>>253 (part 1/2)
1) Self-improvement is realized through baby steps as you reprogram your System 1 thinking to get closer to your ideal. If anyone tells you to take a larger step than that, they're probably underestimating the difficulty. The major exception being: if they were/are an expert at the thing you want to be good at and also a good teacher, they're probably trying to tell you the easy way to do something. Personally, I've been trying to improve my speed so I'm not so awful at fast video games. A few months of playing a shitload of Osu! has genuinely improved my eyesight and reflexes, and taught me a bit about how skill improvement even works.

2) Almost all good advice I've run across in self-help is a bastardized version, restatement, or practical application of what the Stoics preached nearly 2000 years ago, who in turn did not formulate their ideas in ways that are easy to grok in plain English, no matter how pithy the statements get. The virtuous life is the only easy path, yet it is incredibly difficult. It's the calling of a saint, after all, to be a good person (albeit one who makes mistakes); yet few people seem to achieve even that. Accordingly, it is hard to give a comprehensive picture of what I have found to be "good advice", and I do not yet live "the good life" myself. My own lame excuse is that my life is just that messed up and full of trauma, that I will need a few more years of mental reprogramming to really get going.

But to sum up about three years of this research:
■Have concrete goals, take steps to get there. Do look back, don't stop having goals. Even setting and achieving goals is a skill that you might suck at at first; it will get better.
■Be committed to objective truth when possible, and focus on the objective truths that are helpful instead of the ones that aren't.
■Try to write out any significant thoughts you have, and have a system for revisiting them later.
■Try to catch bad thoughts in the act, and don't beat yourself up for having them; instead, come up with what you want to think instead of that going forward, and by repetition you will eventually get to the second step faster, then skip the first step (this is the bullet-point version of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but again, that's just a repackaged Stoic tenet, the sort of thing they talked about over and over again)
■One of the most common bad thoughts is "fear of missing out". Guess what? It's a big universe, and there's only one you, so you're missing out on nearly everything anyway. It's more helpful to decide that you care about only a small number of things and work on those, even if you actually care a little bit about everything; human compassion is just as limitless as human greed, bounded only by time, space, basic economics... so, it is helpful to minimize this desire ("suffering", as translations of Buddhist doctrine often put it). Current events is the big such bugbear for a lot of people today: brands are not your gods, celebrities and politicians are not your community, corporations are not your friends; but it is okay to like these things in moderation and with reservation, and society is made of people. Try to humanize the way these things work; e.g. try not to use online shopping or self-checkout lanes to avoid talking to people, but because it is smoother for both you and the vendor to use actions instead of words.
■Try to value your margin of freedom, no matter how small; as long as you have a little bit of reasoning, you have at least the freedom to reason.
■No single pithy statement will fix your life, but you can make a few hundred of them come natural to you.

I wish I could put it way better than this, and there is more I feel like I'm missing (!), but I know that my wordiness tends to be accidentally obscurantist, so "brevity being [...] wit", I cut it off here. Still, if you are the master of a few principles, you might just end up with the power to withstand astonishing tides and furor. What to do with this power? "You must choose, but choose wisely."

(part 2/2)
3) Piotr Wozniak (ttps://supermemo.guru/) has valuable things to say about memory. Don't be intimidated by how his writings are both voluminous and info-dense, I just find a lot of it "good to know" and I have a(n unwanted) reputation of being "smart" in real life (N.B. that includes the company of several legitimate geniuses that have gone on to do brilliant things; but I have done nothing with my life). The major point is, you will forget things eventually, so just embrace it and focus on being an expert on your interests, and you can become an expert by using computers to remind you of things you don't want to forget.

Now, Spaced Repetition Software is not for everyone, but I've found it to be nearly miraculous for me to be able to remember a massive number of things. I've been trying to combine Anki with the methodology of the book Getting Things Done lately; it automatically brings up my "maybe somedays", and sometimes putting things off feels great just because you did it intentionally instead of failing to fulfill an obligation. The self-assurance that everything you "have to do" is in one place is pretty great.

4) Trying to fit all that diet/exercise/meditation/hygiene/good sleep/study/etc. in is worth it, but god damn, it takes a serious chunk of time out of every day. So if you want more of that kind of thing, that is time that needs to be expressly set aside.

5) Avoidant personality is probably one of the biggest undiagnosed mental issues out there that nobody's heard of. In part, it's "terminal" procrastination. That's so normal that nobody considers it a "disorder" unless it's causing a serious lack of function. I have had to reflect lately on how all this self-improvement study is a way to avoid job-hunting. Getting a job would be an easy mode escape from my narcissistic parents. But it means facing rejection, and my abusive upbringing seems to have helped me take rejection much more hard than most people seem to (which is saying something; most people do not seem to take it very well at all). Even now I fear rejection for posting all this drivel, but because you asked nicely, >>253, that makes a huge difference. Thank you.

(part bonus)

Ah, that was the thing that was bothering me. I did touch on it, but constant distraction and thoughtless stimulation is a huge stressor on the brain. That's been with humanity for a long time. Multitasking is a myth. But stuff like TV, games, and social media the way many people seem to use them is more like "tuning out" than "tuning in". I do not criticize these things per se; I would opine that there are lots of people who use/enjoy these things and use them in ways that make them net goods to humanity, and even people who use them in ways I would disapprove of often have a reality they do need a break from.

Bouncing from idea to idea and drawing interesting connections isn't just a sort of creativity; it's how our nervous systems make ideas that stick on the physical level! But where there is frequently no connection, bombardment of the senses, too much time in the exact same activity, this causes one to learn a kind of dullness as other things (even meaningful ones) are neglected connections that fall apart (yea, even unto the neurochemical bonds).

So I would say it is important to focus, but I would add it is important to have diverse experiences that surround that focus so that it's all in proper context. How I was able to build the kind of mental focus that allows me to read a book in one sitting while going through a childhood dominated by Mom's frequent tantrums and Dad's emotional insensitivity? All the other books I'd done the same to. Didn't mean I could focus in class or even get through the books I was assigned; in fact, at the time, I was quite baffled when I couldn't manage it. In retrospect, it was more that some books "speak to me" enough that I could manage it, and I didn't have the time, the rested mind, or the discipline to get through the ones I needed to put effort into.