Mistakes I Made (and how you can avoid them)

Literally everyone has done it: wasted hours upon hours on completely useless things. If you think you haven’t, chances are you’re either lying to yourself or you’re Brendon Burchard. Throughout my “career” of making stupid decisions that have severely tampered with my productivity, I’ve decided to compile and publish these mainly so that other people don’t need to make the mistakes I made.

1. Watching Youtube. Believe it or not, Dude Perfect and the Backyardigan Hippo could not care less about your productivity. I understand that it might be hard for you to understand this because I didn’t seem to get that until it was too late. So, the next time you’re tempted to click on that enticingly red play button, opt for reading or some physical activity and it’ll probably pay out better than wasting your time on some random Youtube nonsense.
2. Going to sleep late. You see, I’m not some maniac who has an absurd sleep schedule, but I did believe for quite some time that staying up late magically made me more productive. Anyone who knows me knows that is impossibly false. My inexplicable ability to sleep anywhere (the ground and airplane seats being a few) has left me with more awry “productive” nights. Simply said: the work you’ll do (or think you’re doing) in the night by staying up is worse than waking up afresh and completing the work then.
3. Incessant water breaks. Somehow, it happened that whenever my violin practice started, I had an incredibly parched throat which explained the 15–20 times I would get up to get water in a one hour practice. However, what was more strange was my expectation that some new snack would arrive in the fridge whilst I had been practicing, albeit only in five-minute intervals. I then learned that it proved better and more satisfying to actually practice for a shorter bit (forty minutes to be precise) and not take water breaks.
4. Games. Once again, I’m not a maniac who plays hours upon hours of games, but I’ll happily idle on a flight simulator for no particular reason. Why, you ask? I have absolutely no idea but the thought of flying has somehow always enthralled me. Chances are that if you’re playing games that you’re most likely not going to stop playing them. Instead, limit your time on them and push them out to the end of your day so you can feel more satisfied with yourself.
5. Researching nothing. Did you know that the candy company Brach had an insanely exciting missing persons case of one of their heiresses? Masked behind Quizbowl, I scoured every resource I could find with no particular aim in mind. I could argue that this was what helped me do well in competitions, but there’s no denying the severe lack of focus I exhibited whilst doing anything academic (or serious for that matter). I found that the only way out of this was to stop using Wikipedia in exchange for Encyclopedia Brittanica and other higher quality (and more boring) resources.
6. Thinking I was a Michelin Star chef. You see, for me in ninth grade, nothing seemed more interesting than serving up cheesy scrambled eggs with buttered toast and sausages. In tenth grade, I finally decided that my grades were perhaps more interesting (somehow my parents thought this all the time). Honestly, unless you’re a chef or an aspiring chef, your food doesn’t matter all that much.
7. Postponing important things. I still remember having this reminder on my phone which had the title “Learn DFS/BFS” (all of my fellow programmers unite) which I would snooze every single day. Every. Single. Day. Yes. I believe this notification was pushed out for a year before I ever got around to learning it. When I did learn it, I truly wondered whether all the weeks of water breaks and delectable potatoes were worth my inability to solve tons of easy questions. The simple solution: just do it.
8. Skipping the hard stuff. There have been plentiful quotes upon diamonds and the importance of undergoing stress but I struggle to accept my fate as mere carbon. Maybe it’s just me. Anyhow, I’ve found through the years that the value of doing the tough things has vastly outweighed not doing them. Whether it be doing the last question in your physics textbook or practicing that one line in your crazy hard violin piece, doing it is way better for you than not doing it.
9. Overestimating my abilities. This one is conjoined with the next lesson, but they’re both important. Somehow, I found myself constantly kind of like this plane with regard to self-confidence.
10. Underestimating my abilities. Strangely enough, I never seemed to accurately gauge what I could do and it always seemed to vary slightly from day to day.

Well, that’s a wrap! I hope you can (and hopefully myself) can learn from this. I know it isn’t much but hopefully you can avoid the mistakes I made and go do great things!