Libb

Is that normal in your opinion?

Imho, a better question to ask yourself would be to consider why you’re giving up quickly?

If you give up because you realize you can’t be bothered with whatever that activity is, fine. I tried a few things I realized had little value to me. No big deal.

If it’s because you don’t want to make the effort of learning to do it properly and/or because you can’t accept that, as beginner at it, your not already good and get not success. Then, it’s probably not a great decision.

I see two things our society as a whole (even more so when it is lived through social media lenses) tend to discourage younger people to reflect upon:

1. Not being good at something new is normal.
   It is to be expected from most beginners. That’s why as adults we’re supposed to teach ourselves (so we learn and get better at that thing), and that’s why, as little kids, we are being taught by adults. And that learning takes time and practice. A lot of both.
2. Failing at something new is to expected too.
   Failing is how we learn. Remember how you learned to walk as a toddler? Was it by being good at walking? Or was it by falling on your diapered bum many, many times over and over again like a clumsy toddler? At least, that’s how I learned ;)

That’s also how we learn to read and to write. By doing mistakes. Not by picking up our first pen and writing the next best-seller.

So, to get back to your question, if you give up on something because you would want to be good at it instantly, you’re probably missing out on something.

Yep, it would have helped a lot. Back when I was in university, we did not even had a single note-taking/research course. We had to figure it out by ourselves, which i know a lot of my fellow students did not bother doing.

As for Obsidian, do not hesitate to share a few insights as I have yet to see how it can help me better than paper does. I mean, beside a faster search inside my notes (which is not what matters the most to me). For example, the fact I cannot manually/freely reorder my notes, in a note-taking app, is beyond me and it’s something I do all the time with my slip of papers. But I’m also willing to admit I’m missing out on something important.

None.

Countries don’t have a unique identity I could like or dislike as a whole.

They can vary widely from region to region, city to city, block to block, street to street… heck even person to person. I may not like some people, or at worst some region because of this or that reason but that is all.

You’re welcome ;)

If you decide to give a try to a Zettelkasten and if I was to share a single advice it would be to keep it simple. Ignore all subtleties, you will know it when you need them.

As much as I can, I will use analog tools instead of digital.

• I keep a paper agenda.
• My to-do is paper too.
• I draft all my papers longhand.
• I sketch using pen and paper.
• I do all me y research using an analog Zettelkasten (a fancy word to designate a large pile of index cards stored in boxes). I’ve tried using the digital modernized version of that Zettelkasten (a concept that was formalized between the 1960-90s) using an app like Obsidian but it absolutely did not work for me. Paper suits me best.

No notifications, no update/upgrade, no recharging, no bugs and no temptation to go check something online every few seconds. 100% focus.

I’m not saying that analog is better than digital, just that it works best for me and since the better I work the faster I do the work and the less I have to work. The happier I am ;)

Thx for the clarification.

I actually have a sit stand desk. And do use it some. But I have some issues with my hips and SI joints. Standing without walking gets painful pretty fast.

It can sure get painful quickly. A few things worth considering:

• Do you use one of those dedicated mat to stand on? I don’t know the English name for those, but they do sell padded mats made to stand up on them. They help increase the duration of my standing position. Even more so if you also regularly switch your weight form one leg to the other, or just move on that mat. Get a good mat as it will help more.
• Don’t force yourself to make long standing sessions, make them shorter but more frequent? Standing should not hurt.
  For me (50+ dude that was in really poor shape and health when I started), what matters is to regularly get my ass out of that chair for 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes more but as long as I have my 10 minutes I’m happy. Be it to stand at the desk or to do stuff around the office/home. It’s the regularity, making it into a habit, that I find the most helpful. At the beginning I used a timer to remind myself to stand up and, yep, it was a pain to get constantly interrupted by that stupid alarm but since it seemed to help my back (edit: and knee and feet) a little I kept on using it up until the day I realized I needed it no more. I don’t think about it, I just regularly move my ass out of that chair — ad I use one of those mats I mentioned.

I don’t know about your specific situation so this may not apply at all, but getting back into walking also helped me immensely (as does help wearing good shoes: the day I switched to better walking shoes my endurance skyrocketed). That and healthier eating habits were key in me getting back into some kind of shape and health despite starting real low: I barely could walk at all.

Not exaggerating, I celebrated like if I was Armstrong stepping on the Moon, the first time I managed to walk down and back our street without being exhausted and without my joints, back and feet hurting so much for the next few days that I had to lay down (it was that bad). Nowadays, I walk up to 10 km daily, never less than 6. Sure, I’m no athlete and my health issues won’t go away ever but what matters is that most of my chronicle pains have vanished almost entirely, even the most enduring ones that plagued me for… decades. And I can move around and use my body almost normally. I also lost a hefty chunk of fat, which is a neat bonus ;)

Sorry for that too long reply to your comment. It’s just something I consider so worth talking about ;)

Why don’t desk chairs have seat belts?

Because unlike in cars there isn’t much chair accidents? ;)

More seriously, no seat belt can help you sit correctly in a chair. What can help you, easily and cheaply, is sitting less. Regularly make breaks and get up, move do stuff that you can do standing up. This one is not cheap but using one of those sit/stand desks can help in that regard — I consider mine the second best health spending I ever made, the first one being: good walking shoes (another great habit for one’s health is to walk as much and as regularly as one can).