Recently I’ve been focusing too much on short terms goals.
This is the thought that came to my mind when I was boxing fiercely in the gym.
For work, I focus too much on small projects, and forget about long term career development. Sometimes I am energetic, and work until late night, then the second day I feel bad, which reduces the second day productivity and blinds me by making me think less and work more. This introduces a bad cycle, to compensate for the regular low productivity, I have to work over time more often. This makes me suffer, and further makes the whole thing worse.
So today, I decide to rethink about what are the most important things for my career and for my life.
For career, I think making impact by doing things is the most important things, so I have to focus on the important things and set priorities. The second thing is to gain experience from the projects. Apart from the two most important things, communication with my boss and my colleagues is also crucial, communications can save a lot of meaningless coding and better show them my impact. I’ve tried to send weekly reports to my boss for 2 months, but have stopped for 2 weeks because I think it’s meaningless sometimes. But now, I find that I should resume that, because I did that more for myself to have goals and priorities for each week.
Getting an MScFE degree is somewhere between life and work. I’ve been struggling it for quite a while. I spend personal time on work, because pure work does not require thinking and intake new knowledge, which brings me instant gratification and offers a cheap relief. Because of that, I have no time to work on the courses on a regular basis, then I work hard on the last night before submission deadline, which makes me learn little and also makes me struggle for work in the day after that.
For life, I should sleep better on a regular basis, this is strictly related to my long-term health. I should also read more books, writing more blogs, making more friends, do more outdoor excercise, seeking for healthy relationships, they are more related to my mental health. Going to the gym is good for my health, but it is far from enough, it should be a start for healthy life, but not the end.
I can still remember, when I was in my first internship, I learned a lot from projects, I also try to make sure that I can finish every day’s work before 4pm so that I can have 1 or 2 hours for studying online. Recently I am doing too much, but thinking and learning too little. For long term development, I should balance short-term and long-term goals well.
Working hard is easy, working smart is what makes a man outstanding. Short-term tasks come one by one, if I focus on each of them, I end up losing yourself. So I am thinking about adjusting slowly, although it might be painful at the first stage, but without that, life will hit me harder and harder.