YouTubing: Dr. K, Regrets, and Doing Shit to Improve Your Life
Or I’ve Been Doing These Things Before I Knew These Videos Existed, So I’m Ahead of the Game
A few days ago, the YouTube algorithm presented Dr. K and his Healthy Gamer videos. I’ve taken a cue from Noble Knight and have started calling myself a hardcore casual gamer, so I don’t really consider myself a gamer. Despite the branding, Dr. K’s advice applies to anyone. But Lord knows gamers need it the most.
I’ve already been practicing many of the actions he suggests, but some of his insights were completely new to me—such as chasing success leads to failure because people don’t stop to reflect on what they’ve already achieved. Or how having ADHD leads to fatigue because a racing mind is just as exhausting as hard physical work.
These are the videos that stand out for me right now.
Time Traps You In Regret
Action leads to hope.
By late 2024, I was so tired from living without a sense of direction and being caught in cycles, so I started moving anywhere that led me toward people who were happy to have me around.
I can’t remember where I first heard it, but there’s an idea that people spend 90% of their time and effort on 10% of the things (or people) in their life that aren’t working out. That was me in 2024, pouring energy into dynamics that took but never gave back or didn’t respect me.
I fell into the loop of ruminating, trying to figure out where I went wrong, until I realized that it really was a matter of “it’s not me, it’s them.”
Now I’m steadily shifting that 90% of my attention onto 90% of the things that do work or feel effortless. Hyperfocusing on projects helps, and it feels like I’m making up for lost time.
How To Make Life Easy
[In] order to make your life easy, you must be willing to live a hard life today. There are two kinds of people in life: The people who want an easy life so they seek an easy life and they avoid the hardness. And their life becomes hard. […] In search of an easy life, you create an easy life today, a life of indulgence, a life of lack of effort, a life where you screw yourself over tomorrow. Then your life will be hard.
Paradoxically, the ones who embrace a difficult life today will have an easier life tomorrow. And the more that you embrace difficulty, the easier your life will become until you reach a point where you are relatively sattva. And as you’re relatively sattva, something magical will happen: Your body will start to listen to you. And if your body and mind listen to you, you don’t need motivation, you don’t need willpower, because it is compliant. […] And then your life will truly become easy.
Life didn’t start to feel remotely easy until recently, and that’s because I stopped trying to force everything to align with my desires. I let go of the hope that people would act a certain way and started practicing more radical acceptance in every relationship, both personal and distant.
This person close to me in life will always do things behind my back and justify it.
This person is socially awkward and stuck in their loops, so a collaboration will never happen.
This person doesn’t care about me and will keep ignoring me.
This group wants help but is determined to stay in their self-destructive habits.
And so on.
Does it still hurt? Yes. Radical acceptance in itself is also painful, but I’d rather have the short-term sting of hard truths and work toward a point where they don’t hurt as much, rather than hang onto false hope and live in pain indefinitely.
Accepting that I may have ADHD has also helped. My days aren’t static, so I no longer stress if I don’t cross off everything on my to-do list. I don’t despair if I’m so tired I can only accomplish a single big task instead of the three I planned. I don’t want my days to be identical, and if this is how things are for now, then that’s the reality. The future is always open to change.
The Science Of Catching Up In Life
[Changing] your company is really important.
One thing I’ll never forgive society for is the expectation that everything must happen in your 20s—finding the perfect career, buying a house, starting and raising a family—and then coasting peacefully along without stumbles or obstacles until the safe, permanent embrace of death catches you.
This world doesn’t accommodate late bloomers. It wasn’t until I read Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement by Rich Karlgaard, a late bloomer himself, that I finally felt hope for myself. More importantly, I realized that I have several advantages over people who lucked into dream careers in their 20s and are now, in their 30s or 40s, floundering for some kind of change—or heavily resisting it.
I clearly needed to surround myself with people who wouldn’t judge me for being a late bloomer. It took years, but I eventually found them. Volunteering for the Friends of the Library led to grad school—an expensive form of help—which led to a group of people who want to help people no matter where they are in life. It’s a small world that shares a collective belief that we’re working for something greater than ourselves: Making knowledge and information accessible, something that’s more important than ever.
It’s not a perfect world. Some parts are still mired in outdated methodologies that produce no new results, and, despite a desire for change, some of the old guard resist it. I’m just surrounded by stubbornness (more radical acceptance). But from the start, people made it clear that they wanted to help newcomers like me. Some followed through, others were useless—as it is in any group.
But changing my company really did help. My confidence grew. Things started falling into place. Maybe just two or three things, but they were the things that mattered—like an internship opportunity with a special library.
How To Defuse Procrastination And Be Productive (Without Using Willpower)
Becoming aware that I might have ADHD has done wonders in helping me understand why I work the way I do—how easily I get distracted and the different ways I need to accommodate a brain that constantly craves novelty. Some days, that means starting my morning with half an hour of Minecraft, or jumping straight into work and then taking a break to play for 30 minutes. Other times, it could mean working in 20-minute sessions with 10-minute breaks to craft zines. And then there are the rare days when I feel like a “normal” grownup and do nothing but schoolwork and leave the fun stuff for the next day.
Then there’s the simple fact of having to do a task because not doing it makes me feel worse. Part of what helps is recognizing that the longer I put something off, the heavier it hangs over my head. So sometimes, it’s just about getting tired of seeing “add resume to portfolio” written in my planner week after week, and finally tackling it because I’m sick of rewriting it every time.
As appealing as a single solution to all my problems might be, it would actually be pretty boring. Accepting that some procrastination is inevitable, despite my desire to complete everything on my list, gives me a sense of peace. Some tasks just aren’t fun—like working on the portfolios my peers and I need to graduate—and not everything can be gamified. But sometimes, knowing that not everything is “game-y” adds an odd kind of variety to life, and that’s exactly what my brain needs.