Goldilocks zone

In everything, there's that small window in which efficiency and output is the best it can be.

Motivation to work

Inspired by a question on the GAT (lmao), our motivation to work on some project is generally related to the difficulty of the task (seems obvious). What might not seem as obvious is that if a task is really simple, we'd actually feel less motivated to do it due to its sheer boredom. If the task is extremely difficult (i.e. my Chinese orals), then it is also very hard to feel motivated to even start it.

There is definitely that Goldilocks zone in the middle of that where a task is both not the simplest to work on, but not too difficult to sustain progress on it.

(Side rant) In my belief, the hard part of doing anything is not starting it, but sustaining it. Only if you sustain it, is there any outcome. This is the reason why we are so able to do work only last minute, there is limited sustaining of work required, so it is easier to feel motivated to do it (time pressure as well).

Anyways, obviously its highly unlikely that any task actually falls within that scope, but what you can do is artificially move it into that zone. Either by challenging and rewarding yourself or by breaking it down into pieces such that the work required each day is minimal for sustaining it. That way we can land any task into the Goldilocks zone of motivation.

Time to work

In a similar fashion, often there is diminishing returns and even negative returns corresponding to the time we put in to working. In some cases there are definitely compounding returns, but those are the minority and we should find ways to optimise our expenditure of time.

Especially with "productivity", after a certain number of hours worked, our output will not only plateau, but fall as well. This goes to show workaholic methods are generally inefficient and goes hand in hand with breaking work down to find the Goldilocks zone of motivation. With lesser tasks, we are spending less time on the task per unit of time (e.g. 4 hours per week for 5 weeks vs 20 hours in one week), and actually maximising the effort we put in. It's like finding the maximum point of a parabola and around that is the Goldilocks zone of time.

Focus

This one is slightly different, its more too do with balacing the things we are focused on. It's really tempting, given how close we are to the holidays, to start to let go about school and put myself in a holiday mood.

It is also really tempting, given that I have a Chinese SAC and Methods SAC in the next week, to start panicking and stuff.

The Goldilocks zone in this case, actually might not exist. Clarity of focus is actually very important in terms of focusing. It's a lot easier to focus on one thing than multiple things at once. Approaching things one by one is probably always the best action, so I'd definitely encourage going about things in this way.

Plans for next week

1. SAC & SAC
2. Continue the olympiad grind
3. Tidy the small things up

DM me 'pastiche' if you see this.