Update for 4/2/18

No objectives for the past few days - haven't had much time to do too much due to college search.

However, here is a quick post with some of my thoughts on something that I found rather interesting (although it is rather speculative in nature):

   Over the last few days, I have really not thought too much about this, but here it goes. This topic is something that I honestly have wanted to talk about for awhile but, due to college stuff and other assorted stuff coming in the way, I haven’t made too much progress in this respect.

  The tired introduction aside, I wanted to write this as the start of a series on my experiences in high school - in particular some of the things that I have realized that are a bit more particular to my own but, hopefully, will provide some benefit to anyone else. The first one in this series, this article, is on the difference between giving 100% and giving 101%. Enjoy!

  --- Pause for some sense of dramatic effect ---

   Now, mathematically, it makes perfect sense that 100% is possible, and that 101% is simply not. After all, how can one give more of oneself to some task after giving their all? Well, I would like to assert that giving one’s 100% and 101% are more in the line of a relative scale. If you were to look at how one operates, I think that our current definition of 100% is relative and that it shifts from year to year, decade to decade. Picture this: You start working on some physical skill, say martial arts. At first, giving 100% does not mean anything substantial - just tiring onself out performing some basic maneuvers. Later on, however, due to constant practice you learn to optimize yourself and, eventually, learn to output much, much more than 100%. In a similar manner, our definitions of what constitutes our “best effort” can also decrease substantially, if we learn that putting in less effort is good or that putting in less effort is actually what people desire. This phenomena, that of changing our notions of success, seems to me to be the main factor in how people operate. While we might say we value such-and-such, such values do NOT seem to matter, to the extent to which they do not actively change one’s life to produce higher effort / higher quality work. Now, what I am not saying is that we should undervalue efficiency. By all means, we should try to automate what chores we have to do to provide the greatest output and pleasure of our life. However, it is important to recognize also to the effort that led to the increase in efficiency as, for the greater changes in life, surely one would have to say that some sort of effort has to be made to increase those behaviors that lead to efficiency over those that lead to sloth and no actual benefits.

   Now that, I hope, this idea that what constitutes our 100% has been made clear enough, I want to take this a step further and use it as a base to understand one of the current predicaments of my schooling career: so-called “unnecessary work”. Such work, which can be seen as a way for students to get some work done without doing any “intellectual work”, can be seen in a manner that is rather ,,, unsavory. People, for one reason or another, feel that such work is either below their standards or that it seems like “a waste of their time”. While I do feel that, at times, such attitudes can be permitted, continuously viewing certain types of work in this manner can hurt you as an individual. If you view anything as “below you”, you learn to associate work with meniality. As a result, you tend to “lower your standards”, thus reducing the overall sort of work you want to put out, let alone what you can put out. As a result, I would like to propose that one should treat such problems with optimism and more dedication than other assignments. Use these assignments to better understand how the content / teacher works, one can upgrade one’s overall work ethic and, hopefully, one’s work quality. So why not try for a bit to see how working oneself feels -  it might help you out more than you realize!