Productivity – how do I care about mine

Yes, I know, sorry for that. You hear it all the time from all sources you follow, each YouTuber, blogger, mentor or anyone you know better, will eventually tell you something about productivity.

Superb productivity trick, check it out!!!111oneoneone. Well… no

I don’t want to teach you any new productivity trick right now, encourage you to start your blog, wake up at the time when the average person you know is going to sleep actually… Nothing like that. If you’re happy with the way you operate – just live the way you used to till now.

But! I’m not happy about my efficiency during last two weeks and it starts to freak me out, to be honest. And in fact, I’m being selfish today, because this post is the first one I forfeit the concept of giving value to you for fixing myself.

As I said – I don’t want to teach you how you can improve, you need to find it by yourself (if you think you need such improvement), but I want to say (write) out loud what can help me.

I bet you fixed more than one issue just by describing the problem to you colleague. You know the Rubber Duck Debugging method. And this is what I guess I need to do today. I need to tell myself what I need to do, to turn back to achiever who I was yet one month ago.

The Power of Habit

Have you read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg? If not I truly recommend it, it’s stunning! What distinguishes this publication from many others covering similar topics? Proofing each scientific part by a real-world sample. The history of Starbucks and its outstanding success, Martin Luther King fighting with racism, an unexpected switch of CEO in General Electric… and many more.

I wanted to recall quickly the story behind General Electric.

There was a need to change the CEO of the company and it was a switch that no one expected. The successor was an exceptional formalist who cares only about safety at the workplace. Do you imagine that? Investors couldn’t as well. The company’s Stock Market has decreased rapidly. But… day by day, this ‘safety-driven-work’ started to actually… work!

Safety improved communication, communication improved knowledge share, knowledge share improved product awareness which drove employees to raise amusing ideas for growth. That followed to new business concepts, unconventional acquisitions etc…

The story started in 1981 and concerns Jack Welch. Till 2001 General Electric lead by him has increased market value from $12 billion in 1981 to $280 billion. For this ‘transition’ he earned the biggest severance payment in history – which was $417 million. Impressive start of retirement don’t you think?

The conclusion I’ve drawn here is that when you focus on one goal, on fixing only one area of your life, the other areas will soon be fixed as well. Almost involuntarily (nice word isn’t it? 🙂 )

The only thing that matters now

What was my resolution for this year? To run. To run 3 times a week and make at least half marathon in the second part of the year. I have other goals for this year of course but this is the one. What when I fail with my blog? Or won’t train playing the harp? Nothing happens, until I do the running. Completing this will make this year successful from my point of view.

And when do I have the training planned? Well…. today.

Who just missed the training? Uuuumm… me.

Wake up!

Another thing I developed lastly (when I started my blog actually) is going to sleep early and waking up early. Maybe this is something you can’t believe if you know me personally, but yes – I’ve been waking up very early recently 🙂 And I found this very productive.

The target is to turn off the monitor at 21:30 at the latest. And wake up at 5.00 AM

It’s 23:45 and I’m still editing this post, so… am I man of my word? (BTW I woke up about 8:20 today :/)

I skip these two important actions lastly which I’m sad about because it (badly!) influences my day, my ability to work on CodeMate, to develop this blog, accomplish household matters etc.
It influences my general productivity – I’d say in one word.

I hope you don’t have a problem with being negligent – at least right now because I guess everybody encounters such bad period at some point.

Plan!

What I need to focus on now is not the topic for the next post, next functionality of CodeMate or nearest purchase to my apartment. The most important thing is to get back on track with running and getting up early to be achiver again. The rest will fix itself anyway. How? Involuntarily. 🙂

If you read this whole story – I’m more than grateful, because even only writing this pushed me to a better attitude. If it helps you or makes you feeling better – that would be just mindblowing 🙂 Really. I’ll appreciate if you could let me know in comments if this post gave you value.

Thanks!