People often say that effort means everything. It’s not entirely. In fact, this is also quite a dangerous thing to say.
If everyone has the ability to exert effort, then there has to be a reason why people don’t study 24/7!!! (other than sleep of course) we are all dead. There is an inherent limitation: sanity.
In the f3 chinese midyear I grinded to memorize everything. Did I do well? Yeah, but not too high. Did I feel good? Absolutely not! I felt the effort go into the trash can of useless junk that I do not have to know ever again.
It’s even worse if you have a developmental disorder like me. I’ve been diagnosed with developmental differences, and I suspect that I have odd as well from all the times I disagreed with teachers. Well, the main point is that, regardless of the effort I exert, it still won’t make me get better! “effort matters” but not much. Effort grades are stupidly subjective, and often don’t even reflect the effort you put in. Teachers can’t see you self study at home, so it is quite pointless to compare or even look at others judgement. (idk why effort grades even exists tbh). Well flashcard usage is a beginner’s method, but has it actually helped? Slightly, but if you account for the extreme anxiety I gained from the huge debt and piles of pieces of paper on my desk at home, it is not worth it at all. Especially in junior high school I didn’t have past exam papers so this felt like the only way to do well, to completely trade my wellbeing for effort. And all the time and tears I used up almost amounted to nothing. And regardless of how much time I use, my stupid parents still want me to increase my effort and add oil. They don’t know anything! Where is their authority to say so to me, who is already suffering from severe mental illness and such? Am I not enough? Am I a fraction of my actual potential?
Eventually when I actually asked how I should be, they just told me to “study harder…” and “I don’t know, you teach me.” mother trucker, I’m not your teacher!!! You are supposed to help me! She kept saying “you can do it!” but with my current ability, it is the exact opposite. It feels extremely negligent and disrespectful, because if this happens I don’t want to let her down. This ironically made everything worse. And they say that “I should stop playing video games”. Man if you do so I will actually get real ideas because you people fail to realize that videogames were one of my only sources of entertainment!!!! They told me to get social interaction. But I had no friends. And I felt like it was too early to get some. I needed to sort out myself first, it felt like. By myself. Therapy is useless to remove my anxiety and keep my head motivated. Actually, I was motivated, but in the wrong way, to think of ways other than dying that can end my suffering once and for all. I often heard that others can study 2-3 hours, but me? I hate it with every ounce of my brain (not heart).
There is no spirit. There is no purpose of effort, it will all lead to vein. And mom even told me to never talk about such ideas again. Do you realize this? Do you realize that just keeping the thought in my head makes it worse???
What an idiot. What a pathetic human being. Completely useless, yet gave birth to me and expects me to be better than her and give more effort in things. She scrolls through her phone everyday, yet expects me to be effortful?!
I’m not going to work more with more effort.
I’m going to actually work less.
This is the only way out of this hellhole.
I am embarrassed that it took 3 years to figure this out.
I’ve cut down on my workload.
By f3 finals, I already knew that memorization would in fact be futile. It was one of the worst exam performances I had in my school life, even if you account for the fact that it was quite new.
Now, I just do 2 past papers every day. I finally got the hang of it. It’s good for me to not waste 100 flashcards per day, but just do around 12 questions. It gives me comfort instead of anxiety. It gives me peace instead of chaos. It gives me acceptance instead of hatred.
What is motivation?
Not the ability to continuously exert effort until you burn out, but the ability to keep a thought in your head for a long period of time.
What is discipline?
Not the ability to do what you need to do, but the ability to reduce your anxiety to the point that you feel comfortable working by sorting your problems out and fixing them.
And my parents made it seem like that it’s just me being lazy.
I am not lazy! I’ve tried too hard before and it had no effect! What a waste!
They don’t seem to realize that my neurodiversity makes it hard to focus! It’s basically impossible to change, no matter how much they pressure me to!
(pressure is bad in the first place for me.)
And my past makes me reluctant to seek help! My dad told me not to talk to teachers about it because I don’t wanna show my weakness and get expelled! (this will not happen. They actually brainwashed me!!! Yes, my pathetic brain is equivalent to a 10 year old, how impressive.) they just expect me to have value, even when I clearly show them my distress? What??????!!! I’m so done. At least I feel kinda calm these days. But it was a disaster in the past, and I’m not the one to blame. That’s all there is to me.