energy-saving philosophy

If I don’t have to do something, I won’t, and if I have to do it, I’ll do it quickly.
—— energy-saving philosophy of Houtarou Oreki, from Hyouka

Recently, a friend of mine told me he experienced brain fog more often than before. He came to ask me about the problem of reducing energy consumption.

When I was in middle school, I also encountered the problem of becoming drained because of loads of work to do. I developed a few strategies that worked well at that time:

• Periodic goofing off, that is to periodically take rest during class without missing important content. I always flip pens in class.
• Sustaining an optimal thinking speed, that is to know the current status of myself and control the mental pace to reduce unnecessary energy waste. I remember slowing down my pace during Maths class to ensure I didn’t burn out before the end of the day(because I have already mastered the skills).

Those strategies helped me a lot, as I was able to balancing the mountains of assignments and the responsibilties of a students’ union president. However, recently, I leveled up to high school, and these strategies just do not work well now.

Things changed a lot:

• The classes have denser information, which teachers repeat less and have faster pace. For instance, my history teacher talks so fast that I cannot afford a break. Thus, Periodic goofing off fails.
• More things get on my mind, like the more flexible deadlines, social meetings, etc., as the degrees of freedom increased exponentially in high school. This makes me less likely to be aware of my current status, thus impeding me from adjusting my thinking speed.
• The daily activities are harder and require more thinking resources. Especially socially, as we have a non-fixed class system, where social network becomes more dispersed, and I struggled to make new friends at first. Maybe I should write a blog on how to make friends in a dispersed social network.

Despite the circumstance has become much more complicated, I developed ways to deal with it:

• Reduce. This means you do not do (or do less) unnecessary things, like watching viral videos. Also, this refers to distribute workload to other people, like making powerpoints. Activate Goblin Mode as frequently as possible. For example, I stopped watching YouTube videos during study breaks and instead used that time to do nothing.
• Rest actively. This is an evolution of periodic goofing off. With more degrees of freedom to plan, you plan time for naps in afternoons. I started taking short naps, which helped me recharge and stay focused during evening study and gaming.
• Do Cardio exercise. This is a long-term investigation to increase your max stamina. It might make you tired in a short term, but this helps you in a long run. I used to run 1km every morning in middle school but stopped due to academic pressure. I noticed I got out of breath more easily when stressed. After running 1km weekly for a month, I feel noticeably better.

I hope anyone finds this useful.