Hello there! Hope you are doing great and enjoying the last piece of summer.
Today I am going to share some new tricks I just discovered to motivate myself, and hopefully this could provide you with some orientations😊Let’s get started!
Every day has been basically the same since Teams meeting started to dominate our lives. With schoolwork and part-time jobs (remotely) on my hands, keeping myself concentrated has the top priority on my list. What I normally did is to make a detailed to-do list beforehand and stick it on my laptop to remind myself those are the key assignments I need to finish today. This approach worked well for quite a while however, from time to time I found myself easily getting distracted when following the plan too closely. This doesn’t seem to make sense, so let me explain a little bit😊
Having a well-structed or full schedule is not always the best way to be productive as your brain may need to unwind when your to-do list says “no rest, keep going!”. It is not possible to predict when your brain may resist working tomorrow when outlining what you need to do, so one thing happened quite often to me is that when rest time comes according to my timetable, I was so focused on my current work that I would rather not take a break. On the other hand, sometimes I forced myself to strictly follow my schedule and stay focus even though my brain was complaining about not having enough rest. As I found setting detailed plans is quite tricky and I lose track of time occasionally, I felt the urgent to make some changes.
Instead of filling my timetable with detailed tasks (e.g. from 9-11 a.m. ~ continuing with the literature review), I only set hours estimated to finish the assignment today (e.g. literature review~ 2 hours). This is a way to make my schedule more flexible as I can decide when to do it and how long I want to focus on it one time according to my preference. Continuing with the previous example, with the flexible and adjustable plan, I can do the research either from 10-11 a.m. & 1-2 p.m. or from 9-11 p.m. if that suits me better.
To be honest, I was not a morning person. Hiking in the early morning was the last thing on my list until one day when I got up pretty late and saw the beautiful sunshine through the window, I started to think how the sky looks like in the early morning and what I had missed. So, the next day, I decided to capture the sunrise for the very first time.
The next day, the view I saw at 6 a.m. didn’t let me down, the world looks totally different. Everything is so fresh and brand-new. There is no one around me (even though it happens quite often in Finland 😉 and after a short walk I feel so ready to start mt day. After the attempt, it got me thinking that instead of taking the beautiful nature for granted, we should feel and absorb the energy it gives us.
In closing, two new tricks I’d like to share with you guys are as follows:
- Be in tone with your brain. Make more flexible daily plans.
- Embracing the nature and sunrise in the morning is a good way to start a productive day! Why not give it a go?
Thank you for your time. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to drop me a line via wanafang@student.hanken.fi.