As you can see from the title, the main purpose of this piece of writing is to strengthen my level of self-accountability. I have a little over a month of left in my gap year, and there’s still so much I want and need to do🥹. I know that I’m more likely to follow through with my plan if I release this to the public.
A heads-up: the tone of voice used in this newsletter is more casual than my previous ones bc this is an unfiltered version of my internal monologue.
Sooo… here’s my plan.
In the next week (7 days), my priorities are:
FIXING MY SLEEP SCHEDULE [bolded & in all caps]. Since I’m naturally more productive at night, I tend to procrastinate on urgent and important tasks during the day to “leave it until I’m more productive,” aka after midnight – when I’m supposed to be sleeping instead🙄. I acknowledge that I’ll probably never become an early bird, but I expect to fall asleep before 1am as a goal to start with. Beginning my night routine at 2:30 in the morning is not sustainable.
READING MORE. Originally, when I was planning for a gap year, one of my main goals was to read a lot more than I usually do. However, as my reading choices are dense, non-fiction books recently, my reading speed is slower than a snail’s. The more days I give myself to finish a book, the less motivation I have to even pick up the book. As I’m writing this down into words, I just realized that I’m suffering from Parkinson’s law, which explains that the amount of work increases👷♀️🕐📈 as you allocate more time to the task.
My concentration constantly swings between a strong and weak state depending on the day and time, hence why I like to work in sprints. When it comes to reading books with a high degree of complexity, patience is bitter but the fruit is sweet. I accept my current reading speed. But I do need to sit my ass down and read with no distractive thoughts more often to nourish my soul with golden nuggets of knowledge🧠📚.
Eating healthier. I told myself that I would cook more often once I didn’t have the pressure of school work. Now that I’m no longer in school, I don’t have any excuses not to cook. Yes, I still find myself busy with a long to-do list to complete every single day, but let’s be honest, it’s not nearly as bad as high school🫢. As long as I genuinely want to cook to become healthier and stronger, I will make time to meal prep for myself and my mom.
Making these three improvements would help generate more time and energy for me to work on other interests. Actions speak louder than words, so Imma stop talking and start executing now👊.
Be authentic, be vulnerable
Elena 💓
She gonna go off