ElizabethShermet

Balance is just searching for balance along the way.

There is no such thing as an ideal schedule, perfect regularity, or continuous performance.

My biggest mistake? Expecting to find a single solution and getting frustrated when I fail.

Also, that desire to get everything right now, regardless of the effort it takes.

The point is, it’s quite hopeless to rely on an optimal single solution, just as it’s hopeless to believe you’d do the same stuff every single day. Nope.

Lately, I’ve been working on my ideal schedule: how to combine full-time work, intense studies, yoga classes, blogging, and some rest.

Additionally, there’s the immigration background—legal paperwork, running a home by myself, family far away, and trying to build a social circle from scratch.

The list is infinite. My capacity is limited.

So, I screwed it up. Not because of the list, but because of my desire for «perfect» performance, which is just not possible.

I won’t share exactly how I failed, but trust me, it was a spectacular failure.

I had every minute scheduled from wake-up to bedtime.

However, I haven’t counted one thing—well, a few things—the emotional impact, the physical impact, and just being tired of myself.

Good news! I fixed it: just ignore those failures and keep going, pretending the crash never happened. Gone. Forgotten.

In ML, we work with huge datasets where we have enormous amounts of records. When we classify those data, we always have outliers.

Outliers are the records that are impossible or pointless to use while training models or making decisions. In data science, we simply ignore them so they don’t skew the whole picture.

In real data, the amount of outliers can be 100s of records, and this is totally fine. So what if I can take my failures as outliers? Like a system bug, just an accident.

You haven’t changed because of a few things that you’ve done. You just did something which doesn’t belong to the overall system—this is not the end of the world.

All that to say, the point of a permanent solution is the search for the one based on circumstances or ignoring them if they are just outliers.

This is the balance, I believe.
Cheers.

📌Loneliness as a focus mode.

I’m not here to spread loneliness propaganda or promote an antisocial lifestyle. I just want to share my observations.

When I started learning programming, most of my time was spent on complex materials. My active social life gradually became weaker.

My stories about achievements sounded like a list of weird terms to my friends. Our interests became different: I chose to stay home and learn instead of talking about things that gave me nothing.

⚡️It wasn’t because I thought I was better than them — I was just saving my brain capacity and energy.

After moving to Canada, the situation became harder. I was alone not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t know anyone. Finding people with the same interests was harder than I thought.

🙃Sometimes it was scary. I had a thought: “Is something wrong with me?” The hardest part was the fear that it would stay like this forever.

But this silence helped me understand myself better. Who I really want to have in my life. How I’d like to spend my free time, and to whom I should dedicate my efforts, energy, and attention.

⚡️These are highly important things. My energy, strength, and presence hold a lot of value.

💡I started to filter who I talk to and for how long. It’s not about feeling better than others; it’s a way to save my focus.

💡I stopped participating in «politeness talks» just for attention or out of habit. I reduced cognitive noise.

I can still join in small talk at the grocery store or the gas station, but it’s a completely different thing. You don’t share your depth with strangers.

I freed up space for knowledge, real insights, and people who actually matter. I found people who like me and share a similar mindset.

This is valuable. I wish I had found them earlier.

⚡️Our surroundings are crucial for our lives!

That said, it’s not about isolation. It’s about priorities.

Always open to chat. Cheers🫶

💡Discipline is just a regular habit, like brushing your teeth.

I’ve read a lot about discipline from various sources. However, I was still struggling to understand how it’s actually supposed to work.

❓How was I supposed to figure out that I’ve officially «installed» a new habit?

I’ve tried to make it work hundreds of times with no success, until I understood that the main point is just doing it as a regular thing.

⚡️That means: no follow-up questions or thinking in terms of:

• What exactly do I need to do?
• Oh no, I don’t have enough desire/motivation/inspiration today.
• Should I do it today or can I do it later?

Do you ever ask yourself these things before you start brushing your teeth?🧐 Me — nope.

The secret was just to do what I needed: a task, an assignment, cleaning — whatever — regardless of my mood or thoughts about rescheduling.

➡️Do it for just 30 minutes, but DO it.

Even if it’s a small step and you think 30 minutes won’t change the overall picture — it does.

Every small step increases your duration and decreases the effort.

Every time I forced myself to do a small piece, the next time became easier to start and lasted longer.

💡Give it 7–10 solid efforts and you’ll see the change.

This was the hardest part where I used to give up. I didn’t know I just needed a few more sessions to get there.

📌Now, I don’t wait for a mood. I just call the discipline() function.

Always open to chat. Cheers🫶

🇺🇦Ukrainian version is in the carousel ❤️

❓Dopamine Intoxication: Why you can’t feel your limits.

I’ve noticed a pattern: the more tasks I solve, the more I want to keep going. It’s easy to confuse this for «inspiration,» but it’s actually just chemistry. And even though I’m aware of this, I still make the same mistake.

In programming, there’s a concept called an infinite loop—it’s when a task keeps repeating forever as long as a certain condition is true.

In my case, that condition was «I don’t feel tired». But a program doesn’t stop because it’s «satisfied»; it crashes when it runs out of memory. Stack overflow.

Recently, my «battery» hit zero—suddenly. Insomnia and a total lack of energy followed, even though just the day before I felt «more than good».

⚡️I realized that dopamine creates an illusion—as long as things are going well, everything seems fine.

⚡️I was running on credit borrowed from my own body.

I ignored my actual resources because the «reward» felt too good. But the body, unlike a program, doesn’t just «die» and stay there; it forces you to spend time on a slow, painful recovery.

💡Now, I’ve designed a new approach to my schedule. I don’t rely on how I «feel» at the moment.

🔎Instead, I analyze the logic:
1. How much effort have I actually spent today?
2. What is the complexity of what I’ve done?
3. Am I ignoring the need for my brain to process information?

Pauses and rest are not signs of weakness or incapacity. They are essential for high productivity and performance.

I’m learning to exit the loop not when I’m exhausted, but when it’s rational to do so.

If you’ve ever felt this way, just know you’re not broken—you just took on too much.

Always open to chat! Cheers🫶

🇺🇦 Ukrainian version is in the carousel👆

❓Why does thinking about an action take more time than the action itself?

I started writing to figure out something that has lived in my head for a long time. Later, I found its name in psychology: Imposter Syndrome.

It has been with me for a while, but I only recognized it when I started examining my thoughts:

🔸I don’t know enough to speak about it.
🔸It was just luck, it wasn’t complicated.
🔸I need a bit more experience, and then…

The problem is that “then” and “enough” never happen. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I still have to learn — which only strengthens the doubts.

For three weeks, I’ve been preparing posts while looking for excuses not to start. Instead of writing, I’ve wasted energy on these thoughts:

🔹I don’t have enough topics.
🔹Someone will judge me or think I’m silly.
🔹This will sound too harsh.

I noticed a cycle:

Doubt ➡️Pause➡️Analysis➡️More doubt.

It takes more energy than the actual action.

This pattern appears at work too. I often doubt my solutions. Even after closing the task, my inner critic says: “The task was easy. If it were complex, I wouldn’t manage.”

It’s the same with learning. If I need a hint or make a mistake, the criticism begins: “I don’t know anything. I’m not capable of anything.”

It’s time to let this go. Not because I’m no longer afraid, but because there’s no point replaying scenarios that may never happen while devaluing my results.

Even if a fear becomes real, I’ve lived it so many times in my head — I know I can handle it.

I can’t control other people’s reactions; I’m responsible only for my actions. I can’t know in advance what someone will think.

And I can’t say that I “don’t have enough topics.” Calling someone silly just because they share their thoughts doesn’t make sense.

What I can control is whether I keep postponing action because of imagined consequences or continue spending energy on inner conflict instead of real tasks.

Maybe with time, I’ll learn to manage not only my actions but also these thoughts.

For now, I choose action over doubt.

P.S. The Ukrainian version is in the carousel.

I’m already missing those days🥹
Why do holidays always fly by so quickly?

🌃Night Paris feels romantic at every step.

I’ve never seen so many proposals along the walking paths before🥹 It was quite beautiful and fascinating to look at☺️

I couldn’t wait for my plane to land so I could share these amazing memories.

I’ll miss you, Paris 🥰

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?🙃

Office mood.
Today was the first work day in a new company and in a new position😱
If you wanna know what is it just go to my Linkedin😉 (link in profile)

Such a beautiful view 💕
It was a really cool event 🤩