Man just put a tarp down and let it cure in a hot room if you can. I had the same thing happen with all-purpose compound but caught my cat mid squat on a bucket of it. Blocked off that room for a day with a fan blowing on it and the mud was hard enough to sand after like 8 hours. The 90 minute stuff sets up chemically so you gotta mix small batches and work fast. I switched to using a plastic mixing tray with a lid so I can seal it up between coats. Keeps the cat out and the mud fresh enough to use later.

Haha the "makes me wonder what's actually in those little packets" part got me. I had a buddy who worked at a flower shop for like a summer and he told me they used to just mix up their own version in a big bucket. Said it was basically sugar, lemon juice, and a tiny splash of bleach. He claimed the flowers would last almost two weeks if you changed the water every few days and added a fresh pinch of sugar. One time he forgot to put the bleach in and the water got all cloudy and gross by day three. So yeah I think the little packets are just a convenient version of that old school hack.

emerycarr nails it with that "designed by people who never actually have to use them" bit. It's like they hand you a fancy blueprint and then you're left to figure out how to actually work in the space. I swear, someone thought the collapsible ladder thing would be a cute feature, but they never once had to haul it up three flights of stairs while a toilet's running over. Same with those motion-sensor paper towel dispensers that always seem to spit out one tiny square when your hands are dripping wet. It's a small thing, but it really does wear on you after a while.

The 5 minute timer trick got me through a rough patch too. I also use a free app called Insight Timer since it has a simple bell that just rings at the start and end of your sit with no goals or streaks to worry about. Ditching the gamification helped me stop treating meditation like another chore I was failing at.

The structured studying part is what got me. I picked up a cert last year and found out I'd been doing a lot of stuff wrong for years just because I learned on the job. Stuff like proper subnetting and security best practices that nobody at my old place bothered with. It's not that you can't learn that on your own, but having a syllabus forces you to cover the boring stuff you'd skip otherwise. Pair it with your actual work experience and you look way more legit in interviews.