The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
Happy new year! My resolution this year is to get more done and to be more effective. I'm sad to admit that I'm dreadfully passive in general, I only ever do the absolute minimum to get by and spend the rest of time consuming content such as games, reading trivia online, etc. I'm still reasonably successful - a postdoc in a topic I care about - but my PhD was a letdown as judged by me, and I do have the impression that at least part of my success so far is due to being sociable. I end up on papers I contributed little to because I get along well with almost everyone, I'm always in the good graces of my superiors often to the degree of being personal friends so that they judge me less harshly and tolerate my excuses, etc. That makes me, in a certain sense, exactly the kind of person I loathe the most - A leech that contributes little but still falls upward through social manipulation. I'm not actually quite that bad, but I'm not the person I want to be.
As a result, I've decided on a number of specific measures: 1) I'll not read the CW Roundup or scroll through any other longer thread on any forum or play mobile games until the evening of every day, after I've gotten my day's work done 2) I'll concentrate on starting discussions on purposeful topics I care about intrinsically (such as this post), and avoid reactively ranting because "somebody is wrong on the internet" 3) Generally be less tolerant of my procrastinating habits - no I don't need to read something every time I I go on the toilet, no I don't need to play a "short round" of a mobile game because I got something trivial done, no I don't need to start the day by reading the news ... 4) Every day in the evening, I'll review my day to see whether I've done what I planned to do and make a list of the things I want to do the next day. In particular, I'll judge myself more harshly than normal and if I didn't manage, I'll have to do it in the evening instead of more pleasant activities.
I'll probably fall short of my expectations again, but I'm happy about any improvement, it doesn't need to be a total change of life in the end.
So, mottizens, I have two questions for you:
I'm working on native habitat preservation/restoration on our property. It's a twenty year project, and it's going to be something special when I'm done (and it kind of already is). Bought a rifle recently--too many deer, and the meat would be nice. Controlled burns are fun.
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