I ran across a tweet (are they still tweets?) on X/Twitter that was titled: how to ruin yourself. It had these items, which seem to be coming from a young person. Either a student or in their first job.

1. Stay on your phone all day.
2. Feel sad for no clear reason.
3. Stop eating well and ignore your studies.
4. Sleep super late and wake up in the afternoon.
5. Let sadness take over everything.
6. Always look at others' lives and feel yours isn't enough.
7. Keep blaming yourself for the past but never try to let it go.
8. Compare your progress with people who started years before you.
9. Get stuck imagining outcomes instead of creating them.
10. Keep waiting for motivation instead of building discipline.

What was interesting to me is I saw people doing similar things when I was younger. Either adults with careers or fellow students. I'd change "sad" to "anger", which I saw a lot in the 80s. Replace the phone with TV, as I saw lots of people start to invest a lot of time in TV with the growth of cable and 24-hour channels in the early 80s. Eating well was less of a thing, but drinking more was a thing. However, many people stagnated, or maybe ruined, themselves in similar ways.

Read the rest of Finding Motivation