Discipline

While talking with friends about 2011 resolutions, I listed mine as : “Work harder”. On, further thought, I think that should be changed to “Work regularly”.

I have sunk deep into a “chalta hai” attitude quick-sand.  My work mostly consists of pen-paper derivations or simple simulations ( ones which does not require a muscular computer), and lately, I have just kept pushing them for later, while horsing around on the internet all night long (like today). So much so, that there have been days this winter when I have hardly seen sunlight, and more days in which I have cooped up in my apartment, having fooled myself into thinking that ; a 10-15 minute “thought to the problem” is work.

It is one thing to be distracted by something and the distraction affecting your schedule, but to be distracted by nothing? I did not work, but thinking back, I achieved nothing else in that time.  In 2010, my casual reading decreased like anything, from 22-23 novels in 2009 to just around 10-11 in 2010. I hardly blogged or read anything useful online. All the time went away watching TV serials online.

But despite all this time wasting, November-December saw some exciting possibilities of solutions to the research problem that I have been “working” on for the past two years.

I know 2011 is going to be a very important year for me, and much of what I do (or not do) this year is going to decide, how soon I can graduate. 2011 is also going to be important because, I have to start thinking about graduation and job. I have to decide what job I want, research the preparation required to give good interviews for that, and prepare for the interviews. Importantly, If I am looking at jobs outside corporate research, I need a lot of reading and preparing to be done.

The foundation for all this comes back to the one thing that I have been lacking since school: Discipline and Focus.

I need to be disciplined to utilize time effectively. Determined to just work for a long periods in the day. I want to start with basic things like waking up at a regular time daily and going to the department at regular times. With the ideas that came up last month, bulk of what I need to do needs no inspiration but hard work. I need discipline to sit and get the code written, the proof completed etc.

Last year has been spent completely out of focus. I need to focus on finishing, on preparing for the future.

I need to get out of this rut. I have to. I must.

I hope I will.

I have always regarded self-help books as useless, but just a few moments ago, I got myself a “motivational poster” to remind me of the importance of staying focussed. I am beginning to think that a self-help book might help too. I know that, I cannot become an efficient person overnight; that the move towards efficiency has to be gradual etc etc, but old habits, especially the bad ones die hard. For instance, another restriction I made to myself was that I will refrain from doing a few “stupid” things, and 15 days into new year, I broke it.

I thought, after a refreshing holiday with a great start to the year, I will give a great start to my research this year. So far, it has been disappointing; having spent the last 10 days trying to convince myself that today is the last day of the old me.

I hope that as the year moves on, I become more and more Organized, Focused, Disciplined, Hard working.

I hope that, I be able to balance time on the stuff I need to do with the stuff I don’t need to do. I hope that I read more often (that gives me the most pleasure, but TV is addictive), blog more often. I used to love to read blogs, tweets etc, but since my internship, I have just refreshed FB a few million times a day (FB is internet’s TV, for sure).

Hope!