Boosting My Productivity

A sweet treat over the weekend

I have a confession. I am the queen of distractions...lol. It's still a work in progress for me to rid of the habit of being easily distracted, especially when I have actual things to do but I have a solution that I find is rather helpful. Okay, maybe very helpful because I managed to do up a custom order in one sitting yesterday night. And that is my most unproductive time when I am at home after a whole day at work, grocery and food shopping and then returning home to work out and eat. Yesterday I didn't exercise so I used that time to do up the order. 

But it's about balance too. Prior to that, I was watching an anime episode and before I got sucked into watching more episodes, I ended it there and went into 'work' mode. What helped is breaking down the time, to 5 minutes each. For example, I will take 5 minutes to do the foundation layout, rest for 1 min and then another 5 minutes to do the next step. And so on until I finished the order. If it was rather taxing and I know I wouldn't be able to finish that certain task within 5 minutes, it is ok to go over the limit, say 10 minutes. I also didn't want do a shabby work just coz I wanna clock it within that time limit.

I don't think nobody is immune to not being distracted. There are many things 'calling' for your attention, even those that didn't bring about benefits such as bingeing on youtube videos or Netflix for some people. But we need to train ourselves to re-focus our attention to the tasks. Every 5 minutes time slot 'forces' me to focus on finishing it within that time. It helps me to be present. Not exploring the distractions within my reach such as checking on instagram. 

I try my best to remain focused within that 5 minutes before boredom and distraction set in. Simple tasks such as cleaning the messy table by telling myself, it's just 5 minutes. It forces me to clean it up instead of constantly looking at it and thinking about doing it later. That later may come much later, lol. 

I want to learn Spanish daily but sometimes I don't feel like it when the level gets a little harder than before and I  just feel unmotivated. Now I just tell myself again, it's just 5 minutes. So I don't get myself distracted and learn the language on the App. Actually, the app is good that you also just need 5 minutes to brush up on your Spanish lessons or learn a new one. But psychologically, when I tell myself that it's just 5 minutes, I just open the app and start learning though I will end up taking more than 5 minutes as I also write down so I can learn them better.

I also struggle to read daily. The latest mini challenge I did, from a private IG group, is to read for 5 minutes yesterday. It again forced me to read as 5 minutes is not that long. So I took the opportunity to read a book on kindle that I have putting off reading coz I have another reading material that is more interesting coz of it was of a more fantasy and adventure fiction, rather than non fiction with a heavier content.

We generally need a boost of motivation to do something, especially when we don't set the intentions or the tasks seem very mundane. For me, it's doing filing at work. So now I say, 5 minutes! Then I quickly punched holes and then file file file..and oh, I'm done! 

The custom orders that I mentioned earlier, they were many steps involved so halfway through, I can easily lose the motivation and start to get distracted. So i break it down into several tasks to be completed within 5 minutes each. Again, it's not a rule to be exactly 5 minutes each. As I get into the flow, the accumulated time will increase until the final work is done within one and a half hour. 

It is also useful to set the intentions right at the beginning. Why do I wanna clean this table? So I can do work on a clutter free table and be more focused, instead of looking at that annoying mess. So I can be productive. Why do I write this blog post? Because I wanna use this post to organise my thoughts and perhaps share the content with other people that may find it useful. Though now I rely on my journal to sort out my thoughts now, and less on writing on the blogpost, I still enjoy writing. And now I try to turn each post into a purposeful post, rather than just complaining or the ways on how my life is lacking. 

The thing about time is when it's gone, it's gone. You can't backtrack time. You can't bring back the lost time you spent on the many distractions or lying on the bed and on the phone. So we try our best to plan our time out well. Yes things may not always go with our plan but do we always have to make good use of it as much as we can. 

This morning I watched some IG stories and people sharing how they spent their mornings. And oh my gosh they were so productive. They planned their schedules well such as ok, around this time I send my children to school, then I go to supermarket for groceries, Starbucks for a quick coffee run, go home to clean and do Zumba. After that, block the time to do work from home to earn some dough. Then fetch the children and continue with their work or spend the time with their families. 

So amazing.

For singles like me, it doesn't mean that I can't schedule my time because I don't have things to do such as cleaning and cooking or fetching the children. I also block time for self care, to gain knowledge or creating. I believe everyone's life can be made more purposeful if we spend the time to self reflect on how we best make use of the time to benefit ourselves and others, rather than to compare our lives and thinking why can't we be like that. And also to reflect on what we should spend more time on and less time on. Instead of spending half an hour reading this comic for entertainment when I can use it to read a motivational book. Yes it's me.

Remember progress does not equal to perfection. We don't have to be so perfect that things have to flow a certain way to be accepted as a progress. For example, learning a new knowledge that needs time for us to understand and recall in order to reap the benefits. It's okay if the facts don't enter our minds immediately or within a short period of time. It's also okay if we tend to mix up the new and old knowledge. Happens to me all the time, lol. Over time, when I have fully learnt it, example memorising a prayer, and then recalling it off the bat, without hesitation, it felt like I achieve something. The hard work was worth it. 

To me, every struggle, every frustration and the struggles to memorise, make me appreciate it more because of the time and effort to get here. And the dedication and the consistency to keep learning, writing and reading leading to the sweet success to mastery or the completion of something meaningful.

All started from the first 5 minutes. Just like this blog post :)