Every now and then I find myself back at my WordPress dashboard, looking to write something or pen something down. At such times, a couple of thoughts are probably running through my mind.
a) What I had in mind was too cliched and it’d probably sound stupid in my horrible writing.
b) I’m too tired, the school day was too stressful and there are a few people I feel like killing. As such, I shouldn’t blog.
c) New episode of House has arrived! Turn off everything to conserve battery and just open VLC.
Today, it’s probably more of the first point. I’m thinking what I have to say is SO me. It’s just stuff that I say all the time. It’s just the same few ideas that keep going through me. So what’s new that I can add? Whatever, I need to encourage myself a little. So here goes!
It’s the every-little-bit counts idea today. If any of you remember, not too long ago I blogged about keeping logs of the things we do. I don’t mean this in the sense of a diary or a journal but more of something that can be shown graphically to show progress. Something like a log of running timings or number of books read. I’ve found a few problems with using this to track how much I have read or improved in my running. This approach means I tend to see improvements or progress in very discrete and quantised blocks – Yes I’m thinking of photons – when in actual fact these occur continuously. For example, I may start thinking it’s no point running short distances or reading short excerpts on newspapers because it doesn’t contribute to my log and show progress in it. More than simply a problem with this system, I think it’s probably more because I can’t keep up with tracking every small action I’ve done and add it to my grand chart showing my progress over the years. I would like to, I really would. I tried keeping track of stuff like that in primary school. It was hard enough then. As such, I should bring myself to embrace the fact that every single action, every single bit counts towards improving myself and simply believe in the fact that it may not show immediately.
Most unfortunately, this may not help that much since a procrastinator like me will just find new excuses. For example, despite this view that every-little-bit counts, I still think it is not overly useful to mug the day before the exams. I would need a graph to explain this properly, but for most of us, we have already crammed so much that the little bit more the day before the exam would probably not help us that much. The cost of that little bit of cramming is tiring yourself out and eroding your confidence. So we should all be happy and confident about the upcoming exams.
One of these days, I will draw some elaborate diagrams and post a PDF about the long run and short run costs and benefits of cramming. I’ll remember to include the bum diagram too. Certainly sounds more fun than Markov Chains.
