awakeneedsasleep

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Today was exhausting.

First, we had a full-day meeting where we were supposed to be collaboratively working on the direction we want our team to go in through the next year. Instead, we had a meeting that was partially collaborative but mostly driven by the management chain, so really, us analysts could have just gone back to actual work in the afternoon and there would have been little to no difference.

And then, when we were back at our desks, this happened:

Coworker 1: I think I want to start reading a Marie Curie biography.

Me: Oh, do you have one picked---

Coworker 2: Who’s that?

Boss: Oh, yeah, the organizing lady!

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The reason mathematicians are so boring is that if they say numbers with too much enthusiasm then they accidentally factorial them

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Self-Discipline Isn’t Always the Answer

So I wasn’t really taught to brush my teeth every day as a kid. So I didn’t. I got to be an adult and realized “hmm teeth are expensive I need to start brushing them” and brushing my teeth twice a day has been on my actual to do list every single day of my college career. It’s a habit I needed to build.

Have I successfully done it? Absolutely not. I’m pretty good about doing it at least once a day, but some days it just doesn’t happen. It’s not that I forget usually, I just had some aversion I couldn’t figure out, until last week.

I’m at the grocery store, in the toothpaste aisle with my roommate, and I complain about how much I hate mint. I FUCKING HATE THE TASTE OF MINT. The taste and the smell, any kind of minty thing in any form, I HATE IT. But literally every “adult” toothpaste in the aisle was some type of minty disgusting nonsense. And my roommate was like “you know you could like get kids’ toothpaste? You like bubblegum right?”

And y’all, it was like the clouds parted. I got some strawberry bubblegum kids’ toothpaste. I brushed my teeth with it and it was a whole new experience. I have successfully brushed twice a day every day since, because the mental block I had towards it is gone! 

I thought my lack of brushing was just a moral failing on my part; I was too lazy, too undisciplined, to build a good habit. But really? I just hate the taste of mint so much I didn’t want to brush my teeth.

This made me realize that when presented with a change you want to make, a habit you want to build, if you’re encountering resistance in yourself, you should lean into that resistance and really investigate what’s causing it, then work on accommodating that. 

Say you hate washing dishes so they pile up and then you’re overwhelmed by how many you have to do. Why do you hate it? Deep down, what about it do you dislike? Is touching wet food super gross for you? Try thick rubber gloves while you’re washing. Does the sound of dishing clanking together grate your nerves? Do them with headphones in and turned up loud. Do you hate the smell? Light some candles, spray some air freshener. 

Do these things instead of gritting your teeth and forcing yourself, then ultimately failing and getting discouraged by your “lack of self-discipline”

TL;DR: When a task is consistently hard for you, relying on self-discipline, forcing yourself, and gritting through doesn’t always work. Lean in and listen to your discomfort, and find what makes the task hard, then try to accommodate that. Also, mint toothpaste is gross.

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the one experience that unites all 90s and early 2000s kids is experiencing at least one work of fiction with a deceptively adorable illustration of cute animals on the cover who live in societies with an established political system, hierarchy of leadership and culture and are driven from their homes by human activity and/or engage in violent conflicts with other animals in similar communities that lead to many of the characters’ brutal deaths, which are described in graphic detail and which left you briefly emotionally traumatized by being confronted with the concept of your own fragile mortality before you were 10

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“There are two wolves inside average person” factoid actually just statistical error. Wolves Georg, who

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i’ve been crying laughing over this for the past 5 minutes

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she is freaking adorable!

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Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

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You know, some days you just realize that things are starting to work together.

I don’t know if I’m actually creating good habits yet, with this week being really strange with New Years midweek (and thus a day off of work), but it’s Friday night, and I’m sitting here with a fridge full of groceries and a meal plan, watching TV while folding my laundry.

And it doesn’t feel like that long ago when I wouldn’t start grocery shopping or doing laundry until Saturday, and I would be lucky to have finished cooking and folded laundry by Sunday or did dishes and had a huge pile of laundry waiting to be folded.

That’s not to say I’m living a domestic goddess’s life style (my kitchen is trashed, even though the dishes are clean), but we’re taking steps. I want to be more proactive about meal planning and freezing meals, but we’re making small steps in a good direction.

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Proofs be like

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Damn I'm really out here a boring stable adult with a STEM job when I could be some lightly unhinged blonde art hoe in NYC that puts deep poetry and almost-nudes on my IG and also have a podcast