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deniigi · 5 years

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Any advice on how to stay focused? Whenever I study I get distracted every few minutes and ended up doing something else much longer than studying. This also counts as work as well and really dont want to get in trouble like this

Ooh. Okay, so this might be a hit-or-miss kind of answer, friend. What works for me might not work for you. I’ll give you as many things as I can which help me get/stay on track, but you’ll probably just have to try a load of things to figure out what works best for you!

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Motivation/Interest:

So I suppose the first thing I’ve got to say is that if you’re having a hard time focusing, you either might not be in the right head-space to start focusing or not be stimulated enough or in the right ways by the work you’re trying to do. That’s not really anyone’s fault, but knowing that you’re about to sit down and be still and focus for a long period of time can be challenging in terms of getting yourself to stay on task or hell, even start a task.

One of the ways I combat this is by multitasking. Like, I find that I can do something better if I’m doing two things at once. Usually, that’s something like listening to some kind of instrumental music to keep my mood up when I’m researching or writing academic work, but sometimes, when I’m having a fucking rough go of it, I’ll get some knitting or drawing or something and I’ll use a screenreader to read my articles to me. This way, it feels less like work and more like I’m just listening to a podcast.

If you’re studying for something that requires you to spit facts back at it (like, idk, chemistry or highschool exams or smth) then studying in groups where you can just have a conversation about the material might be helpful in terms of making the work feel less like work.

Power Hours:

I have power hours. I work best between 1pm and 5pm. After 6 or 7 in the evening, my attention and writing quality and just generally my critical thinking skills drop the fuck off. My quality of work goes down by like 50% at least.

My colleague, on the other hand, can only work from 8am to 3pm. My partner works best almost exclusively from 11pm to 2am.

I feel like we’ve all got this period of time when we’re able to focus better than we do in the space around it. Figuring out your own power hours might help you plan your day around your work. You might just be forcing yourself to do things earlier or later than your brain wants, so maybe try moving your schedule around a bit if you can.

Timer:

For certain tasks, I give myself a time limit because I know that I have a tendency to go ham on tasks that don’t require it or not start tasks if I think they don’t have an urgency to them.

This helps me moderate the amount of time I’m spending on a single task and it also makes me go ‘oh, well, thirty minutes to answer emails. Pft. I can do that. That’s no problem. There’s only 4 emails.’ and then just like that the emails are out of the way and I’ve actually got more time in my day.

So yeah, a timer might help you break tasks up into more manageable chunks. Don’t be too strict with yourself if you use one, though. You’re human, the timer is not.

Reward System:

I reward myself for every bit of work that I successfully complete. I am essentially a complicated dog. I do the trick, I get the treat. Once I am done with the treat, I am ready to do another trick.

Treats for me are things like making a cup of tea, poking around the internet, watching a funny video, etc. etc.

If I do a really big thing which requires intense focus for many hours, I’ll reward myself with something a little bigger. I.e. A nice dinner. A trinket or a walk or a bit of shopping or smth at the end of the day/week.

All work should be rewarded, even in small increments throughout the day, even when you’re the one doing the rewarding. Be kind to yourself!

Additionally, treats give you a goal to work towards! (i.e. I will do one hour of reading, then I can have!! A snack!! I am excited for the snack! Let’s do this reading!!)

(Also don’t deny yourself things as a punishment for not completing tasks. Fuck that. Nah. Positive reinforcement is almost always a better teacher than punishment.)

Avoiding Overload:

You might be getting distracted because you have a thousand things you have to do and you’re thinking about them while you’re trying to do that one thing. You might also be experiencing some executive dysfunction, anxiety, depression, etc which might be eating into your drive to focus on a task.

There are loads of layered reasons why focusing/doing work is hard sometimes and even often.

When I get to this point, I break down tasks. I try not to give myself more than 3 tasks to do per day because I find that I can usually manage 3 tasks, even on a bad day. This way, I don’t feel so overloaded and I feel like I’m making progress, even when things are looming on the horizon.

Like, okay, you can panic-study or cram for a test, or you can re-read your notes one day, flick through the lecture notes the next day, and then plan out an essay you might write the next day and none of that should take more than 30 min to an hour, so by the time the test rolls around, you can be chill in the knowledge that you have studied, you just haven’t crammed.

I realize that this involves some planning and time-management skills that we aren’t really encouraged culturally to learn (and for whatever reason, a lot of people think it’s cool to procrastinate and cram-study or write), but when it comes to like, being kind to yourself and giving yourself the time you need to complete a larger task and actually learn from that experience, it really is an essential skill to learn.

Taking Breaks:

I take a lot of breaks. I take a break at least every hour. Usually every 40-50 min when I’m working. Otherwise I’ll burn myself out and I won’t be able to prolong my researching/studying. This acts as a reset and a treat (see above. I am still a complicated dog), so that you can process the material that you’re thinking about. For this, I wouldn’t go more than 10-20 min, depending on the task you just completed (the bigger the task, the longer the break.)

But yeah. Work doesn’t have to be continuous. If continuous work doesn’t work for your brain, don’t force it to. It’s just gonna leave you frustrated and unmotivated.

—–

So yeah, anon. This is what I’ve got. I’m sure others have some good recs too.

Mostly, the way I approach focusing and productivity is by trying to be as empathetic and kind to myself as I can be within the confines of the task at hand. I don’t really ascribe to ideas about working yourself to the bone or forcing yourself to do something your body and brain don’t want to do.

It’s all about finding the rhythms and contexts that suit you. So like, try:

listening to certain types of music during a task

changing your method of study (i.e. listening to the material instead of reading it, playing games, making maps, pictures, etc)

making a list of 3 tasks you will complete in the day/study session

giving yourself little things and breaks to work towards

moving yourself to a new place to change your environment (perhaps go to the library or to a cafe or something and study there if you have a hard time focusing at home)

maybe even find something to fidget with in your hands

Anyways, I hope this gives you something to work with and I encourage folks to leave other strategies in the comments!

#writing advice #long post #if lack of focus happens to you consistently anon #you might also take it up with your doc!#while I'm not saying that all lack of focus stems from mental health issues or neurodivergency if these things are underlying your struggles #then you can and should absolutely get specialized help for them!

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hjmarseille · 6 years

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Update

Hello followers,

I would like to take a few minutes to discuss the state or so of this blog. Honestly I have no idea where to begin though. I think it would be no understatement to say I don’t enjoy this blog anymore and what it has become. I do not feel the joy that I once felt, like for example when I use to post rare Hans Joachim Marseille photos. Managing this blog has become a chore and something that has caused me much stress which on top of other life problems is unnecessary. My main problem is an “addiction” to photos. I first set this blog up in 2014 or so because I saw other fellow history lovers who shared with others the wonderful historical photos they had found and I wanted to share the photos of people I liked with like minded people instead of my fellow (at the time) teenagers who couldn’t name a historical battle for the life of them. This blog started at a time when i was crazy about Germany and its participation in the Second World War. A time where I idolized flying aces like Galland, Marseille, Mölders, Nowotny, Rudel Etc... and Panzer aces like Carius and Wittmann and oh so many others! Most of my content at the time, and really till a year or so ago, was German content including Waffen-SS photos. That caused me some hate and being labeled as a Nazi, despite the fact I was not political or really had any idea what politics were. I faced those problems in real life as well, because I was interested in the Luftwaffe that made me an automatic Nazi. But none of that is the point. This is not, and never has been a political blog. I am a Lefty and I will leave it at that. Anyways, the point is a lot of my following was other lovers of Germany and the Luftwaffe, some of which were Right wing people. This blog was never exactly meant for a particular subject besides World War history but I feel as if perhaps the fact that I broke away from my original content is why the content I post now does not do as good as my old stuff. Not just the content in general but how much I post. I have pretty much posted at least one thing every day so far in 2018. My blog is a MESS! Maybe I have undiagnosed OCD but how messy and disorganized it is bothers me. My blog doesn’t exactly have a personality per say anymore, if it ever did. It doesn’t have its own aesthetic either. All of that can be attributed to the fact that there isn’t exactly anything special to the majority of what I post. To begin with none of it is my own content (especially the IWM posts, but we’ll get to that later). I’m not some artist drawing beautiful artworks, or an OC meme creator/comedian or hell even a pornstar! I’m just an (almost) 21-year-old posting whatever photographs I find online or in a book. I think I alleviated some of it by coming up and researching my own caption for each photo but now I just use the captions featured in books or on the website with my own side notes if there is anything wrong or extra to add. That is due to not having the same amount of resources or time like i once had to do the proper in depth research. I’m no historian so to have a caption from a published author and historian gives proper credit and so to the photos I think, and also shares with you the book that i found the photo in for you can check it out yourself. As i have said this isn’t a political blog, it also isn’t a personal blog. I’m not here for anything about me or to talk about myself, I am here to share with you photos I love! I am somewhat jealous though when I see other bloggers converse and communicate with their followers. I might as well be a robot! I have had some interactions with a few people, mainly people that have asked me questions that are better left to Historians with connections to other people. One very nice Greek or Cretan guy(?) sent me a couple times some stuff about Patrick Leigh Fermor which i was thankful for. That kind of stuff is nice and something I hope to see an increase of some day.

Something else that disappoints me, like most bloggers, youtubers and content creators, is the likes/notes to followers(?) ratio. For awhile i have been at 13,000 plus followers, slowly creeping one by one to 14,000, yet my notes are so low! Majority of what I post gets around 15 notes, if it even gets more than 10! Its rare to get more than lets say 25 notes or even more so 50 notes but its incredibly rare to get anything near 100 notes! I don’t know what you, as my followers, are here to see. Then again I made the blog to share what I wanted to share. It would be helpful though to let me know the stuff I have posted that you have enjoyed or perhaps something I never have posted which you would like me to check out!

Speaking of content, that leads me to something else that we should mention. The Imperial War Museum (IWM) problem. Perhaps you will have notice in the past year the increase of photos from IWM. To describe it I would say it is like the whole Fortnite problem with Youtubers. It is easy content to get a hold of and to post. The amount of IWM photos i have scheduled, in my drafts, in my notes and photos of which I have not even done anything with is overwhelming! I could seriously take all of that IWM content and make an entire brand new blog with it. As long as I have everything written out and scheduled (which would be a piece of cake), I’ll be good for a year! Due to the queue limit of 300, which I have not gotten lower than 260 this year, it takes up a lot of room which I could be using to posting more unique and niche stuff. Currently i have over 400 drafts, yet again I have struggled to get it down past 399 as i quickly fill it back up like my queue, with so much stuff to post that it is overwhelming. That goes back to my brief mention of being addicted to photos. If i see something then i save it as a draft, no matter what. There is so many interesting things I want to post! I have SO MANY history interests you would not believe. You maybe able to tell from my posts what am Interested in at any given moment. I will go from subject to subject depending on what material is available. For example last/this year i was into the wartime SAS then I jumped to the post war/modern SAS, then it was UDT stuff, then Jedburgh stuff (which you will be seeing some of this August and next February) and now I’m back into wartime SAS and SOE/OSS/BCRA. That leaves so much stuff to post! Again this all goes with the question of what stuff do you all enjoy and how can I make this blog better. I have no plans on deactivating hjmarseille but a break sometime would be nice. I have been for a year or so now debating on wether to open a second blog. As you may have noticed the Spanish Civil War content stopped around the end of last year. I still am highly interested in it but I felt it deserved its own place and not among the clutter of this blog. As i have been overloaded with everything on here, the posts still sit in my drafts and the rest in my notes. Perhaps if i cleared out more of my blog I would be happy to bring it back. The whole new side blog thing just goes with me wanting for the blog to have a personality and to be aesthetic. A “Spanish Civil War” aesthetic.

Of course this is only a hobby and not something I am being paid for, so not a life and death situation, but if you have taken the time to read all or any of this then I would love to hear some thoughts from you on what I could do to be better.

Thank you for taking the time, if you did, to read and again I thank you for any feedback and hope you continue to enjoy what I share!

Sincerely,

Liam aka “hjmarseille” 😊

P.S. I apologize if any of this feels like just a scramble of different thoughts mashed together. I have so much I want to say but I’m not very good at explaining things.

#update #hjmarseille #2018

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gamedesignerben · 7 years

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Baldessari’s (optional) assignments for his 1970 Post-Studio Art class at CalArts

I could only find abridged versions, or blurry photos of the original handouts, so I transcribed everything, and here it is.

1. Imitate Baldessari in actions and speech 2. Make up an art game. Structure a set of rules with which to play. A physical game is not necessary: more important are the rules and their structure. Do we in life operate by rules? Does all art? 3. How can we prevent art boredom? 4. Write a list of art lies, un-truths that might be truthful if we really thought about them. However consider this: Art truths that we have often are boring in their correctness. 5. How can plants be used in art. Problem becomes how can we really get people to look freshly at plants as if they've never noticed them before. A few possibilities: 1. Arrange them alphabetically like books on a shelf; 2. Plant them like popsicle trees (as in child art) perpendicular to line of hill; 3. Include object among plants that is camouflaged 6. How can gallery use be subverted, as in land art? Exchange locations with another business? Photo gallery sq. ft. for sq. ft. and paste up in another space? One way glass in front of gallery? 8. Give police artist verbal description of Baldessari and have him do drawing. Perhaps everyone in class do verbal description. 9. Describe a neutral object completely with fileand tape or video. Do it until you have fully translated all its qualities to the medium. Perhaps better a class project in that more insights would be available. 10. Create art from our procedures of learning. How does an infant learn? How do we continue to learn. How do we learn speech? To count? To know danger? Investigate Montessori methods, books and learning and perception. 11. Do a tape recording of raw sounds and edit into a composition. 12. Make up a list of sound as art projects (see example). 13. How can a gallery space be used rather than put art objects into it? 14. Two man film project. Each shoots up an amount of film. Each edits the others film. A film collage problem. Important that the footage be "found" 15. Given: The availability of an airplane or helicopter for a short time use i.e., an hour. What would you do? 16. Given: $1. What art can you do for that amount? 17. Cooking art. Invent recipee. They are organizations of parts, aren't they? 18. Subvert real systems. I.e., dial a number that records passages while the person is out and dial another number that gives recorded messages. Put the two phones together. Put a sigh that says "SLOW" in the middle of a street. Get it? 19. What art can arise from magic and myth. Or just a magic trick on video. 20. A sensory deprivation piece. A sensory overload piece. 21. Ecological guerilla art. 22. Disguise yourself as another object--a tree maybe. Or becoming a tree. A big bird? 23. What are the minute differences in things that are supposed to be the same? And vice versa. If you took 36 photos of a lawn, would they all be the same? Or of 36 sections of the same lawn? Or of a wall? Or 36 identical nails (either, finger or kind you hammer). 24. File loops of slides of all the objects one stares at in a given interval when in an arbitrarily chosen room. Or recorded on a tape recorder as one's eyes look on them. 25. 36 slides from start to finish of simple motion like picking your nose, scratching your ass and so on 26. Slides of #24 projected in correct places in another room. 27. Wet and dry. I.e., how does wet gravel in a parking lot look next to another dry area. Perhaps an actual situation, where something would be constantly wasted. 28. Recreate sculpturally with other materials in a magic realist approach any 12" sq area of earth land. Perhaps better yet to keep your own seeth out of it would be to have another choose it for you. 29. Have some take a photo portrait of you just before you go into a store to steal something. Have your portrait taken immediately after the act. Photo the object stolen. 30. Design and have printed your calling card. 31. Steal the trash from Pres. Corrigan's wastebasket and make a collage of it. 32. Have yourself photographed in act of insulting a person. To repeat each time insulting a new person. 33. Pay homage to a movie star, rock musician, etc. in form of a pilgrimage visit. Photograph is required of the two of you with a personalized signed greeting by the culture here. Or it could be a famous person's grave. In this case a photo of you at the grave. Person's name on the gravestone should be visible. No signiture necessary. 34. Defenestrate objects. Photo them in mid-air. 35. What kind of art can be done with real animals? 36. Record all actions, thoughts, for 1/2 hour on tape recorder. 37. What kind of works can be done literally under the earth. 38. Liquid works. 39. Chemical works. 40. Biological works. 41. Photograph landscape in color. Make 8x10 color print. Make some color changes. Color landscape to match retouched photo. Color landscape to match photo. Rephoto. 42. Class make up list for scavenger hunt. Exhibit works at end of day. 43. Forgeries. Each in class tries to forge my signature on a check by looking at an original. Or forgeries of forgeries of forgeries, etc. 44. Take any sentence of text to 6 signpainters to be lettered in letters of same style and height. Study differences. 45. Punishment. Write "I will not make any more art" "I will not make any more boring art" "I will not make make good art" (or something similar) 1000 times on wall. 46. One person copies or makes up random captions. Another person takes photos. Match photo to captions. 47. Serial TV works. 25 ways to fold a hat, to comb your hair, 25 different people spitting. 48. Develop a visual code. Give it to another student to crack. 49. Disguise an object to look like another object. 50. Do a film or TV script or scenario. Use TV layout paper. 51. A video tape that is a result of reading a book. You give book report in front of camera. 52. Smell pieces. 53. Touch pieces. 54. Art that you see by looking up or down 55. How do we get eyes off the visual and into experience. Rent a service rather than an object from Yellow Pages. 56. Take a canvas stretcher, size of your choice, to an upolsterer and have it upolstered with fabric of your choice. 57. A piece that deals with measurement--up, down, right, left, etc. and where spectator is located. 58. Make up list of distractions that often occur to you. Recreate on video tape 59. Make up art parables. 60. Edmund Scientific Catalog project. What art can you make my ordering from this catalog. Maybe grow plants chemically. 61. Hypnosis. Can art ideas be planted and removed in a mind? 62. A wall drawing based on numerous persons height--each marks his height on wall with line, signs name and date. 63. What art can arise from such phrases as: 1. Entasis. 2. Gestalt with some left over information. 3. Simple shape, simple experience. 4. Unitary form with reduced relationships. 5. Unitary form with line of fracture. Or can pure information be art? 64. The structural movement of cameras as subject matter. 65. Performance pieces. I.E. Speak thru your hand to your thigh but not with your head. Or talk with your knees t osomething knee-high. Or what are your dog-like traints without imitating a dog. Or the delivery of a speech to an imaginary person in different spaces in a room. Do a series of artificial voices. Can the various positions of the hand change the resonance of the voice? Say "good morning" every morning into a tape recorder for the length of the tape. See Growtowski, Towards Poor Theater. 66. A snapshot album of things to see in Los Angeles with exact locations so that others could locate sights (sites). 67. Document change, decay, metamorphosis, changes occuring in time. 67. Do good an bad compositions (by photo) of same scene, object. Frame a photo in viewfinder and move camera a foot to side before shooting. 68. Make up a list by looking at art books. Talking to artists on things to avoid in making art. Do them. Ask yourself if results are good or bad art. 69. What art can come from the use of a set of walkie-talkie radios? 70. By using movie camera to follow actions and by your observations into cassete recorder, document the movements of someone secretly for an entire day. Or have someone follow you. 71. Photos are flat. Photograph flat surfaces. Maybe exchange them. 72. Change, control, alter, arrange light in room environment. 73. Art Powers. How much and what kind of art can you make from kleenex and masking tape, for instance. 74. A film video tape etc that deals openly with a physical flaw of yours (in your estimation). A film called PIMPLE? 75. Information exchange. You writer letters to someone and they to you and so on. Framed letters of Refusal (I am sorry, but...) for instance. Or Thanks (That you for your ...blah blah etc). 76. Random photos. End of, beginning of, roll photos. Camera sent up with pidgeon, balloon, given to another person with shooting instructions, shooting from hip, etc. How do we avoid our good taste? 77. Using of time devices. Time clock (that prints time in and out), random time devices (red dot on cash register tape), a fuse, a candle 78. Large scale art that can be seen in its entirety. For instance, if you dyed sheets each a separate color and arranged them checkerboard like, say a hundred or more, they could only be experienced by walking through them, but the ycould be seen (also photoed) by helicopter or airplane. 79. Photograph backs of things, underneaths of things, extreme foreshortenings, uncharacteristic views. Or trace them. 80. Put labels on things that list their contents. 81. Design an art test. 82. Can one give and take away aesthetic content? 83. Street works, art determined by locaiton. What would you do on top of a 30 story building? What would you do under water? 84. Given $50, could you increase the sum in a period of time? 85. Describe the visual verbally and the verbal visually 86. Film of, or video of, children's play activities--walking on a ledge, drawing a line in the dirt, etc. 87. Do a work of art by telephone. Or use TBA (John Collins). 88. An all word TV tape. Or a single word. 89. A real time movie or video tape. A steaming cup of coffee. 90. If photos come from reality, what kind of reality comes from photos? Reconstruct a photo tree-dimensionally. 91. Scenarios. Do a movie for an existing, stock scenario. Or 1 person write scenario, another shoot movie. Or grabag scenario--everyone write 2-3 scenes, drop in box, someone pull out maybe 10 and they are shot in the order drawn out. Or everyone do their version of the grabag scenario. 92. Video tape of making sound effects. 93. Design a secret handshake (for our class members?) 94. Verbally describe a landscape instead of painting one 95. A distinctive work that is based on parts and not a whole, that is one see the parts and never teh whole 96. Prove a point as in a science fair diorama, display tableau such as, "How quickly does bread mould under certain conditions?", or "a plant growth hampered by use of conditioned water?", "The effect of colored lights on plants", "Is untreated seaweed useful as fertilizer", "What effect does ultra Sonic vibrations have on plants?", "The effect of asperin on potato plants", "Why is a rainbow round?", "Do race, color, texture affect the strength of hair?" and etc. 97. Take the titles of any amateur art exhibit and illustrate them. For instance much titles as, Ah, Toro!, Autumn Leaves, Mexican Patterns, Xenogeniala #2, Xanadu, Wharf Enchantments, French Restaurant, Boat Patterns, blah blah 98. Repaired or patched art. Recycled. Find something broken and discared. Perhaps in a thrift store. Mend it. 99. Art that requires the rental of a Service rather than an Object. 100. How does one react to a minor stress problem. Perhaps compare what he is thinking to his outward behavior. 101. Put new canvas over old paintings. 102. Composition based on the duration of say, one gal of paint. 103. A 30 day continuous line of adding machine tape. 104. The shapes of shadows of well known people (or well known artists for a specific example) 105. Reversals. Be black, say things backwards, all while standing upside down. 106. Put make-up on dogs and other animals. On trees and plants. 107. "If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: 'I want to be praised.'" (E.V. Cloran). Do a piece that deails with Praise as a theme. 108. Photograph of umbrella and sewing machine on an operating table. That's Surrealism isn't it? 109. Blow powdered color through straw on drawing made with fat on wall underground. That's cave art isn't it?

#baldessari #art #list

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