Since my hand accident I have been struggling to stay productive, spending way too much time in front of the television watching movies and series and spending way too much time looking stuff up on my phone. But let’s face it, we’ve all been there: staring blankly at a screen, feeling overwhelmed by the endless amount of information, videos and series. This of course isn’t really great when you are trying to earn an income whilst working from home. ^^”
I still managed to do a lot of the work needed, but I always felt like I could achieve more if I were to just put down my phone and shut down the television, so I decided to make some changes in my life to fix and maximize my productivity.
Screen detoxing
My screen time was the biggest thing which needed to change. To do this I removed the laptop from behind the television, it was there to more easily watch YouTube, Disney plus and Amazon prime. We are also planning on canceling the subscriptions for those which will save us a good amount of money each year. We used to have Netflix but during that time we wasted even more time in front of the television and with the ever rising price we put that to a stop last year.
My phone
Staying connected is important, but the main issue I had was using it to look stuff up. This was wasting a lot of time which I could have spend in other ways, for this the solution was simple … Just putting my phone on the kitchen counter and leaving it there. Luckily I at least have that much self discipline to keep to that rule. My phone is also no longer on silent so when people really need to contact me, they can.
Another big issue which probably caused the most issues related to my little amount of sleep each day was taking my phone to the bedroom. Since last month however we have a rule in the house that nobody takes a phone in the bedroom. Originally this was because of some research we read about of WiFi affecting sleep, and we found this to be quite accurate with having better sleep after changing this. It could also be that we didn’t use our phone in the bedroom which helped our sleep, but yeah. :p
Exercising
This may sound strange at first, but a healthy body is a healthy mind and a healthy mind gets a lot more work done. Daily exercising is something I used to do in the beginning of being a stay at home dad and this helped me a lot to get over my burn out and to have more motivation and energy to do things during the day.
This was probably also because of having more of a schedule in my days. But anyway, it helped me a lot. When I went to Belgium to visit my family I however stopped the whole daily exercising stuff and I must say, I felt it in my body. When I started again, or at least tried to start again, my grandmother passed away making me not feel in the mood to do anything. In January I did attempt to start again … then my hand broke. ^^”
But since last month I have been exercising daily again and I do feel a big difference in my overall productivity. I feel like I have more energy. Exercising in a gym is something I’ll never do as I don’t look to gain muscle, just looking for health improvements, which most of you probably know is something I have struggled with ever since my previous job.
Caffeine
Coffee has been an issue, as I am a stay-at-home dad I spend a lot of time in the house and I like drinking coffee. However the caffeine was making me feel more tired and made it so I didn’t get enough sleep to perform optimal the next day. The rules which I set out for myself are to not drink any caffeine drinks past 1 pm with rare occasions, such as family gatherings and such, no caffeine after 2 pm.
Limiting the amount of drinks with caffeine to maximum 2 but most days of the week 1 has also been helping in improving my sleep and energy levels during the day.
Cold showers
This is probably one of the strangest things which I changed but helps a lot for me. After warm showers I feel drained of my energy making me waste the entire rest of the day. Taking a cold shower is something I used to do ever since I was a elementary school kid. I enjoyed it and I felt like I was saving electricity and gas by not using hot water. No idea why I was concerned for that as an eight year old kid hahah.
Anyway, cold showers wake me up again and I don’t take uncomfortable cold showers, no need to torture yourself hahah. I feel that finding a lower temperature to wash yourself might be beneficial. I go a good amount under half the temperature without going fully ice cold. However I live in Japan and during peak summer the water out of the tap is basically warm even when turned to ice cold. ^^”
No productivity apps
For my productivity tools I completely switched to pen and paper. I may do a full video of it in the future so won’t talk too much about it. Basically I have a checklist to see if I finished my weekly tasks, a checklist to see how many times I exercised and studied Japanese, a guideline schedule and a year goals list.
There is another page on which I write my daily to-do’s which I limit to 3 items a day to not overload myself and to give myself enough time to spend with my kid and wife, and to do all the housework as I am still a stay-at-home dad to begin with.
Just 2 pages in my book which I use daily, making it convenient and not a waste of time. ^^
Reading
This does not directly relate to my productivity, although it does help me in some ways. Less screen time, I feel more tired and get better sleep from it. Which in turn gives me better rest and more energy for the next day. Also I noticed that I am terrible at reading documentation and long articles, this is something I wanted to improve as it was causing trouble when working on programming related stuff.
Conclusion
I feel like I am getting more productive and starting new healthy habits is going easier then expected with the lack of screen time and being more overall bored during the day. Being bored is needed for people to perform better and I am glad I made the step, although I will miss some series I wanted to watch.
The not watching TV stuff is temporary though. First I want to build better habits and later on I think I’ll be able to have more self discipline to really keep it to one movie or one episode a day.
This journey has taught me that the key to productivity isn’t about finding the perfect app or hack, but about understanding ourselves, our body and creating a system that works for us. It’s about embracing simplicity, prioritizing our goals, and learning to appreciate boredom.
So, if you’re struggling with procrastination, I encourage you to experiment with these things which I talked about and maybe they can also work for you. Remember, it’s a journey and changes don’t happen in just one day. 😉
