For me:

1. Set goals
2. Accomplish those goals

That’s what gives me the best feedback. The more realistic goals I set and the more often I accomplish them, the better I feel. Bonus points for setting “due dates” for bigger goals and seeing if you can meet your own deadline.

That’s about the same model as I have (I’m using a slightly older X260) and Blender works plenty fine, even on decently demanding stuff. An important note is to make sure to reduce the default tile size to something like 256 if you’re using Cycles for rendering to prevent memory issues. Other than that, I’ve had no issues with modeling or Eevee rendering.

Assuming it allows for it, I recommend upgrading your RAM to 16GB. 8 is fine for if you’re just working in Blender, but once you’re following a tutorial and are doing some browsing while listening to a YouTube video in the background, things can start to slow down.