A Former Self-Loather’s Guide to Actually Building Habits

If you judge me by my productivity, you’ll conclude that I peaked in middle school. During seventh and eighth grade, I got gold medals at the Asian kid Olympics: I was hardworking, smart, and thin, all while still having fun. Sure, every once in a while, I’d break down and cry for a week straight, but overall, I was a productive machine back then and able to do it all. Let me be clear here, I’m not exaggerating. Every day after school, I did two hours of competition math practice, practiced flute for an hour, and then did one hour of extreme cardio workouts on YouTube, all before dinner time. Then after dinner, I did my school homework, and concluded with a night-time dessert of fruit. Yes, dessert for me was fruit. That’s how disciplined I was back then. At the end of a long day, I relaxed by eating clementines. And I had time to read a book for fun every other day and post frequent book reviews on my blog. High school and college were not as idyllic. My classes were extremely diffic

If you judge me by my productivity, you’ll conclude that I peaked in middle school. During seventh and eighth grade, I got gold medals at the Asian kid Olympics: I was hardworking, smart, and thin, all while still having fun. Sure, every once in a while, I’d break down and cry for a week straight, but overall, I was a productive machine back then and able to do it all. Let me be clear here, I’m not exaggerating. Every day after school, I did two hours of competition math practice, practiced flute for an hour, and then did one hour of extreme cardio workouts on YouTube, all before dinner time.