Focus.

I think I’ve come to a crossroads in front of me. There are just so many things I am finding challenging in my life that I think I need to make some changes. I fucked something up at work and it was kind of a big mistake that basically made my boss say that if I ever make that type of mistake again, I might not have a job. He said I made him look really bad, and it was not acceptable, which is fine – I get it. And it caused me to reflect back on the past 6 months and identify some key things that I need to change. The basic gist is that I need to be more disciplined in everything I am doing. I lack the discipline sometimes to do good work. But I think if I’m able to train my brain to be focused and attentive, I can probably get back on track here. One of the biggest issues I have is that I am scatter brained, and I constantly wake up not well rested, and it impacts my work ethic. There are a few things that I think I can do here to improve this:

1. Get better sleep – I think I have to target getting at least 6 hours of sleep – which means that I should get to bed by 9:30 am and then I can wake up around 4 am. This has to be a strict schedule that I follow. I think that if I start to engrain this in myself and reconfigure my circadian rhythms to work on this schedule, I can be well rested in the mornings. This will probably take a couple weeks to actually implement and get my body used to it, but I should apply it to my life.
2. Get to the office at 4:45 every day – just do it. Whether that’s walking or ubering, just get there by that time. Being in the office before your boss gives the illusion that you are working hard and being engaged with the work.
3.  Meditate – This has proven to be so helpful for me to begin. Maybe I can meditate when I get into the office for 15 minutes – before starting any work. This has been so helpful in the past even for just 10 minutes. But if I can make it a daily habit, I can likely have it impact my life in a positive way.
4. Prepare for the 5:30 am call and see if I have any items that I need to bring up to my boss or the team. Make it look like you care about the work.
5. Eat healthier – count calories and eat healthy – see if you can start bringing in avocado toast as lunch and just eat that for the week – this will help you lose weight, improve your focus and mental stamina, and also save money because you’re not spending on eating out all the time like you do now. Don’t eat processed food anymore, cut down on sugars.
6. Exercise more – have a consistent gym routine down – take an hour and go to the gym and just workout to a maintenance level. Do full body workouts. Consider going back on stronglifts – and if you need to do machine squats just do them. The squat racks are always taken up and that’s annoying.
7. Do laundry on a consistent schedule. Right now your laundry is all over the place. The best plan of action right now is probably to just pay for a laundry service and get a baseline wash going. Have all your clothes washed and folded, and use this opportunity to also go through clothes that you don’t wear or need and donate them. Stay on a disciplined approach to washing clothes at least twice a month so that you never run out of clean clothes. This will reduce the clutter in the closet. Buy clothes that you will wear and when you don’t like them, just donate them. Maybe have a separate work clothes rack? Go through and see if this is necessary honestly. Set reminders on your phone for laundry – this will probably help a lot.
8. Party and socialize a bit less – you’ve been going on lots of dates and socializing with people and making meaningless connections – can do a little bit less of this perhaps. Maybe just use one dating app – bumble – instead of 5 haha. This is the one that’s had the least success, so maybe that’s why it would be a good thing.
9. Spend your weekends and stuff learning about your companies. Spend a lot of time on Pubmed and learn the science. It’s important, and I think I need to change things around right now. Learn the pathways and mechanisms of the drug, read research papers of that pathway being used in other papers and see if here is any validity to it. If there is, maybe you can explore it further. This will probably be the best way to stand out. I have to work hard, which I haven’t. I think it’s time for that level of sacrifice and doing less of the socializing and dating will open up some time for this. When you’re good at your job and know this stuff like the back of your hand, you’ll absolutely have the time to go out and have fun.
10. Think about sex less.

Maybe this is worth a check up in a month to see what the progress has been like. These airplane trips really do well for me to reflect on things and write this stuff out. I think one thing that I should do is come back and read this every day and see if I’m working towards these changes. It takes a couple months to build a habit and it’s time I build a habit. You’re better than this, and you’re smarter than this. You can reach your full potential, like seriously. You can. Don’t fuck around.