Day 16 - It Was Going So Well...

It was going so well 'til today.

Did I just jinx it? Not sure. But today felt like I was sludging through mud. I think I figured out why, but more on that later.

I started the day off like any other. Same routine. Same work. Same regimen. This time, however, every Pomodoro session had my mind wandering. I wasn't sure why my brain just would not think. I would find myself just blanking out staring at the screen, clicking the spacebar on my computer only to realize I never actually answered the question on the card.

Of course, then I was left with the dilemma: Did I actually know this answer before I saw it? I'd usually just click "Again".

There goes the algorithm.

I reorganized all my Anki today to separate it by Organ System. How I've been chunking my studying thus far. Seeing how much material I've covered compared to how much I have left honestly left me feeling pretty anxious. Let me try to describe what I felt.

What I Was Feeling

You know that feeling where you're like going towards a goal, whether it's climbing a hill or doing Anki, or anything else. And you decide not to look at how far you've come, so that you can push as long as you can and be "happily surprised" when you look up and the end is right there.

Well, that's kinda what I've been doing. And today, I looked up, and it felt like I hadn't moved.

I've been working on GI for nearly a week now and not only did I not finish it. I have now realized I have 200 additional new cards + 150 additional reviews that had gotten lost in my Anki mess. Plus, I have yet to even start reviewing the practice test I took over the weekend. I couldn't stop but ask myself, where did all the time go?

I know rationally that I'm giving it my best, but I just couldn't shake this feeling.

Why I Was Feeling It

Whenever I start feeling like this, I try to step back and look at my anxiety from an outside perspective. Instead of letting it consume me, look at it like a clinician. So I did exactly that, I stepped back and asked myself why I was feeling it. Where it was coming from.

My answer was that despite the hours of work I put in, seeing the number of cards go up made me forget what I had accomplished. After all, Anki doesn't exactly show you the cards you've done great on. It only shows the ones you have left to do.

My feeling was a result of me feeling like I wasn't making progress. Now, this wasn't real, objective progress. Because I can see that with every day I learn a little bit more, objective progress was being made. No this was the perception of progress.

Let me explain.

Although I knew I was moving forward, because I had been studying the same subject for a week, realizing I still have more to go altered my perception of what I had done. Rather than realizing the reality of how much I did, my brain couldn't remove the idea that I hadn't really moved on. So now where do I go from here?

What I'm Going To Do Next

To try and overcome this feeling, I've decided that tomorrow I'm going to put a pause on doing my Anki reviews first, and start a new subject. I'm going to do something I feel like I already know decently well, and try to make as much progress on the new topic as I can in a day.

This will undoubtedly be objective progress towards step but more importantly, it'll hopefully change how I perceive my progress. I will no longer have worked on one subject all week. Hopefully, by tomorrow, I can say I have nearly finished 2 subjects over the course of a week.

Big difference.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, today felt so rough that I was planning on just tossing up a "no post today" and calling it. But I reminded myself that this isn't just about posting what's working for me, but also what's not.

It's definitely a lot harder to share the difficulties, but my hope is that even if this were to help one other person. It'll be worth it.

'Til next time friend, good luck. ✌️