My friends, what do you do to help encourage you to work, meet deadlines, and keep your motivation up throughout the day?
How do you stay focused? Do you tend to just “wing” it, as things happen?
Doing stuff, when it’s needed. And maybe have other stuff to do later on, as other things also happen in the process? And if you also do this, do you think this approach leads to chaos and disorder?
We all have finite waking hours throughout the span of 24 hours.
For me, I realized only after years have gone by doing a disorderly approach to work, and study. That putting up a structure to your time available, underlying tasks, and therefore, doing some time management — is important for anybody. Be it a student, or an office-worker, like me.
Productivity often suffers if you don’t plan your day beforehand. Or at least, try to put a structure to it.
In my experience, keeping a calendar app with alarmed reminders that periodically sound off, or give notification alerts is key. It also helps to jot down notes, have post-it notes in places you frequent, or keep a simple “to-do” list. Crossing off an item as you accomplish a small task, then move on to the next thing to do.
Additionally, starting early in the morning. Doing your routine and continuing later on to your study or work, for me, is quite helpful. As, for my case, I often lose my drive, energy, and motivation if I put things off for later in the afternoon. Or, for later on, after nightfall. So, I need to start doing things in the morning.
This means for me, to begin with prayer and the morning health drink (which is a blend of various organic vegetables). I call it a tonic, or really it’s a health shake because it’s mostly water with a blend of different pulverized vegetables. Additionally, taking multi-vitamins, or food supplements also is part of my morning routine.
After doing morning prayers, I either begin work if I have work, or study if I can spare some time on some focused book read, or covering modules for an online course.
Online courses, and may I recommend a few sites where I learn from — from the likes of Coursera, Udemy, and other reputable learning sites are places on the web where I often go to in order to keep learning. They offer a wide-range of topics, from Mathematics, to agriculture and technology.
I recommend that you also try learning from these websites. As they have good courses, from qualified and experienced teachers, or professionals. Most of their offerings, which are online courses — offer some hands-on practice to actually do learnt concepts. To add, their online courses are mostly affordable for every day folks, just like me. Most especially when you purchase your learning course when they hold various promos that give you considerable discounts off the regular purchase or subscription cost.
However, if you have the budget to spare.
And if you’re aiming to become job-ready at the end of a holistic program. I do suggest that you invest in learning from Udacity. Another good thing about Udacity, is that they have these frequent discount offers, and a times, they have scholarships going on. Make sure that you subscribe to their mailing list, as they tend to announce via email, to their subscribers, when there is a scholarship program that’s about to take in applicants. Scholarships with Udacity, allow you to learn from their Nanodegree offerings — without the sometimes hefty cost.
For the most part, Udacity offers learning programs for emerging or currently prevalent tech skills and practices. Very good if you’re trying to get a job from the tech industry. Their topics range from project management, business analytics to digital marketing, and programming.
Anyway, enough about online courses.
Let’s go back to keeping time while doing something productive or meaningful with spent time.
Keep a calendar.
And actually write and save tasks to your calendar app, reminders, or events to it, as necessary. Google Calendar is a very good tool for productivity. It’s free, and it’s a fully online app — this means, you need not download any installers to start working with the calendar app. And it integrates seamlessly with other Web Meeting tools, such as Zoom, or Meet. Or, with email writing applications like Gmail, or Outlook.
Online or electronic calendars allow you to organize your time. And also supports you with timely reminders that you can customize as to when they go off with an alarm to remind you of relevant task(s), or event(s) that you need to do, or to be at.
However, if you don’t feel like working with an electronic calendar — you can keep a traditional printed-on-paper calendar. That works just fine too, if that is where you’re most comfortable with. For example, my mom likes the printed calendar than working with an app.
Another helpful practice that I have learned from a college student from a local coffee shop, is the “Pomodoro technique”. Very helpful, if you ask me.
What is the Pomodoro technique?
According to a website excerpt that Google search has quoted, it is the following….
“The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method based on 25-minute stretches of focused work broken by five-minute breaks. Longer breaks, typically 15 to 30 minutes, are taken after four consecutive work intervals. Each work interval is called a pomodoro, the Italian word for tomato (plural: pomodori)”
And personally, I work with this free online timer to do 25-minute focus interval, with breaks in between these blocks of time.
In my experience, one of the main good things about doing the Pomodoro technique. Is that, you’re able to preserve your energy as you do your work or study — it helps preserve your motivation levels as you spend time for extended periods during study or work hours. This is due to that you’re able to take frequent “sanity breaks” after each focused block of time doing only one thing.
Please also note, my friends that according to some credible research, multi-tasking is unfortunately not good for productivity. And for me, it really isn’t a good experience, and I can’t do it also.
Multi-tasking is akin to building a house of cards made from flimsy paper.
I would rather just focus on one thing, or one task, at a given time. Before moving on, to the next task after your current one is done. It may be slow in some parts, but it helps you do a better job across the list of tasks you must do, at the end of the day.
Anyway, I hope these has been helpful for you.
This brings us to the end of this post.
Thank you for spending your time here with me, to read around what I have been able to share.
May God continue to bless you, my friends.
And, let us keep learning.
Hello there! How are you? My name is Abraham, or, Abe to all my friends, acquaintances, and family.
I’m a young dad, an uncle, an older kuya, and a son. I love learning and putting things together when it comes to small projects around computers, and tech. And for me, I also love food, everyday drink — like coffee, and most furry creatures — like good doggo doggos (goofy doggos), and chonky (very fat, almost circular and literally round) cattos. ^_^ Anyway, I hope good animals also make you chuckle, my friends.
Recently, I was hired to work as an engineer in I.T., specializing in looking after web-servers, maintenance, and a few other stuff.
Thank God! From my end, I had been dreaming to become an engineer in I.T., and have been studying for it for a time now.
We mustn’t stop with our training and study. For we’ll need to keep learning in order for us to remain helpful.
Nawa, ang Panginoon’g Diyos ang Siyang purihin, dakilain, at pasalamatan sa ating mga gawain, at salita.
My friends, may the Lord our God be glorified, honored, and praised – through the kind of work that He called us unto.
Thank you, and for now, that’s mostly it for me. Salamat po!