
• and set realistic weekly time commitment estimates (including commitments to personal + social time) and stick to them.

Implementation notes

Unfortunately, these solutions are much easier said than done. (for instance, shortly after recovering from the flu, I distracted myself further by going on a trip to Boston for a weekend.)

I want to get better at keeping the promises I make to myself and others… which means fulfilling my responsibilities to my research PI’s, to my orchestra members, to my friends, and to my family for paying my college tuition. So hopefully I figure this time management thing out pretty soon.