Help me get my life in order: This bewildered twenty-something needs advice and lots of it

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am just past my mid twenties, with very little energy, no marketable qualifications or work experience, contacts or significant cash reserves. I have a lot of student debt, but it’s income-linked and thus non-urgent.

I have a ton of solid excuses that led me to this terrible position, but excuses won’t lead me out of it. I had a stroke when I was born, and most recently I was severely ill for about 32 months, but increasingly better since late January. Today, after weeks of tests, I was told by my neurologist that I will not have another stroke and thus I have a future to plan for.

Despite my apparently terrible position, I do not believe I am a lost cause, I’m still pretty smart (IQ ~135, good longterm memory), fairly good at coming up with ideas and critical research. I have a place on an accounting course in the second best university in Australia if I get a medical certificate saying I’ve recovered. I have no medical debts (yay! Socialised medicine), and the government gives me unemployment benefits. I have a few good business ideas, which I’d greatly prefer over Accounting. I am not unhappy being alone, I also look young for my age (I am 27 but people believe it when I say I’m 25). I have no overwhelming ethical quarms about pirating books or media.

Now to my questions.
Do you have any tips or recommendations to give me more energy or motivation?
Do you have any advice to keep my spirits up about me getting so far behind?
Do you have any studying or project management advice or book recommendations?
What’s the best way to improve your shortterm memory?
Do you have any advice or inspirational anecdotes in general?
Are there any useful books you can recommend?

2

Do you have any tips or recommendations to give me more energy or motivation?
Find something you love and do that with your life. Don’t try to get money, just do what you like and find a way to turn that into a job. Money, women, success, it will all come. I know.

Do you have any advice to keep my spirits up about me getting so far behind?
Don’t think you are behind. Who are you behind? Life is only a race against yourself.

Do you have any studying or project management advice or book recommendations?
Books? Again do/read what you love. I love fantasy and if you like fantasy, try The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. If not find something you like and just enjoy! If you are looking for straight up motivational books I can’t really help you.

What’s the best way to improve your shortterm memory?
http://www.brainmetrix.com/memory-game/

Do you have any advice or inspirational anecdotes in general?

Here I lie broken
hearted tried to poop
but only farted

Don’t take life too serious.

Are there any useful books you can recommend?

Useful? Encyclopedias make great weights for biceps curls. But Wikipedia contains all the knowledge in the world.

3

Do you have any tips or recommendations to give me more energy or motivation?

Repeat this poem to yourself:

A voice said, “Look me in the stars
and tell my truly men of Earth
if all the soul and body scars
were not too much to pay for birth.”
Do you have any advice to keep my spirits up about me getting so far behind?

Remember that life is short, infuriating, and messy for everyone. You aren’t alone. You are also young, very young, and have plenty of time in your relatively short life to make of it what you will. And if you don’t, you’ll blink out into non-existence before you know it so stop stressing out.

Do you have any studying or project management advice or book recommendations?

No book recommendations but the absolute best advice I ever got with regards to studying is to write notecards from your notes/books/whatevers an hour or two before you go to bed, and study them. Then throw them away and do it again night after night, an hour or two right before you go to sleep.

What’s the best way to improve your shortterm memory?

Care about what you’re hearing and seeing and learning. It’s the only way, really.

Do you have any advice or inspirational anecdotes in general?

See my answer to question #1. We are all lucky to be alive, even for the brief flash of time that we are.

Are there any useful books you can recommend?

Catch-22. It’s basically the best self-help book money can buy :slight_smile:

4

So basically, finish my accounting masters, but don’t go straight to the first soul-crushing accounting job, find something that I enjoy doing, and build a career on that.

Good point

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

Cite?

If I understand it correctly, it’s saying that the beauty of life is worth the stress and pain.

I’ll try to seize life while I have it.

Yes, this is good advice, I effectively already do this.

I’ll look it up.

5

FYI, Catch-22 is a fictional novel :smiley: It’s also hilarious and I think it contains a lot of truth about life, but it’s not really a self help book.

Good luck to you!

6

“Terrible position”? Gimme a break. You’re just 27. Not having a direction yet at that age is no big deal.

Relax. There’s no rush. It’s not a contest.

7

A very good piece of advice I got recently was this:

MOTIVATION NOT REQUIRED

I was taking part in cognitive behavioral therapy, and this was one of the things they stressed. I know in my case, waiting for motivation to strike results in me doing nothing at all, waiting for some sort of spark that usually never comes. By telling myself that motivation is optional, I re-remember that there really is nothing to wait for, and force myself to do what needs to be done without overthinking or hoping for divine inspiration.

8

You’re going to the University of Sydney and you think you need to get your life in order?

Whaaat?

9

If you’re not enthused about accounting, perhaps you might consider an actuarial career?

10

You’re less than half my age and you’re worried about not having your life in order?

You think it’s bad now, wait until you get to be my age.
You still won’t have your life in order, but you won’t have the knees, back, energy to care.

Life is like house cleaning, no matter how much you’ve done you always see something else that needs wiping, dusting, polishing, scrubbing, vacuuming, painting, sprucing, repaired or replaced.

If you ever do reach that place in your life where you finally feel like you’ve got it all together you can be sure some asshole is going to come along and screw it all up for you

or you’ll drop dead from the shock.

11

Wear Sunscreen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

12

DON’T PANIC

And also, always remember to bring a towel.

13

I had a significant slump in my life at about the age you’re at now, though for completely different reasons. It took me quite a lot longer to get out of it than it should have, in fact I’m still not completely out of it. I often found the advice of other people really didn’t help me much because they either didn’t understand the situation, or grossly overestimated or underestimated how different things affected me. Still, for what it’s worth, I’ll share my thoughts with you.

“You don’t water dead grass.” This is probably the biggest one, and it’s one of those one’s that sounds cliche, but it’s the truth. You just have to do things.

Anyway, what that expression means to me is that if you’re sitting around unmotivated, you’re going to stay unmotivated. It can easily become a self-inforcing cycle where you’re unmotivated, so you do less, you become even less motivated, and do less. Next thing you know you’re at the bottom of a hole and you have no idea how you dug yourself so deep.

For me, it came down to forcing myself to do certain things even when completely unmotivated, and it was difficult. In my case, my previous source of motivation was completely gone, so I had to come up with a new one. Sitting around unmotivated, I wasn’t even willing to find a new motivation. But just getting myself doing some of the things that I ultimately would want to do or used to love to do, and some motivation just sort of starts to appear. And once I had those motivations, it helps a lot elsewhere.

For me, at least, it was a matter of perspective. I felt so far behind of where I would have been had I not lost that source of motivation. But I realized that I was still in a pretty good spot. You just can’t keep focusing on the past. Use the past and where you’ve been as a means to learn, and let it go.

So, for you, you’re getting healthy now, you’re not in untreaded ground financially, you have an opportunity to go to a good university for accounting. Focus on the good things. If you need some confidence boosters, set some small but still meaningful and reasonably achievable goals, that’s worked well for me at least.

Practice. There are a lot of various memory techniques out there I’ve seen. Some of them may work for you, some not. But ultimately, your brain is like a muscle and it has to be used. You may never get awesome short term memory, but finding some exercises or techniques that leverage things you are good at can make noticeable improvements.

My own story isn’t particularly relevant to what you’re going through, but the optimistc approach of “this too will pass” helps. For me, once I reoriented and set my eyes back on the horizon, even though I’m still not really sure exactly where I’m going, it made all the difference.

14

I’m 28. Didn’t start getting my shit together until I met a guy. And even then, my shit is still pretty fucked-up. Just do your best, keep on chugging as much as you can. Take your vitamins, drink plenty of water, exercise if you can. Academically and career-wise, network as best as you can and fake it until you make it. Once you make it, you’ll still feel like you’re faking it–this is totally normal. Find something and/or someone to love, and don’t let go of it.

Most of all, take comfort in the fact that, no matter how many mistakes you make, nothing you do will matter 100 years from now. Unless you make the mistake of becoming a serial killer, of course. :wink:

15

Changed the title as you requested.

16

That’s good advice, and it should help with procrastination, but I must ask; how do you persist in doing it? I’ve tried to do something but I get tired. What keeps

I suspect I was let in for diversity purposes.

Is this the white-collar equivalent to saying “Don’t feel bad about not having the latest phone, there are starving children in Somalia”?

Douglas Adams?

Excellent advice, thank you. Recently I’ve been trying to motivate myself by doing small things that show rapid progress, I am hopefully ready to ramp up to bigger, slower to show fruit projects. You are right, acting unmotivated leads to less motivation.

Yes, I shouldn’t ruminate on the past. It’s funny, I used to blame myself for getting depressed, but when I found out it was actually brain-damage outside my control, I felt like a load had left my shoulders.

Thanks.

17

Stay as healhty as possible as long as possible. Having had a health scare and long-term issues the reason for this should be obvious, but how you do that is:
[ul]
[li]Eat healthy[/li][li]Get some exercise/keep moving[/li][li]Learn to relax[/li][li]Get a hobby and do it for an hour a day[/li][li]Moderation in all things[/li][/ul]

You’re not behind. Actually, no matter how “ahead” a person is circumstances may at some point require them to reinvent yourself. If you can keep a roof over your head (even if it’s a small one) and food on your table (even if it’s basic) and pay your bills you’re doing OK. Really. Anything else is gravy.

Even if you don’t meet the minimal requirements listed above (maybe you’re couch surfing or something) don’t despair - lots of people have been where you are and climbed back up to something better.

Meanwhile - take advantage of inexpensive entertainment. Spend an hour a day enjoying yourself. It’s OK, really. After all, what are you working so hard for, if not to get some enjoyment out of life somewhere?

Read widely and in diverse categories. If you’re in a college course of course do the reading for that.

Practice, practice, practice. Games that involve the use of short term memory can be a pleasant way to do that.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Keep it simple.
Enjoy the little things.
Don’t sacrifice the “good enough” in pursuit of the “perfect”.

18

You know, I heard something a long time ago, and it’s just as pertinent today as it was then. Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice - pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
mmm

19

{slight hijack}
You lie about your age? Why? And why wouldn’t people believe you when you tell them this? Just odd all around.

{slight hijack}

20

How you got in is irrelevant; that you’ll be studying here has me wondering why you think your life doesn’t have some kind of (favourable) order to it.

Be ecstatic that you were accepted by ‘the second best’ - ANU may be the top university, but Canberra sucks watermelon-sized dog balls.
And thanks, Clint0! Had forgotten that one.