Rest Is Not Always Stopping
My study buddy told me to finish one thing before starting another. She was right. But it took me years to realise I had also been right, and that the two lessons were not in conflict.
During my first degree, I had a system for studying. It made perfect sense to me. It made very little sense to anyone watching.
I would sit down with one subject and work at it until my attention began to slip. Then I would put it down and pick up something else. I would read around that for a while, get restless, and move on again. By the end of an evening, I would have touched four or five topics and the desk would be covered in open books.
To me, this was studying. I was moving, and I felt as though I was making progress.
I was not finishing anything.
My study buddy noticed before I did. She watched me do this for weeks, and one evening she said it plainly, without any sense that she was giving advice worth remembering.
"You need to focus on one thing and get it done before you move on."
It was not a profound sentence. I remember it because it changed how I worked.
Until then, I had mistaken movement for progress.
So I tried it her way. I chose a topic and stayed with it. I read around it, found the parts I did not understand, and pushed at them until they gave way. I looked for the connections between one part of the subject and another. I kept going until I felt I had taken what I needed from that area, and only then did I move on.
My learning became deeper. It also taught me something I had not expected, which was prioritisation.
There is a particular satisfaction in knowing something is finished. You can put it down and stop carrying it around in your head. You can move to the next thing without the low hum of the last one still nagging at you.
I began to understand that being busy and being productive were not the same thing. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stay with one difficult problem until it is solved.
For a long time, I thought that was the whole lesson.
