Self-improvement often presents us with dilemmas, where striking the right balance becomes essential. In this article, we delve into the concept of moderation and navigate through six dilemmas of self-improvement.
1. Dilemma of Watching Netflix for Language Learning and Netflix Addiction
Watching TV shows or movies is a great way to learn a language. You can see how words are used in different situations. I haven't watched TV shows or films quite in a while, but I want to watch series to improve my English father. But I know if I download Netflix and subscribe again, I might be glued to the screen.
1,1 Podcast As an Alternative Learning Tool
So, instead, I listen to podcasts a lot after unsubscribing Netflix. They're good for learning too, but not as good as TV shows because in podcasts, people just sit and talk without acting things out. TV shows help us learn phrases and words by showing us real-life situations.
1.2 The Risk of Netflix Addiction
Watching TV shows is better for learning languages than podcasts, but we need to be careful not to watch too much. I used to be a Netflix addict, and it's hard to stop once you start. It's important to avoid watching during the day to stay productive, and not to watch before bed for better sleep.
If you can control how much you watch (maybe just one episode a day or on weekends), using Netflix to learn languages is good. But how much you need to watch depends on your language level. If you're just starting, you might want to watch more to fast-track your language learning."
2. Sleep Quality vs Input Time
2.1 The Importance of Sleep Quality
To improve sleep quality and have a full night's seel for optimal productivity, it's a good idea to avoid artificial light exposure before going to bed (especially blue light) and go to bed early if necessary. However, nighttime is also a good time to read to gain knowledge. Yet, we need light to read.
Getting a full night's sleep is crucial for optimizing productivity and being ready for the day ahead. One way to help with this is by avoiding artificial light exposure, especially the blue light from screens, before bedtime.
It's also a good idea to go to bed early if you need to catch up on sleep. But here's the thing: sometimes we want to read before bed to learn new stuff, right? Well, we need the light to read.
2.1 Don't Stress Too Much About Light
If we try to go to bed early even when not feeling sleepy or worrying too much about the light in our room, it can mess up our sleep. it can cause waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to fall back to sleep. It's important to relax and not stress too much about these things. While it's a good idea to avoid bright lights before bed, we don't need to worry too much about regular room lights or the light from a Kindle.
2.3 The Importance of Input Time
If you're super busy during the day and the only time you have to learn or read is at night. Then hit the book until you start feeling sleepy. While a full night's sleep is crucial for optimizing productivity and brain function for the next day, don't force yourself to sleep if you're not tired yet. It's better to keep reading until you feel ready to sleep.
Reading is important. Even just reading one page a day can be beneficial. So, if you're feeling tired, go ahead and get some rest. But if you're not quite ready to sleep, keep reading until you are.
3. The Dark Chocolate Dilemma: Healthy Food or a Guilty Pleasure?
3.1 Should we eat dark chocolate for health?
Chocolate with a high cacao percentage, typically higher than 70 percent, has several proven benefits, but it still contains sugar, which isn't healthy.
So, should we eat chocolate for health or not? The answer is always moderation. But what the hell is moderation? Is it one piece or two? People always talk about moderation, so let me provide an answer for you.
3.2 Choose Higher than 90% Chocolate
Choose chocolate with a cacao percentage higher than 90 percent, ideally 100% if it's available in a supermarket near you. Eat a piece of chocolate as much as you want, but you're likely not to want to eat more than a few pieces of high-cacao chocolate.
If you've ever tasted chocolate with more than 90 percent cacao, you know how it tastes and how unpleasant it can be. You won't want to continue eating it, and it contains quite a lot of caffeine. So, physically, it's hard to eat a whole package of over 90 percent high-cacao chocolate.
So, get the highest cacao percentage chocolate possible at the supermarket, but not lower than 90 percent cacao. When chocolate approaches 100% cacao, it becomes so unpleasant that you're unlikely to consume an excessive amount of sugar or calories.
4. Dilemma of Concentrating All Effort on Important Tasks vs Other Parts of Life
If we want to fast-track progress, it's better to concentrate our efforts on a few important tasks and eliminate others. However, we can't neglect our health, family, and other important aspects of life.
4.1 How Much Can You Sacrifice for Success?
For example, let's say you just started your own business, and you spend most of your day on it to make it successful. But you also need to stay healthy by exercising and spending time with your family. Plus, you want to keep learning new things. But now you don't have enough time to do everything.
It's pretty much like how much you can to sacrifice in other areas of your life to achieve your goals. The more you sacrifice, the faster you progress, but of course, you can't sacrifice everything.
4.2 Determine the Most Important Aspects and Allocate Time
So, if you have multiple important aspects of life, such as finance, health, and relationships, You need to figure out which parts of life are the most important to you right now.
Maybe making money is super important, so you spend most of your time on that. Then, you decide what's next most important, like staying healthy or spending time with family. You split your time and effort based on what matters most.
For example, if finance is the most important, allocate 70% of your time to it, with 20% to health and 10% each to relationships.
4.3 Allocate Time and Effort Within Each Aspect
Within each aspect, there are specific areas to focus on. In finance, it's about doing work that generates income and gaining knowledge to get better at work.
For health, it means focusing on workouts and diet. So, divide your time and attention wisely, such as an 80:20 split for finance work and learning, and a 50:50 split for workouts and diet.
5. Dilemma of Social Media and Marketing Work
Social media is a big addiction nowadays, but for marketers, it's an important tool for their job. They use it to check out competitors' strategies and to get inspiration from them.
5.1 The Tricky Part: Getting Hooked on Social Media
For marketers, they may need to engage in social media for a long time. But spending too much time on social media can cause problems. It might make you feel stressed out and stop you from getting important stuff done.
5.2 Outsource it or Quit
It can be hard to balance using social media for work and not getting too caught up in it. If it's stressing you out too much, you might want to hire someone to handle that aspect of your work for you. Or if it's making you really unhappy, maybe it's not the right job for you.
6. Overcoming Negativity or Using it for Fuel to Push Yourself?
Some successful people have different ideas about how to handle bad feelings. Imagine it's like choosing between two superheroes: Tony Robbins and David Goggins.
Option 1: Stay Positive
Some successful people say to overcome all your negativities to achieve success and happiness. But here's the question: If you're happy, won't you lose the drive to succeed?
Option 2: Use Bad Feelings as Fuel
On the other hand, some say using your anger, sadness, and misery to push yourself forward. They say that if you're happy with where you are, you won't have enough drive to succeed. Perhaps you've found it easier to use your negative emotions to push yourself harder.
6.1 Should You Be Positive or Stay Miserable to Keep Going?
So, should you work on being positive and practice mindfulness to be happy and successful? Or should you stay miserable and use that as fuel to push yourself harder?
I don't think you'll lose your drive by being grateful and happy, as long as you stay humble and keep wanting more. While using negativity can be a powerful tool, at some point in your personal development and success journey, you won't be miserable anymore.
6.2 No One Would Be Miserable Anymore At Some Point
Take David Goggins, for example. Is he still miserable? Probably not. He's fit now, he's a multi-millionaire, he's famous, and he has a family. What motivates him now probably isn't misery anymore; misery is where he started.
6.3 Use Misery At First and Be Positive When the Time Comes
So, in the beginning, use misery to keep you going, but you don't have to stay miserable forever. You can break free when the time comes. Then, be mindful and stay humble to keep getting better.
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