Everyday Mindfulness & Productivity Tips for life & work. Buildi

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Don’t be too harsh on yourself.

Block some time every day to cover pending things.

Plan before you get started.

Get started.

Value your time and avoid distractions.

Remember

Expanded perspective

You create a rough structure of the day in your head or in your scheduler of choice. You are set on a plan, but you miss out on a time slot. You kept aside this time for a task but you still haven’t made any significant progress. Now, you either need to skip that task and schedule it for later. Maybe, you can keep something else aside and squeeze some time for that task.

No matter what you do with that task, the problem is this happens more often than you want. Don’t worry, it is not just you. It happens with everyone, no matter how efficient one is with their schedule.

Let us look at some of the action points that can help us overcome procrastination.

It is important to be mindful

You need to make sure that you are aware of this slacking and the reason behind it. It is important to identify whether you can control the reason or not. If you can, make sure you tackle it, if it is something not in your direct control, let go of it and tweak the schedule.

A bit of self-forgiveness can help, it will not only help you stay positive but also help you feel better about yourself. Your mindset will shift from self-punishment mode to self-acceptance mode. This can help you motivate yourself and overcome procrastination.

What is taking your time?

Time is finite, if you are giving something time you are striving something else of that time. That is what happens when you are procrastinating, you are giving distractions your time and not letting the important things utilize that time.

Distractions are one of the major parts of procrastination. Distractions are interesting, they entertain you and don’t take much mental energy. On the other hand, the task that you are procrastinating on will take some of your mental energy. This results in your mind telling yourself that you are not feeling like working on it.

This feeling of “not feeling like working on it” continues and keeps you away from the worries as you try to fill your mind with distractions.

One of the things that help me is not worrying about finishing the task and instead focusing on making some progress.

Add some room

Keep some room for the unplanned.

Be mentally prepared to get distracted, don’t plan for the perfect day.

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You can use this time as a buffer if any of the tasks take longer than expected or use this time to reflect on your progress. There are so many ways you can utilize this time but the important thing is to set some time aside. Keep in mind there will be many days when things don’t go according the plan or something unexpected comes up that you can’t ignore.

When you are already struggling with procrastination and wanting to get back to your productive ways, try with small goals for the day.

You can’t magically shift from feeling low and procrastinating to being highly productive.

Give yourself some time, build some momentum. Keep a few important things that you need to get done in the day and overestimate the time you will need to get it done.

Once you start with the flow of achieving things, try incrementally increasing the number of things that you need to do. You can also practice this when you find yourself inclining toward procrastination. This will help shift your focus towards overcoming procrastination before the feeling to procrastinate becomes stronger.

Don’t overthink

One of the key parts of procrastination is overthinking. You make the task complicated in your head, up to an extend that you don’t feel like doing it.

You start looking at the task for its uncertainty and complexity. You start thinking about how big the task is and building scenarios about what if you are not able to get it done. It is this fear of failure that stops you from getting started with that task and keep it for later.

With all this thought process that went into your head and the doubt you have build on your ability to get the task done, you need some quick motivation. And this is where things start, some start looking for inspiration and some start watching something to lift their mood. This makes things worse as you might be able to lift up your mood but you can’t cover for the lost time.

In many scenarios, this is the time where you will start to dig a deeper hole of procrastination. There is still no clarity on the task, and in your head, it is becoming more complicated as now you have even less time to get it done.

To overcome procrastination from this situation, one of the easy things you can do it to plan. Don’t make any progress on the task, just have a look at what needs to be done and what steps you will have to take to get it done. By doing this, your thinking will change from destructive to constructive because now your thoughts will look for the missing pieces in the plan.

Try going back to the basics

Sometimes just the difficulty of the task makes us procrastinate. It is good to read or explore more about the topic, maybe just watch a few videos about that topic to increase your understanding.

Before you make a plan you need to know about the topic enough to create an action plan for yourself. Try to go through the basics of the topic, you might already be way ahead of the basics but it helps. If it seems familiar, it can boost your self-confidence, tell yourself how far you have come on this topic and maybe you will find some unexplored nuggets of information. This will be a revision to strengthen your fundamentals and will get you some momentum on the topic.

You are still off schedule and still procrastinating but your thought process is in right place.

It is okay to be off the schedule

There will be times when things will just keep piling. Don’t mindlessly push yourself. Maybe it is the right time to reset. Try a new plan, maybe the plans are not working out and it is time to reflect and come up with a different plan.

Having a fresh look at things or a fresh way of working on the same things can help in overcoming procrastination. There will be a fresh feeling about the task and you will feel much more engaged.

Take away

Overcoming procrastination is easy if we start thinking constructively about the thing that we are procrastinating on. We have to get it done, if not now, we will still have to get it done later. Time is finite, don’t fill the time of an important task with a distraction. It is okay once in a while but be mindful that it doesn’t become a habit to escape from difficult tasks.

The post The solution to overcoming procrastination is simple, you need to start working but starting is not so easy. There is an emotional side to it, the challenge is to get into the right mood to get started. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Try making small progress every day.

Don’t focus on the finish line.

Gain clarity about what you need to do.

Remember

Expanded perspective

I find myself stuck on one task until it finished and that affects my other work as I don’t make any progress on the other tasks. If you have to show progress every single day, this becomes tricky and overwhelming. Not being able to make progress adds to a lot of stress about the tasks that were not done because you were focused on just one thing.

Or sometimes I just can’t find time to go back to an important project I started. I keep procrastinating, until I must get it done at any cost.

If this situation sounds similar, it is time to change your perspective about finishing things.

The struggle

You have various things to do, different projects and getting everything done can be tedious at times. Sometimes you find yourself nearing end in one of the projects, but the other project is not even moving forward.

It is easy to get into a struggle

This can be frustrating if you are juggling through multiple things at work or life or want to kickstart your dream project on the side.

You know what you need to do but somehow looking at everything that needs to be done, you just can’t make yourself work on it. You are struggling to finish the incomplete project and now you have started feeling bad about it. You are focused too much about the end product or the finish line. Pause and refocus on the process.

It’s not about finishing

When we start something, we want to wrap it up as quickly as we can. The initial motivation makes us underestimate the efforts that we need to put into completing it.

While there is always that finish line that we need to end at, but it comes after the start and there is progress in between.

There is a journey between the start and the end. This is something that is very important when we are in the middle of a journey. We think of things as binary, with a start and an end. This makes us not enjoy the small progress that we make. We aren’t happy until it is completely done, any progress is just worthless.

It is always about the journey, start and the end are just small parts of the journey. Most of the time will be spent on the journey from start to the end and that is what we need to enjoy the most.

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Making progress

The major reason is not having clarity about other tasks. The one that is done or you started with, you can project with some certainty how far you are and how much more it will take to get it done.

This is not the case for the tasks that you have not yet started.

Make progress on things, maybe block some time for planning and plan out every single task that is pending in your list. Having clarity is more important, try focusing on that every single day.

Set small goals or tasks for yourself each day and be grateful for finishing them. The small steps every single day will compound into significant progress one day and these small steps will create something big.

Think long term

You need to start thinking of your efforts more like savings. Put small amount of effort every single day and you create something big. Everything you do today will help your future self. You are doing it to make your life easier in the future.

Even if you make small progress today, tomorrow you will have something done, otherwise tomorrow you will have more to do.

Take away

Think of work as a compound effect, small progress every single day compounds into the final output. If you are struggling to finish things, don’t think about finishing them, make progress.

Seeing something progress will give you the motivation and momentum you need to reach to the finish line. What are you waiting for, just start planning and make some progress.

The post If you are struggling to finish things, you might be looking at it the wrong way. You have tried different things but nothing seems to work, maybe it is time to focus on making progress and not finishing it. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Form getting started routines for you tasks

Think of long term or short term time commitment when you form a routine

Don’t be too strict on yourself

Create your own routine, don’t directly follow other people’s routines

Remember

Expanded perspective

Being productive is as simple as sitting down and doing the work. The bigger challenge is to sit down and get started. A routine can help you automate the process of getting started, avoid unnecessary thoughts, and procrastination.

When you pick a specific time and task to work on, it is scheduling, but when you do a series of steps without much planning that is when you have a routine.

Have routines in place

A routine automates your actions and you don’t resist much as you don’t have to put much effort into planning your actions.

Parents form routines for their children to avoid resistance from them. Having a routine makes both the child and the parent familiar with the things that they need to do. For parents, it helps them not forget steps and for the child, they know that they must go through those steps. As they practice the routine, they become comfortable with a series of tasks.

It also reflects in our school, college, and work, we have certain routines that repeat every single day.

Feel the sense of control

Life is unpredictable and having these routines might not give you control over how to tackle things, but you always have control over the steps that you need to take.

Having certain automated steps will help you feel a sense of control over your day. As most of our days are so unpredictable and there are so many distractions around that will just drive you away at times.

A Routine helps you get started

Having a well-defined routine helps you get into the right mood as there is less uncertainty about what you are going to do. Your brain doesn’t have to make many decisions on what to do next and is all ready for the steps to follow.

Have at least a loosely planned routine for common tasks like starting or stopping work, starting or ending the day, this will make it easy for you to shift your focus to the present actions. It is difficult to get anything done in a distracted mode. Having a routine to getting started, will help to get you into that rhythm to work.

I personally think of routines as follows:

A long time commitment to get things done

A short time commitment to warm up

By categorizing your routines this way, you will be able to get clarity on what routines you should be following at what time of the day.

If you are looking to build a reading routine, here are some benefits of reading. If building a morning routine is what you are looking for, here are some tips on waking up early.

You don’t have to follow

You don’t have to start with a routine of a successful person. If it works for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. You can use them as references, but routines are very personal.

Having a routine for yourself will take some hits and trials. The goal is to find something that works for you and suites your style. There is no one solution that will work for everyone.

Don’t overwhelm yourself with a lot of information, you need to keep it simple. Routines are to make your life easy, so they should be easy and simple.

You don’t have to be too strict

Don’t be too harsh on yourself if you miss your routines.

Routines are to help you, not to feel bad about yourself. Click To Tweet

If your routine starts making you feel bad about yourself, it is time to either change the way you think about that routine or completely get rid of it.

You will have to find your own balance between the strictness of the routine and the burden of that routine.

There will be some parts of the routine that you will need to follow strictly and you will also have to make sure that not everything in that routine needs to be followed strictly.

This gives you enough breathing space to tackle unplanned things.

Take away

Having a structure for your work and personal life can help you avoid distractions and focus on the things that matter to you. Routines can help you stay consistent with things and reduces the amount of unnoticed wasted time on distractions.

The post Be it your work, a personal commitment, progress towards a goal, or even a bad habit that you are trying to avoid, a routine can help you stay on track. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

List down your priorities

Pick one priority and work on it every day

Remember

Expanded perspective

No matter how much we try to stick to properly planning our day and getting most things done, there is still this feeling that we are wasting time. If you are feeling the same, you are not alone, most of us do. It has more to do with how we look at time and our priorities. Instead of time conspiring against us, the feeling has more to do with unmanaged priorities.

You have plans

You have plans for the day. By the end of the day, you are not able to get things done according to those plans. Now you don’t have much time left in the day and not enough energy to make yourself do anything at all, so you just end up watching something or doing something random and sleeping.

We all are guilty of planning and not keeping up with the plans. While planning and following through is really one of the best things you can do, but it is not an absolute essential. You can still get things done without much planning.

Even if you don’t have a properly planned day, you will still be able to get things done. Well, this is a counterproductive statement, “NOT HAVING A PLAN”, but the point is, you don’t have to feel too much pressure, if you don’t have a plan for the day, it is fine. Just to clarify, this doesn’t mean that you should not be planning your day. Plan your day, but if you find yourself in these thoughts about wasting time, skip planning for a few days in between.

Plans are rough

Plans are just “Plans”, they are just a rough outline of things, so don’t over plan. Don’t measure whatever you are doing by time.

Set some priorities and a clear set of tasks for yourself and get them done. Stop worrying too much about how much time you should be putting into your tasks or if you are giving them less time or you are completely wasting time.

Time is a finite resource and you will not be able to make up for time, but you don't have to worry too much about utilizing all the time you have. Click To Tweet

Even 15 mins in a day towards your dream project is a good utilization of time when the rest of your day is spent on tasks that are helping to earn money.

Wasting time

It will be difficult to keep track of what you are doing and how long it will take or is it going to finish at all or not. Although planning doesn’t guarantee success, it is still better to plan and follow through something. Having clarity about the next steps is important to stop you from falling into the habit of wasting time. Therefore, having things planned is helpful. You are reducing decision making when you are about to start something and it will help you reduce the amount of procrastination.

As soon as you find yourself off the plan there is this feeling that starts building up, telling you that you are wasting your time. While there is a lot of truth in that, but you don’t have to go down the rabbit hole and start worrying about it too much. It is ok to not follow through plans at times if you will come back to it later. If you don’t, you will start feeling worse about wasting time.

What matters to you?

If a relationship with a friend is important to you and she or he needs you in this phase of their life, that is time well spent.

Don’t manage time, manage the important things, and put time on them.

You don’t have to worry about how many hours you have in a day, worry about the things that you want to do in your day, and just do them. Don’t overthink that you need to put this many number of hours to consider it not wasting time.

It all adds up, even if you have just 5 minutes left in the day, just utilize that time, and you will have the first 5 minutes of the next day and if you still want to continue, you have 1435 minutes still left in the day.

Time is a concept that we have created, so make it work for you, don’t work for it.

The post If you are feeling that you are wasting time, it is the right time to organize priorities, not time management. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Visualize your morning

Stay in bed for some time

Don’t think, just wake up when the alarm rings

You are trying to wake up early in the morning, but even those annoying alarms are not working. You have read a lot of things about waking up early and watched a lot of videos of people sharing their morning routines and rituals. Everything seems so awesome. The only problem is you are not able to follow through on these plans that you are making for yourself or not even able to start.

Let’s try and simplify things.

Don’t overthink it

There is so much information about waking up early and so many rituals and routines to follow that can complicate the process. The point is, don’t pressurize yourself to stick to any or many of them, just because it works for someone, doesn’t mean it will work for you. When you read or watch someone’s morning ritual, absorb it for inspiration and not to follow as it is.

Here are a few things you can try:

Absorb the article or video about morning routine and ritual

Create a list and notes of the steps that were mentioned

Keep adding to this list as you consume more content

Highlight the points that you think can work for you

Pick any 1 or at most 2 out of them

Start applying from the next morning

If you find yourself struggling to follow along with the plan, you still have other items on the list that you can swap with the existing selection.

Remember, the goal is not to overthink on create a perfect routine or ritual for the morning, but some steps that work for you and help you wake up early.

You might start feeling bad about your day

When you set standards for yourself by seeing or reading about other people’s morning habits, you are pushing yourself. It might work for some, but not all. If it is not working for you, don’t stress too much about it. Most of the time we start setting unrealistic expectations for us. 

We somehow don’t pay attention to the fact that habits don’t form overnight or just by deciding on them. Even the people whom you are looking up to didn’t form these morning habits in one day.

If you push yourself too hard, you will start developing the feeling that you are not starting the day well. Once that happens, your point of focus for the entire day is on the regret of not waking up early. With this, you start wasting your energy on regret instead of making most of the day.

Don’t focus too much on waking up early, even if you are not able to wake up early, keep it behind you and utilize the remaining hours of the day and try again tomorrow.

Visualize the morning

Don’t plan too far ahead about the morning, just think of the first thing that you want to do. For me, this is how it works, “sit on the bed when the alarm rings, close the alarm and open DoRemember to write what I am looking forward to today.” Just this series of steps activate me and makes me ready for the day. 

By this time, I have a good idea about what I am looking forward to in the day, so the next step is planning by day and prioritizing my tasks. After this, I read a book and keep myself away from any news or social media. This makes sure I am not starting the day distracted and I am not getting into a distracted mindset for the rest of the day.

You can stay in bed

You don’t have to jump out of the bed straight away. It is ok to stay in bed and do something productive while sitting inside your blanket. If you are not the person who can easily jump out of bed, it is fine, find something to do in bed and prepare the night before. If you want to read in the morning, keep the book next to you. 

You might have to get off the bed to turn on the light if the switch is not accessible from the bed, or you can get a table lamp right next to your bed. But this is up to you, you can get creative with comfort and reduce friction so that you are not making excuses in the morning and sticking to the plan. 

You can try reading this 20-second rule to learn more about the resistance to getting things done.

You can’t wake up early if you stay up late in the night

Don’t force your body to wake up early if you are not able to get proper sleep at night. You have to sleep early in order to wake up early.

You don’t have to wake up at 4 or 5, even waking up around 6 or 7 is early enough, but make sure you are sleeping based on when you want to wake.

Forcing yourself to wake up early when you are sleeping late, can only take you as far as a few days of productive feeling. After the early days, you will start feeling low on energy throughout the day.

Take away

The important thing to wake up early is to not overthink the process and put too much pressure on yourself. Things are still fine and you are able to get things done throughout the day. It is just that you want to extract more out of the day. If you keep trying and are not too hard on yourself you will be able to get into the habit of waking up early. Start simple and gradually make it sophisticated step by step.

The post If you are considering or trying to wake up early in the morning, you already know the benefits. Waking up early is not that complicated than you think, do don’t overthink it. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Focus on what you can do in the next hour

Be mindful of the choices you are making in the day

We drive through our days with a sense that a lot happens based on how the day is. If we have a good day, we planned it well, but if we are having a bad day, we rephrase the statement to “it’s a bad day.” We put too much wait on the day and blame it when things are not going well and that gives us the sense that we don’t control our days.

You have a choice

You are about to go out of the house and it starts raining. While you can’t do much about the rain but you still have a few choices. You can choose to take an umbrella and still go out or you can choose to stay at home.

No matter what situation you are in because of the events in a day, you will always have a choice. These are the choices that give you control of your day and make it good or bad for you. Your choices in those uncomfortable situations are what will define how good the day will be for you.

Although this doesn’t always guaranty a good day, good days will be more often and more importantly, you will have a sense of control over your days. Life is unpredictable and there will be events that will not have choices to offer.

If you don’t have a choice or control over an event there is no point in overthinking about it. Having a choice and not having one is the indicator of whether you should focus on something or not.

Not making most of the day

A good day and a bad day is more about perspective. There will be days when you will find yourself not feeling like working. So, one of the first things is to be aware of it, that you are not making the most out of the day.

I will not refer to it as a bad day but rather a day you are not fully utilizing. And just one action can turn that day into something meaningful. Even if you have like 10 minutes remaining in the day, you can still take action to think about something that you can do tomorrow, to make tomorrow meaningful and learn from today.

Just a few steps

More often than not you have control over your day. The best way to make a day good, is just about 3 steps:

First – realizing that you are not making most of the day

Second – Deciding on something that you can do in the next hour to make the day meaningful, don’t think about the long term, just the next hour, or just the next 15 minutes

Third – Once you have decided what you want to do, just start. Don’t think about anything, just get started.

We usually resist a lot when we must start with something. We start building up stories in our minds and all sorts of excuses to do it later. It is that uncertainty or mundaneness of the task that gives us that uncomfortable feeling and we start resisting.

You anyways have to do that task, if not now, later. You should stop overthinking and start working on the task.

Keep the momentum going

We are all about momentum, once we start, we can go on and on. It sounds very simple and that is what it is. You will just have those 10 minutes of friction and discomfort when to start. After that, once you are in the flow, your mood for the day will dramatically shift.

Once you have started, just stick to it for a while and I can assure you, you will be surprised by what you will be able to accomplish, despite feeling like not doing anything.

The post The difference between a good day and a bad day can be just a 2 minutes action or a small choice you make in the day. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Create an action plan

Start with a small project

Offer your help to someone

Using what you know sounds easy but it is not that obvious. More often than not we focus on absorbing knowledge without timely application and that can make things a little trickier to start with. Here are some things that you can happen and affect your wellbeing.

Overwhelm

You have a lot of dreams to follow, but somehow you feel there is a lot to learn. Learning will prepare you for the unknown and you will be able to face the challenges more effectively.

You have a lot of things to do and putting in the time to learn all those things that you need to learn seems tricky, and at times, frustrating. There are days when you plan things out, set goals and schedule all things. Things go fine for a few days but after a while, you find yourself again struggling to keep up with all the goals.

If you will not be able to get time to learn new things, how will you grow?

Discouragement

When things don’t go according to plans, discouragement and disappointment are common. You cannot avoid this feeling of not being able to keep up with things.

When things go wrong, most of the time you know what went wrong. If you are not able to figure out what went wrong, that means you are not planning well. In that case, you will not be discouraged, because you didn’t anticipate the things that will go right to make the plan a success.

If everything in life could be predicted and happened according to plans, life would be so boring.

High fear

You know enough to understand the risks so that adds a fear of failure. You are more cautious about taking risks and moving forward with execution. The paranoia of failure can lead to over planning and delaying the execution to a point where it becomes too late to start.

Finding the right balance between knowledge and execution is very vital to make progress. Click To Tweet

Even if you feel something might not work out, but it is something that you always wanted to do, at least give it a try. 

The backlog moves with time

You want to apply what you have learned, but with the fear of failure you are not taking action. This keeps building a backlog of all the things that you want to do to become what you want to be.

As time moves on and your knowledge expands, you will always have one more thing to do, one more thing to try out and in the end, you will have too many things to do and too little time to act.

Expanding knowledge is about connecting the dots. The way you stitch together different things you know and then apply those things to take action will define who you become.

Regret

You will always regret what you didn’t do and failing after trying will make sure that your assumption about failure was correct. In the end, it’s a win-win, but if you don’t try you will always miss out on that slim chance of success.

If you were unaware of the knowledge and potential you can attain, you will have less regret, but when you know what you can or what you could have achieved, you will live with regret.

Take away

Knowledge is one of the most powerful tools or asset one can have, but using it is what defines your success in life. You will always know enough to make a difference and less to know everything. Just start with what you always wanted to and the knowledge always will increase.

The post Sometimes we just keep absorbing information and growing our knowledge without taking any action towards our dreams. And this can be mentally taxing and a blocker to our success. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Use wellbeing features on your phone

Ask yourself, why you want to use the phone?

Remember

Expanded perspective

As humans, it is very difficult for us to not do anything at all. Even the tasks that don’t require much of our mental energy like eating or standing in line waiting for the coffee we ordered put us in a zone of uncomfortable emptiness.

We live in an age where we are almost, every time connected to information which is just a few taps away. This connectivity makes it difficult to resist the temptation to check in on what is happening on the other side of the world. Even though we might not really care about it, but it is more interesting than waiting and doing nothing.

Checking your phone quickly is an instant fix for filling in for the boredom you are facing at the moment, but one should get used to it. Boredom could be good – it could inspire new ideas and help you clear out of your head the worrying thoughts that are left unaddressed. There are a lot of things that you can observe in your surroundings and can learn from.

You are missing out on observing beautiful moments.

What are you missing out on?

While you are waiting on the line and checking your phone you are missing out on the kid across the hall sharing her burger with a cat. There are so many small moments happening around us that we don’t even pay attention to and they are just missed. Observing these moments might not seem very important, but observing these small details around us helps us learn new things about being social.

We are social beings and we learn by observing others. Paying attention to small moments around you might help you understand certain emotions and feelings. While observing others is fine, but don’t overdo it to an extent that it becomes creepy.

Paying attention to the things happening around you might also open opportunities to connect with new people or help someone in need. If you keep yourself busy with your phone, you are missing out on these connections in your physical surroundings.

Setting an intention

Talk to yourself and decide what is the purpose of using a phone. Are you using your phone to connect with your family and friends or is it your productivity device or it is all about work for you? I am not saying that you have to use the phone for just one purpose, but instead knowing the purpose of the tool prevents you from misusing it or overusing it when not needed.

Set an intention and make sure you are limiting your usage. If you haven’t already spent some time to organize the apps on your phone, take some time out and move all the apps you use to your home screen. Once you have all the frequently used apps in one place, make a call, do you need every single app here? If the answer is NO, try clearing it up by moving some of the apps out of the home screen. This is a good time to move the apps you want to use often, but haven’t been using enough to the home screen. If you still have too many apps, move some of the apps into folders, the apps which are not high on priority.

You don’t have to stick to this for long, you can always play around with rearranging, removing and adding apps when needed. It will help you be mindful of the usage of your phone and also keep a check on the apps you are using too much.

Monitoring your usage

You can use some of the built-in apps or any third-party app to monitor your daily or weekly usage. Once you have a report for a few weeks or days you can have a look and decide what you can cut down and save some hours in your day. 

You can also play around with setting usage limits for certain apps that are taking up a lot of your time. The important thing is to use this data to stay intentional about your usage of the phone.

The data might surprise you and things might seem difficult to control. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to limit your usage, but it is not difficult and with limited usage, you will be able to add some extra hours to your day.

Take away

A phone is a tool and it should be used as one, which means you should be using it when you need it. Our impulsive desire to keep our mind occupied pulls us into undesirable patterns which can hamper our overall well-being. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t take control of the usage of our phone. 

Having control over the usage of your phone will ensure that you start valuing your time and there will be plenty of time that you can allot for doing other things. Being mindful is easy and it starts with being intentional about the usage of the tools you have.

The post While you are using your phone out of habit, you are missing out on a lot of small details around you. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Set a goal for the day

Create a todo list

Create rules for yourself

Keep a note to write things that interrupt you

Remember

Expanded perspective

You are away from distractions of co-workers, you are less likely to be called into an impromptu meeting or engage in an interesting conversation about your favorite sports team. You are making up extra hours by saving up on the commute time. So, these arguments are promising enough to make working from home productive. In this post, we will look at some of the tips to make working from home productive and enjoyable.

Start with a plan

Create a daily goal. Have a clear and simple goal for the day, be it focusing on one important client project or making progress on your personal project. This will help you set a clear intent for the day. Even if some random plans come in the way, you will have clarity over accepting or denying it and your choice will be solely driven by your goal for the day.

Create priorities and make sure that you are focused on your goal for the day. If your goal for the day is to make progress on your personal project, you can set priorities like, getting clarity on the name of the project or making a list of people who can help you make your project successful

This is almost like setting a theme for your day and the earlier you do it, the more control you will start to feel about your day. Everything you do today revolves around your goal for the day. So even at the end of the day, if you are unproductive, you know what one thing you can do to get closer to that goal.

Block your calendar or structure your day

Once you have a plan in place, block time in your calendar and if you are not a calendar person, just create a simple todo list. The todo list will help you stay on track and keep it simple, you don’t need to have a sophisticated system. You can use an app like Todoist (which is one of my favorites) to manage tasks or you can go with a sheet of paper. Make sure that your todo list is driven by your priorities for the day.

Having these three layers of goals, priorities, and tasks will help you break things down to specifics. Your tasks will be actionable and doable chunks of your priorities. And your priorities will be the breakdown of your goal.

The important thing is to create a structure for your day. Having a clear structure will help reduce decision making while starting work and you will limit your brain from getting distracted. You can also keep the distractions away by making them difficult to access. You can use something like the 20-second rule to limit distractions.

Force yourself if you need to (you will need to)

It is highly likely that you will struggle to focus at times. It is perfectly fine (and normal) to get distracted, the important part is to get back on track. You can get sucked into distractions and feel that you are not good at focusing on work at home or you can mindfully start with work as soon as you find yourself distracted.

You will end up being more productive working from home if you choose the latter. The most conflicting part of focusing is, we don’t let ourselves focus. We don’t let ourselves work on a single task for long stretches of time, which is very important to getting work done productively.

You can try the Pomodoro technique to force yourself to sit in one place for a particular amount of time and focus on one task. It is simple and straight forward, just follow these steps:

Pick a task.

Set 25 minutes (you can choose the time duration) timer.

Work on the task you picked and don’t stop until the timer goes off.

One simple thing you can try is keeping a notebook or a sheet of paper or a sticky note right in front of you. As soon as you feel distracted and an urge to do something else, just write it down and keep it for later. By doing this, you will not interrupt what you are currently working on and you can come back to that list later to get those small things done.

Create rules and follow them

Working from home needs some self-discipline and being disciplined can be a very vague term to start with. You can try to be disciplined but that won’t matter until you have certain rules to be disciplined about. 

It is very difficult to get back on track after you are distracted by something, be it watching a series or a call from a friend. Set a few guidelines for yourself and have them in a place where you can refer to them easily. For eg., your rules for the weekdays can look something like this

Cannot watch more than 1 episode of any TV series

No social media between 10 am to 8 pm

Write something in the morning for at least 30 mins

And so on…

You don’t have to strictly follow them every single day and stick with all of them even when you are not feeling good. Just make sure most days are within these rules and a few off days are fine.

Set a start and stop time

Working from home needs some self-discipline and being disciplined can be a very vague term to start with. You can try to be disciplined but that won’t matter until you have certain rules to be disciplined about. 

It is very difficult to get back on track after you are distracted by something, be it watching a series or a call from a friend. Set a few guidelines for yourself and have them in a place where you can refer to them easily. For eg., your rules for the weekdays can look something like this

Cannot watch more than 1 episode of any TV series

No social media between 10 am to 8 pm

Write something in the morning for at least 30 mins

And so on…

You don’t have to strictly follow them every single day and stick with all of them even when you are not feeling good. Just make sure most days are within these rules and a few off days are fine.

Take away

Working from home does come with its own challenges, but with just a little bit of self-discipline and planning, it can be highly productive. You don’t have to get a lot of things done to be productive while working from home, you just need to make sure you are doing the right things at the right time.

The post Working from home sounds very attractive, but it does carry with it its own challenges. If you are not completely prepared to work from home, things can become highly unproductive and full of distractions. It is all about creating a balance between flexibility and structure. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Every month write about an ideal version of yourself

Assess how close are you to your ideal self

Every day write things that you are grateful for

Remember

Expanded perspective

Every single day we are around people, we care about and who care about us. It is easy to see yourself from their eyes and try to push to be good in their eyes, to be what they want us to be. But, do we need approval from others to be what we are?

Trust yourself

There is only one person that knows you the most, and that is you. You know your best and the worst, no matter how much close someone is to you, the information that they have about you is with gaps.

It is ok to want people to like you, but don’t let your decisions and presence be driven by your perception of what others are thinking about you. You can’t please everyone. If you are putting in the effort to please people and not able to please everyone, all the effort is worthless. So stop trying to please others, waiting to get approval from others and do what you think is right for the situation.

Most people in your life come in phases, their outlook towards you will not matter in the long run. The things that matter is what you think of yourself and how you want to present yourself to the world.

Start focusing on yourself and your own values to present yourself to the world.

Next time you find yourself struggling with a thought about what someone will think of you, say it aloud, “I know who I am and I don’t worry about what others think of me.”

Learn to keep learning and take control of your decisions

When you focus on learning and believe that there are a lot of things to learn, you are not burdened with the need to know everything. You feel less offended in situations where you are not the smartest. Instead, situations like these help you expand your knowledge.

With this eagerness to learn, you will be able to take more well-informed decisions.

There is a small difference between taking control of your decisions and making rash decisions. If you rush into decisions without exploring or learning more about the details, the probability of making good decisions decreases.

Have people you can rely on

More often than not you will need someone to push you, to tell you that you are good enough and make you feel good about yourself. Have people you listen to and can trust in making decisions for you or at least giving you the right suggestions. 

But at the end of the day, they have their own decisions and struggles that they are going through. They will be there to support you and help you make the decisions but they can’t fully decide for you as your situation is unique to you. Based on their experiences they can suggest a path, but there is no surety that the suggested path will work for you.

Be humble

Be humble about the things that you have, the position, the power, the skills, or anything that makes you better at certain things.

With so much focus on the self, it is very important to not forget that everyone is working on their lives as you are. Respect others for what they are and what they have, you are no lesser or no superior to anyone.

Take away

Your point of focus should be internal and not external. Don’t wait for approval from others to take action towards the things that matter to you. You are the owner of the life that you have envisioned for yourself, you are in control, it is the perfect time to take actions and step forward.

The post We spend a lot of our energy thinking about what others think of us, and that shapes the way we act and present ourselves to the world. Do we really need to think about what others think of us? appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Are you getting enough time for self-reflection?⠀ https://buff.ly/2TBXJgf⠀ ⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ #passionandpurpose #positivelifestyle #purpose #chaseyourgoals #dreams #life #wellnessblogger #mindfulnessquotes #beyourbestself #everythingispossible #onlygoodvibes #positiveliving #passion #chaseyourgoals #inspiration #mindfulnessmatters #goafteryourdreams #growthquotes #motivationalquoteoftheday #productivity #selfawareness #achievegreatness #motivationalpost #productive #motivationalpost #mindfulnessquotes #DoRemember #connectwithyourself https://ift.tt/2IjDY82

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Write grateful moments in your day

Start capturing your thoughts in a journal or a note-taking application

Remember

Expanded perspective

We have so much to do, but so less time in a day. Even if the days were 25 hours or 50 hours, we still would have had this same feeling. No matter if you manage everything in a calendar or in a todo list, there will always be more to do and more to keep track of.

With so much time already allocated between your work, family and friends it is difficult to take time for yourself. Spending time with yourself and reflecting on your life or yourself is difficult to do unintentionally. Here are a few actions that can help you add self-reflection to your days and take control of things in your life.

Understand the importance

To get unstuck in life and get a sense of control, self-reflection is a must. Self-reflection allows you to assess your situation and makes you more mindful of where you are in life.

Self-reflection makes you aware of yourself You get to question yourself, you get to observe yourself as another person. You get a lot of insights about yourself and you can take them to improve your way of life.

Identify things that are bothering you  With self-reflection, you will have a good awareness of the things that are adding stress to your life. Having this awareness is the first step to rectifying those problems and challenges.

Identify patterns in your day that are making you feel stuck Are you going through the days automatically or are you putting a conscious effort to make the most of every single day? If you find yourself in such patterns where your actions are not testing your potential, it is time to change something.

Slow down

You need to slow down and observe the moment and look back in the near past to assess where things are in life.

Sometimes we are part of an unintentional change and we realize it when it is difficult to get back.

No matter how planned and organized you are, if you are not slowing down time for self-reflection, things will start getting off track.

It is very important to add self-reflection into the habit at least once a month to monitor things and keep a check on yourself. Even if you feel that the year is passing by quickly, you will be mindful of how you are spending your months.

Know what is wrong

You need to know what has been going wrong before making it right. Click To Tweet

Self-reflections helps you find those elements that are not going according to the plan. It can be your yearly goal or your relationship with a friend. You will be able to identify problems before it is too late to act on them or fix things. Once you have identified you will have time and awareness to make it right or at least act towards keeping it one track.

Document your days

Start keeping track of your days, be it in a calendar or in a journal. You can keep a simple notebook or any other note-taking app to write important things in your day. If you are not sure what to write, just answer this question, “What do I want to remember today for?”. 

You can also add daily gratitude to the mix, just don’t be too generic, like, I am grateful for the air that I breathe, but write about small moments in the day that you are grateful for. Try to write different things every single day, If you are writing the same thing every single day, it is time to change something or you need to be more mindful of your days.

Take a look at the future

To feel inspired and fill your life with purpose, you need a direction to move towards. There is no better direction than the future that you envision for yourself.

Conclusion

It is easy to not feel the sense of control in your days and go through in an autopilot mode of your comfort zone. But making a change and being mindful of your days is not difficult, it is just about noticing those small moments that make you smile and keeping your mind to be in the present moment.

The post Take control of your life by adding a little bit of self-reflection to your days. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

7 Assumptions We Need to Stop Making About Other People https://buff.ly/33FZFqZ https://ift.tt/387gEpB

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Think of problems as challenges

Don’t wait for all problems to go away.

Remember

Expanded perspective

You can’t hope for things to get normal if the problem is over, because if this problem is gone, there will be another one. Our lives will always be filled with problems. No matter how many problems we deal with, we will again have something new.

Don’t wait for a happy ending to a problem, just change the perspective towards these problems. They will always be there, it is the way of life and that is what makes life interesting and fulfilling, more importantly, worth remembering.

When you look back in the future, you need to have stories of the solutions that you came up with to tackle the problems of life.

The post You will always have problems. Life is all about how you look at them. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

Do

Actions to take

Write every single day

Just write without judgement

Takeaway action points from your writings

Remember

Expanded perspective

Writing everyday is a good relaxing exercise. You do need to give it some time, but it is worth the effort. It can make you more mindful and aware about your present situation in life.

You can write with a pen and paper or just type it out in your digital device. Here are a few things that start happening when you write every single day.

You start observing yourself

When you start observing, you stop judging, the thinking mind take a back seat and you start to see things for the way they are. Observing makes space for acceptance and you start accepting things for what they are. You don’t miss out on the things which otherwise you will ignore and move on without addressing.

Writing everyday helps you catch patterns in your days that might be blocking your productivity and wellness.

Being able to track and observe these roadblocks will help you stay on track with your goals. You will know when you are slipping off the goals and what are the challenges that you need to rectify.

Reading more can help you write more. Reading gives you more perspective, and maybe you will find something you can apply to your life.

You are not only observing yourself and making sense of the present moment, but you are also preserving memories. These writings are triggers to flashbacks from the past. You can know your past self and how how things have shaped you to this present moment.

Your stress decreases

When you start writing about your thoughts and feelings, you find a medium to express. There are so many unspoken thoughts and ideas that stay stuck in our minds, and letting them out helps reduce the clutter from our head, resulting in less stress.

Writing makes your thoughts become tangible and clear. Click To Tweet

You will have a very good understanding of the thoughts in your mind and why they make you feel a certain way.

You can take actions on your thoughts. As you start to better understand the thoughts in your mind and how they make you feel, you can act accordingly. These actions are more effective and thoughtful. They are driven by observations and a purpose.

You can share your thoughts better

Writing everyday not only helps you clear out thoughts in your mind, but it also improves your ability to communicate your thoughts and ideas. Over time you build the skills to communicate your message more effectively.

There are certain thoughts that stop us from writing consistently. Thoughts like “I am not a good writer”, “I can’t write well” and so on. 

You don’t have to judge your work, as this is not about creating a masterpiece.

You don’t need to worry about the quality of what you write, the important part is writing and that is what matters. You should be able to understand what you have written and that is the only criteria needed.

Don’t even worry about the length of the content, the expression should be clear and that is how long it should be. So just pick up a time in your day, be it the morning when you wake up or the night right before going to sleep and start writing whatever comes to your mind.

The post Writing every single day can help you understand the thought patterns and hidden feelings to gain clarity in life. Writing helps you observe yourself, and that helps you keep a check on your goals and grow in life. appeared first on DoRemember : Thought Nuggets.

[doremember]

We try to live in the present and if things are not right we feel we are stuck with it for the rest of our life. That is not at all true, you are not stuck with what you have or what you had, it is about what you can have by what you can do. . The actions that you take today, in the present moment, will define what you will be in the future. If you are not satisfied with what you have in the present, you can still take actions and get to where you want to be. . One of the first things is to accept where you are and in what emotional state. When you do that, you will be able to figure out where you want to be instead. Once all that is figured out, it’s time to take actions and create the life you want. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • #everythingispossible #bethankful #positivethoughts #passion #bethankful #createalifeyoulove #feelblessed #purposedriven #yourself #wordsofwisdom #selfgrowthjourney #mindfulnessquotes #mindfulnessmatters #believeinyou #instagood #motivationalpost #createalifeyoulove #inspirationquotes #motivationalwords #dreams #crushinggoals #chaseyourgoals #onlygoodvibes #successfullife #purposedriven #successquotes #DoRemember #connectwithyourself http://bit.ly/2Vz27f6

[doremember]

Sometimes we avoid feelings that we need to address the most. Building some tension in a relationship, instead of figuring it out, we try to avoid it and with time things get even worse. You want to start with your dream project, but putting it aside, it might be because of your fear of failure, but if you don’t start you are already failing. . It is really important to take control of the actions you can take on the situations that you need to address. Be mindful of the moment and the phase you are in right now, take actions, not avoid them. Avoiding things only builds stress and make your life more complicated than it should be. . By default, we distract ourselves to avoid our true feelings. These distractions can be things like watching a lot of TV, smoking, drinking or avoiding social interactions. . Stop calling yourself a "loser". You are more awesome than you think. Things will not come easy in life, but you have everything it takes to take control. Just be mindful of your feelings and experience them to learn and grow in life. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • #productivity #bethankful #wordsofwisdom #purpose #wellnessblogger #success #achievegreatness #life #bethankful #mindfulnessmatters #beyourbestself #createalifeyoulove #lovethejourney #positivethinking #successfullife #emotionalhealth #instagood #bethankful #successmindset #onlygoodvibes #betteringmyself #motivationalquoteoftheday #motivationalwords #mindfulnessquotes #workingonme #passionandpurpose #DoRemember #connectwithyourself http://bit.ly/2W7tvFn