Often times the big changes in our life comes from the negative emotions or unbearable situations.
When you can't bear the feeling of hangover, you decide to quit drinking.
When you can't walk more than a mile, you decide to start working out, you start to control your diet. Not before.
Slacking Off
We all have slacked off due to lack of motivation or inspiration. Or maybe due to too many distractions around us. Youtube shorts, random videos. A few small tasks that come out of nowhere. Things that happen in the world, you have nothing to do with them but you suddenly check twitter and now you want to know all about it.
Maybe you don't fall in any of these traps but I do. And I spend a lot of time in these unproductive things.
These things are not only unproductive but sucks a lot of energy. You feel lethargic. Not enough energy to do things that matter to you.
When I was a kid, watching tv for hours in the evening was a normal thing for me. Sometimes I would go out to play but the usual meaning of fun and enjoyment was to sit in front of tv and watch a whole lot of nothing for hours.
This behavior kept going on for years, till 2017. I changed the things I was consuming. Started watching web series and movies, but I was still consuming things, and not creating anything.
I never thought about how much time I was wasting. Or spending doing something I didn't care about. When people get old, I am sure not many of them would be proud of spending so much time doing nothing. Sitting like vegetables in front of their tv or laptops.
Yet, here we all are, doing exactly the same thing.
Just a rough mathematical calculation.
3 hours a day, for a month makes 3x30 → 90 hrs.
90 hours a year make 90x12 → 1080 hrs.
15 years makes them 16200 hrs.
16200 hours of nothing! Nothing useful will ever come out of it.
Who said life is short when we waste so much of it if we don't know what we are doing.
You can learn and master a new skill in that much amount of time. Or use that time to relax. To think. Or you could do 100 more things if you are creative enough.
But these are the things we pick up from people around us. Living around productive people will make you productive. Living around people who just want to sit and do nothing, and you will pick up the same behavior.
We think we are choosing what we watch, what we do, how we think. But most of the things are fed to us, we have no control over them.
If you want to change things, you have to control your actions by building better habits and routines.
It may sound easy to change your behavior and do more productive things, but usually we are on autopilot mode. We don't have conscious control on what we do.
We consciously do only a few things that are new to us or things that need a lot of effort or focus.
Like most people, I want to become more productive. I have goals. I want to make money. Spend time with my family. Enjoy life. Chill sometimes. Work harder sometimes.
So, I changed the meaning of fun and enjoyment for me.
Before, to enjoy meant to sit and consume. But now, enjoyment means to learn something new. To create. To do things that I am not good at, and to become better in them.
For example building writing as a habit. When I picked up writing, being a non native English speaker, it was a hard thing to do.
It was already hard to write. Then, I would wait for the inspiration to strike. Or wait for being concerned about something enough that I would write about it.
I would often write late in the evening. It was easy. Pouring down all my thoughts on the laptop made my mind clear. As someone said, once it's on paper, it's no more in your mind.
But when you depend on inspiration for something, you have to wait a lot.
Motivation can be a tricky thing to rely up on
Most people do things if they feel motivated enough to do it.
For example, when someone wants to increase his income, motivation will come in two phases.
- You believe you can make more money when you are motivated
- Your motivation is low, and you feel you have to manage in what you earn
When motivation is high enough, you try to make more money. You try to find more opportunities online. You ask friends. Maybe buy books, take courses.
But when motivation hits low, you think it is hard to earn more. You should just manage with what you earn.
When motivation hits lower, it seems impossible to earn more.
So, instead of waiting for motivation to come, it's better to get into the action loop!
Your action creates momentum. And that momentum motivates you to act again. It motivates you for your future actions.
Forcing yourself to do something, even the tiniest of the task, will help you push for bigger tasks. And then the bigger ones will seem much easier to do.
Writing an article could be a tiresome and boring process sometimes.
But if you just start with an idea. And then write a few sentences about that idea, you can keep pushing yourself to an entire article.
Doing something daily, over and over again might sound boring. But that's how real progress is made.
It gets you moving towards your desired behavior.
Just changing a few things in my lifestyle changes my entire output.
The Simplest Productivity Hack— Wake Up Early.
I remember reading about Mark Wahlberg's routine thinking it was a joke.
How in the world could someone wake up at 3 A.M each day. Have every minute accounted for. And be done with half of the tasks before sunrise.
Then I see the same routine in more and more people. Like The Rock, Jocko Willinks, etc.
Any person in the history who have made an impact in the world, was most probably a morning person.
Not only does waking up early gives me more time, it builds self discipline.
Nobody is asking me to wake up early. No one will even care if I wake up early or not. But if I still do, I will feel more in control of my actions.
Usually, I feel like I spend more time finding how to be productive than actually doing something productive.
Thinking about all the progress and actually making progress is a different thing. I am not that productive. I wake up early just two or three days a week.
Maybe it's impossible to live everyday with utmost perfection, but the goal is to try again and again. The goal is to figure out your small imperfections and work on them everyday.
That's why it's always work in progress!