And another one I like to use is this one:
>"It's so much harder to start than it is to stop."
In other words, it takes a lot of effort to get a large ball moving, but once its moving its hard to stop the momentum. What this means is that once you get going you'll often find it easier than you thought it would be. Besides that, there is, rationally speaking, basically no excuse for not starting early. Either you finish earlier which is great, or you find out that the task is significantly harder than you expected which is also great because this means that you have more time to fix it.
Finally, please keep in mind that "all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it." In this case, a European PhD student in econometrics, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Feel free to add your own mantras or advice of course.
This is like a long-winded version of one of my favourites:
>"Fight battles small enough to win that are big enough to matter."
> "Dear God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Basically Stoicism in a nutshell. I like this one and I like to practice it but I don't repeat, chant this one often in my mind now that I think about it ... the next 2 I repeat daily, nay, hourly, nay, even more probably.
> "There is never enough time to do everything, but there's always enough time to do the most important thing."
It's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the whole world (trust me, I've been there) but there is no escaping this. In the long run we're all dead anyway. There is basically always an infinite amount of things we can do but often there is only ONE thing that adds the most value or is the most important thing RIGHT now.
> "Look at how far youve come already."
For some reason this one motivates me because of all the hardships I've experienced already. I'm alive. I'm breating. I'm here. I'm going where I want to go. I have overcome all adversities in the past why should I not overcome this one? Let's go!
The first one is basically
Besides this, earplugs are SO nice. Just not hearing so much noise really really calms me down.