Have any anons found themselves obsessed with a particular area,

>>7677381
Spent a number of years that way, on various topic. Ultimately burnt out for mostly unrelated reasons.

I imagine I could go back if I wanted, but that hyperfixation made me half mad at the same time. I definitely lost perspective and became myopic. Then I started lying without knowing it.

>>7677386
How did you get to that state in the first place?

Could you elaborate on going half mad and the lying?

Thanks for the response.

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I have it too atm.

But it's more the drive to materialize a vision I have, which keeps me interested in math.

I see it more as a tool to create, so proving stuff when I don't need, but have to, does still annoy me but I know I have to do it in order to improve.

But when I stumple upon my own problems, finding the solution is as funny as playing a video game.

Sadly I now have stumpled upon a problem so complex, it makes me think I'd might not be able to contribute to its solution in my life, as I have imagined. that makes me kinda sad.

So if im not meant to be the one to use math for building machines, I can surely combine it with art to create something beautiful.

>>7677593
This. I too recently realized that solving math problems is infinitely more rewarding and practical than killing champions in league of legends.

>>7677381
This happened to me with online programming competitions. I kind of lost it.

I signed up to a local hackerspace and burrowed myself in there.
I spent last summer binge coding everything on hacker-rank. code-eval and project euler. I finished all problems on code-eval in both python and java along completing an uncharacteristically large portion of project euler and hacker-rank problems.

I got into a habit of 14-18 hours a day and burning through $120 a week on redbull and cliff bars and meal shakes.

About 5 weeks into it I noticed that I've lost about 16 pounds of weight, had trouble breathing sometimes, had weird issues peeing, and had extremely awkward interations with the people I knew at the hackerspace.

I kept at it some more and eventually finished all hacker-rank problems and all but about 15 project euler problems.

I eventually got foobared by google one day and lost it. I just froze up on a level three problem that should have only taken me a half hour tops and spent three days obsessed and hopelessly coding in circles.

When I finally finished it I stepped back and realized that school had already started about half a week ago and that I hadn't shaved in a very long while. There where red-ish pimples on my back. Talking to people. Even just listening to them felt weird.

Im acing my algorithms class though. Im also getting emails from people wanting to hire me through code-eval and hacker-rank.

>>7677937
>habit of 14-18 hours a day
I wish I could do that

>>7677937
That's an interesting story, anon. I would love to have an experience like yours, although it does sound a little frightening.

Have you always tended towards that kind of obsession? Do you know what triggered it?

I do that atm. Of course, there are limitations like working, excercises for some courses 'n' shit, but all my free time is basically just studying more homological algebra. Why I do it is partly due to interest and partly escaping anxiety and deppressive/suicidal thoughts.

It gives me the tranquility I long for.

>>7678310
Not him, but I used to be able to obsess over something for months. Until I was completely satisfied.

I can't do it now, mostly because of other distractions and shit on my mind.

The formulae for me is:
- Get interested in X
- Have absolutely nothing else to care about
Leads me to autistic obsession that makes me learn a lot, quite quickly.

I wish I could get it back now.

>>7677937

rofl, that's pretty intense

>>7677381

I've done this a few times.

The first time it was just general Russian shit. I read books on the Gulag, the Cold War, biographies of Stalin, Khruschev, histories of Russia leading up to WWI, and then up to the modern day, a ton of Russian literature (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorky), and then one day I just kind of finished a book on the Gulag, and was like I guess I'm done with that.

Another time got spurned by the fact that I got a few months subscription to the Wall Street Journal for like 5 bucks. I started looking through the Business section one day, and then spent the next few months devouring everything finance/economics related I could find. I realized later I had actually learned most of a finance degree. This one didn't end as suddenly. I still have a couple books that I'll probably read through at some point, but I'm definitely not sitting at my desk for like 8+ hours just taking notes, making flashcards, and shit.

Those were the only two really significant ones. Other ones would be like when I spent a week in my room learning German.

>>7677937
How good did you become at programming? Like did you become a top scorer on Top Coder?

Also, out of curiosity if you know, how much do you get offered from the people who contact you?

>>7678618
>Other ones would be like when I spent a week in my room learning German.

How far did you get?

>>7677386
this 100%. no one should maintain that lifestyle op.

>>7678670
If you wan to make advances in big topics, sometimes you have to be like that.

Look at Nima Arkani-Hamed. Everyone who has interacted with him says that he's basically obsessed with physics. Like people say that at dinner, he talks about physics for like 3 hours straight. I read something where they asked Ed Witten what he does for fun and he basically laughed and said that he basically did 3 things "family, tennis, and physics" and I doubt he did the former two for more than 2-3 hours a day at best.

Andrew Wiles spending 7 years working on Fermat's Last Theorem....

I don't think it's bad as long as you like it and it isn't stressing you out

>>7678666

I ended up taking it for my 3 required language classes, and literally didn't have to study for any part of it. It was just 101-103 though.

>>7678690
So you learned like 3 semesters of German in 1 week?

>>7678698

I guess. You gotta remember that language classes move pretty painfully slow, though. Especially the first two. It's not like I did 3 semesters of mathematics in a week.

People like Alexander Arguelles have a lot of great advice to offer in terms of techniques, and materials to use.

>>7677381
I've done this.
>Start first year of university as chemistry student
>Don't know any maths beyond high school calculus
>Required to take one 3 month course on slightly more advanced topics such as matrices and complex numbers and infinite series as part of first year
>Matrices were boring as fuck, never got the hang of it but got obsessed with complex numbers and infinite series
>Lessons had only gone as far as De Moivre's Theorem and the Taylor series but by the end of the year I had taught myself enough complex analysis to come up with my own original infinite series representation of the cosine function derived from polylogarithms, the Riemann zeta function, even some weird shit called Pochhammer symbols
>Failed actual chemistry degree

>>7678740
So what did you do after?

im focused on breakthrough propulsion physics and nuclear cold fusion. i plan to discover ftl and cold fusion by the end on 2017.

>>7677381
>>mundane worries like money become background noise
This is actually seriously fucking up my life.

>>7678888
How

>>7678914
Are you really asking him how money problems could be fucking his life?

What kind of sheltered millennial scumfuck are you?

>>7678920
His post was ambiguous (and so was mine). I was asking "how" did the entire thing happen. Is he so focused on something that his current money problems are just background noise, and as he doesn't solve them, that is fucking up his life? Or is he just a regular guy with money problems that unsurprisingly are fucking up his life? Or what?

>>7678829
I signed up to another chemistry degree elsewhere, flopped that too, realized I'm too creative for university so have spent the past few years working on self-employment.
>Do maths
Nope actually not talented at maths, I have no idea what happened during that winter of 2011. Doesn't pay well anyway.

>>7678967
Legit curious here, anon. How old are you? What do you work with? Is it ok money? Are you happy?

>>7678977
23
I have three businesses, delivery drones, renting spare room to lodger and novelty soap. The room rental makes a couple hundred pounds a month but I spend it all on the other two businesses. I am extremely happy. I am full of vision for my drone. The successful hybridization of petrol and electricity in a multicopter will unleash the possibility of flying cars and hoverboards. I have talked about these things on /sci/ but nobody took me seriously which is kind of something I didn't like about the pure sciences; it's hard to be taken seriously unless you have a certain standing. With engineering the proof is in the pudding. The soap thing is actually a spin-off of the drone development, I bought this really nice crafted soap and I thought that I could do this for cheaper with all my CAD and 3D printed knowledge gained from making the drone so I printed moulds and now I sell to shops.

>>7679012
>I'll bite

So you could say you're like OP described, in a sense. How many hours a day do you spend working on your businesses?

>>7679044
Couple hours a day. Yep I even produce full documents on the working of the system. I am literally trying to emulate a real engineering company. There is a process. First calculations, if it's feasible it gets archived in an official document for later reference, then CAD drawings, these are printed out and archived too. Review of all these documents then final approval for construction. 3D printer is started up, anything I can't do at home like laser cutting or CNC machining that's outsourced. It's not pure autism, doing this saves money. Before I was running it like a casual hobby, building and designing as I go along, something went wrong have to start all over again. Also if I want to patent anything I have clear descriptions filed away. So yeah I'm like OP wrapped up in my little "fantasy Lockheed" but there is a serious aim, I want to market this.

>>7677381
>Mundane worries like money become background noise
Not really the case with me. Freshman year uni I asked a professor if electron orbitals were directly related to Smale's Paradox. She told me prove it and she'd give me research opportunity with her over the summer. Grades took a skyrocket down over one semester. Kicked out the next semester due to personal issues in the second semester. But the whole time I was working on that problem I couldn't help but not worry about my grades. Too obsessed with it.

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>failing two very basic courses
>even the people of a spookier complexion are passing these classes with flying colors
>try to convince myself i'm not stupid by doing math
>spend 4 hours chipping at the burnside problem
>was supposed to turn in a paper but didn't get it in on time because i was absorbed in the math
>turns out i'm actually an idiot

i'm going to fail these classes and it's going to kill my GPA and i'll have to work at chick fil a forever
i'm about ready to give up

That's me but only periodically. If I get interested in a new topic, I'll binge-watch 10 lectures on MIT OCW over the course of a day or two then burn out and not finish it. On one hand it's gotten me a few research opportunities and the entire math department at my uni knows my name. On the other hand I've developed a reputation for starting things then never finishing them.

>>7679101
Get your shit together, anon. You're not stupid.

"What one fool can do, another can".

>>7679091
Have you solved it? Still working on it?

>>7679101
>stupid

No, mate. Unless you are legit retarded, you can achieve anything (well, anything realistic) in a lifetime, provided you are willing to commit yourself. Whenever you are about to give up, just keep on going. Also, forget about comparing yourself to others -- just set a goal and work towards achieving it.

Summation and integrals. I fucking love this shit. Its more challenging than derivatives but its not out of the question difficult in most cases.

>>7679434
After being dropped from uni I sorta fell into a depression so it went kill. Still have all the information I need to continue. Though your little reply has sparked back the drive to work on it again.

>>7679732
What are you doing now? Did you get back to uni?

>>7679748
At a CC trying to get some credits out of the way. I'll see if I want to go back to the same one after this next semester

>>7677381
String Theory

>>7678888
#chekt