Who do you want to be?

I will never forget the quote from Charles Buwalski: “Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” This is a very accurate way of pointing out how society influences our ability to self-reflect. When I was about 19 years old, I still was studying and let the world tell me this was the way to go. Later on, I was planning to do a master and just keep going the way of the world. After finishing my bachelor thesis at the age of 21 I was totally drained and I started to ask myself questions. This changed my mindset forever.

The first step to reflection is asking yourself questions. Why? When? What? How? Why? Where? By doing this you will get a greater understanding of yourself and each choice you make and will make. In this way, you can make better choices and reach your goals much faster.

What kind of questions do I ask myself?

“What do I want?” is a question that I ask myself a lot. Any answer to that question will be followed up by: ”Why do I want that?” or “Why don’t I know?” The answer to these questions are just always very logical and straightforward. If I don’t know it’s often, because I don’t have enough information. If to the first question “What do I want?” the answer is I don’t know, then I go and search for more information. In the case of doing a master, it was looking for other masters and other options. I needed to have all the options that I would consider out there to be able to make a clear decision on what I wanted. I keep searching for information till I have a clear perspective of my options and I’m confident enough to make a choice. And remember, it’s a choice, for now, you can always change it later on.

The next questions

The next questions are always about finding borders to work within. When I wanted to do a morning workout I asked myself the questions ‘how much time am I willing to spend?’ and ‘How much reps of each exercise?’ So, ‘what exercises will I do?’ In this way, I created borders for myself to work within. “How much” or “how well” are questions that do their job very well.

Having a goal

Setting a goal is fairly important. The most important thing about a goal is to have a moment in time to measure with. By having a goal you can also measure if you’re getting closer to it or not. Since we already know a lot of what we’re going to do, how and why. The most important thing is to know ‘before when’. If we know before when we are going to reach what we want, we’ve set a limit and we can get to work.

Work

The question that will make you work is: ”where will I do it.” This will make everything very concrete and will delete a lot of the excuses that you have. You don’t have to think about where you’re going to do it or what or how. You have thought everything through and now you can start to get working.

Subgoals

I do recommend putting subgoals to be able to measure short-term improvement Short-term improvement is very important for motivation if you can see that you’re improving you’ll keep doing it. The best way to set sub-goals is by splitting the time you have set and splitting the goal in half as well. Keep doing this till you end up with the first subgoal in about 20 to 30 days. This will get you motivated to actually start doing something in the next days to come.

Practical example

Let’s say I just finished high-school and I have to choose a study to do next. Although I’m not sure if I actually want to do a study. Because why would I? It does give some type of security for the future. It increases the odds of having a job. But I do think it’s necessary if I want to do a study that I choose something I actually like. Because for the next 3 or 4 years I will be doing this study and after that, I might work in that field for a very long time. So I start with writing down things I like to do. I like people, thinking, I liked biology in school, physics as well, I’m good with numbers, I think very visual etc. I always keep doing this till I really don’t know anything anymore (if you don’t know what you like or are good at, ask 10 friends or family members what you’re good at and let them name 10 things).

Now I have some borders of what we like and/or are good at. Since we’re good with numbers, biology and psychics I might decide to do a study like biological engineering. But I don’t just stop there.

How well do I want to do my study?

This might sound stupid but it is very important to ask yourself. If you’re fine with getting only sixes, good for you do that. If you want to become the best student, good for you. But think about it before you start. So let’s say, we want to just get mostly sixes because we believe nobody is actually going to care too much.

How much time will I spend?

Since we just want to be a six student, we don’t really have to work the 40 hours that they tell you it will cost. For this, I often use the 20/80 principle that basically states:” With 20% of the effort you get 80% of the results.” The principle is based on the idea that getting an 8 in school is reachable, but if you want to get a 10 you need to do 5 times as much as for the 8. In a lot of cases, this is true and you can apply it. We just want to get sixes so with every assignment we get we need to remember that we just have to do enough. We can look for the amount the university tells us to put in and then we can often do about half (since the university doesn’t really expect you to get the 10’s.) So we want to spend about 20 hours a week on our 40 hours bio-engineering study to get only sixes.

Before when?

This might sound simple, the study is 3 years so I want to finish in 3 years. Well, remember Charles his quote? Don’t let others tell you who or what you want to do just because it’s ‘normal’. Maybe you want to take an extra year to enjoy the time you’re studying, maybe you want to take an extra course or do an extra study program. Some people take a gap year. I personally took an extra year to just work on myself, that’s fine. So let’s say I take an extra year in the example to just enjoy my time as a student.

When will I do this?

So when will I spend the 20 hours a week? And how will I spend them? Because if I only want to spend 20 hours I might have to skip the classes to be more efficient. Maybe I need to ask students who are already in their 3rd year what classes are worth following. Spending time on these types of things will save you an amazing amount of time later, so it’s definitely worth it.

In the example, I will skip all the classes that I can skip, probably leaving about 16 hours a week to spend for myself.

So what will I do?

I will spend 16 hours every week on personal studying because I want to finish my study with only sixes in 4 years. I will read, study and practice during these 16 hours. I will also take at least 1 hour each week to see if I can improve my efficiency of learning. Next, to this, I will follow 4 hours of classes that are recommended by 3rd-year students.

Subgoals

Let’s say every year you get 60 credits, so a total of 180 credits for the 3 years. I want to do it in 4 years so that gives me these subgoals:

12 ec’s first half-semester (if possible)
23 ec’s first half year
45 ec’s first year
90 ec’s second year
135 ec’s third year
180 ec’s fourth year
You can make the sub goals more precise as well.

Don’t forget

Now don’t forget to ask yourself the following question once you have done this:

What do I want to do with the rest of my time?
Do I believe I will achieve my goals in this way? If no, ask why and keep asking questions till you are confident you will achieve your goal.
It's also important toso never forget that you can change anything during the years. Maybe I decide to become an eight-student after 2 years. But if you change the goal you need to change the answers to the other questions as well. You can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

I hope you enjoyed the article. If you did please leave a like, comment or share the article. Also, check out my other articles.

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