So, you are stuck.
You have tons of responsibilities, important meetings, calls, school, kids, pets, but also hobbies, your own health, friends, family to take care of, etc.
And because of this you don’t know where to start. So naturally, you do almost nothing.
At the end of the day you found out, you procrastinated the whole day.
You feel bad about yourself, and about your life.
You always wanted more but you feel stuck in this never ending cycle and you don’t feel any motivation to do better.
You feel sad and depressed.
Yeah, I’ve been there.
And to be honest sometimes I’m still feeling like this.
I read a study the other day from Oracle and it said that 75% of people feel “stuck” personally and professionally. It was during the pandemic but I don’t think this number changed much since then.
But you still can escape from this vicious circle.
During the years I came across different techniques and methods. These techniques are supposed to help with productivity and motivation. I tried most of them but I stuck to a couple of them. I’m sharing with you my top 5.
These techniques can help you too. But remember there is no “fits to all” solution.
You have to try, explore and find something that is suitable for your own life and situation.
Brain Dump
Do you know Mari Kondo? She cleans and declutters homes. She wrote:
“The true goal of tidying is to clear away clutter so you can live the life you want.”
And I believe that this is the same with your brain.
You don’t have to carry all these thoughts all day or night.
Put them on a piece of paper, create a to-do list from them, put the tasks into a calendar.
Make a list of all thoughts, tasks you carry inside your head.
After that you can focus on the most important ones.
You can do it in the morning or before bed, it’s your choice.
5 Minute Rule
Name something you hate doing because it takes forever to finish.
Like writing an essay for example.
Your brain knows you hate it, it knows it takes forever to finish it so you postpone it until it is too late.
I don’t remember where I saw this rule but it works.
Tell yourself that you spend only 5 minutes on that task. Your brain is like: “yeah, 5 minutes is nothing, i can do it.”
You sit, take a stopwatch and measure 5 minutes working on that essay.
Doesn’t matter if you write one sentence or whole paragraph.
But you started. And 98% of the time when you finish the 5 minutes, you feel like doing more.
You will not want to end it because you are already doing it.
This helped me to do so many things during my studies.
Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method.
It is based on 25-minute stretches of focused work broken by five-minute breaks. You can play around to find what timings suit you best.
I love this for many reasons.
Helps you to manage your tasks into blocks. You'll definitely do more during those 25 minutes.
Because you know you will have a break to scroll through social media or get a snack.
It’s also good to get rid of any distractions during your pomodoro sessions. You can use a kitchen timer to measure your time.
I love those aesthetic youtube videos with pomodoro timers and jazz study music.
It looks nice and cozy and you get that “I’m the main character” feeling :)
Time Blocking
Time blocking will definitely improve your life.
It’s simple: assign a fixed period of time to a task, schedule it and stick to it. It works because this helps you to single-task.
Single-task is the best when you feel overwhelmed with responsibilities.
You focus on one task.
Thanks to this you finish it faster and more precisely.
Simply because you don’t distract yourself with other things.
The tricky part is taking a task and estimating how long they’ll take. But this skill improves with practice.
Taking a Rest Day
One of the really important things is to learn that one day doing nothing is OK.
I felt miserable when I was laying in the bed feeling without any energy.
I punished myself for being lazy and not as productive as I wanted to be.
But I had to learn that one day of binge watching Netflix series is not going to ruin my life.
I also feel the pressure of the hustling lifestyle that is thrown on each of us from every corner. You feel like missing out and being left behind.
But that is NOT true.
Every person has their own pace, different journey, life situations and possibilities. So don’t try to compare yourself to anyone.
It's great to take a rest day and enjoy your time.
Thanks to this your brain will rest, your mood is going to improve, you boost your creativity and ideas. And the next day you will feel much better and you will crush it again!
You can definitely do much more to stay productive.
But as I always say: “there is strength in simplicity”.
It is important to pick one you can stick to for a long period of time.
Don’t beat up yourself for not being 100% perfect all the time.
Some tasks can be postponed. No big deal.
Most important thing is to be happy with who you are, and where you at.
Talk to you soon.
~ Karolina
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