What I Learn From 30 Days of High Productivity
I completed my month of high productivity. Overall it was great, I accomplished a lot, managed to cover a decent amount of my exam course materail, and up untill my first exam, managed to stick to the schedule.
As my exams were approaching, it became harder to stick to the schedule I made. My mind constantly kept thinking about my exams and that derailed me from my regular schedule. After my first exam, sticking to the schedule became particularly difficult as I started obessiving over the exams. So I abandoned my schedule, and spent my time studying only for the exams. I became somewhat of a machine, I would spend nearly all day in front of my computer, would sleep right next to it, and turn it on as soon as I get up in the morning. That is also the reason why I didn’t update the blog for the remaining days.
I would literally wake up, and get straight to studying. I managed to complete a lot of my readings, but this really hurt my back which was already in a bad shape because of how much I was sitting in the past few months.
In the last week of the month of productivity, I could barely sit. I studied on laptop, lying down on my bed with a few pillows supporting my back.
This went on till my last exam. During this period I barely studied languages or did anything else. After I was done with my exams, I didn’t go back to the schedule. I had to make a new one of course, but it’s been over 2 weeks since the month ended and I am yet to make one. I was back to the procrastinating ways, nothing to hold me accountable, and nothing to force me to do thing I should be doing. Initially I wanted to give my back a rest, it is still recovering but it is a lot better and I can get back to a good schedule again.
I even procrastinating on concluding the blog series. Getting back to a new schedule is a topic for another blog, however for this one:
Here are my conclusions after attempting a month of high productivity.
Schedules are highly effective (unless you become obsessed with something)
During the first half of the month, I was killing it. I was achieving my targets, and my days were highly productive. The problem started when my exams came closer, and that made it difficult to stick to the schedule. I did spend the whole day studying, but there was still a problem, efficiency. And that’s my second learning
I should work on multiple things in a day
When during the second half of the month, I focused on only studying for my exams, I noticed I was less productive. My intensity dropped, I was slower, and my ability to synthesise information also faded off after about 60-70 pages of constant reading. In some cases, I was able to continue when the text was more interesting and engaging. However, regarless of how interesting it was, reading for long hours did not work as well as completing the same reading over a longer period of time.
I haven’t read a lot about this, but I know that there is a point of diminishing returns when we’re constantly working on something during a day, so keeping that in mind, I have to fit multiple things in a day in order to maximize productivity.
I need a way to control obsessive behaviour
Just like how I obsessed over my exams, which also kept me up at night sometimes, I have recently been obsessing over my business. I cannot have that, I need to figure out a way to curb that, and keep myself in check. I will read up on that.
My body won’t tolerate working like this
As I mentioned, my back is already having troubles. My eyes have also not been well, I have weak eye muscles, which makes me near-sighted sometimes. It’s weird because one day I won’t be able to see distant objects, and the next day I’ll have perfect vision. I obviously cannot be sitting for long periods of time in front of my computer, and I also need to exercise my eye muscles as I am supposed to in order to keep them healthy.
As I said in the beginning, I am very happy with how the month went. I now need to work on the problems I identified. I’ll be doing another month of high productivity, maybe this will become a regular thing. I keep evaluating my progress at the end of each month, and fix the mistakes I’ve been making.
I’ll lay down my plan for the next month tomorrow. I’m optimistic about this, lets do this!
