productivity – thejourneyx

Goals (III)

IntroductionAfter almost a decade of studying and living personal development, I’ve come to realise that a lot of the advice (including some of my own!) on making goals is convoluted. This puts many people off and makes it hard for them to achieve their goals. Goal-making doesn’t need to be complicated. I’ll walk you throughContinue reading “Goals (III)”

Consistency

Progress is a core part of fulfilment. The only way to make meaningful progress is through consistency. Never miss twice. First thing’s first. Know (roughly) what you want. Do you want to learn a language? Do you want to read more books? You don’t need SMART goals, but you at least need a direction. YouContinue reading “Consistency”

Mental bandwidth

Years of depression, anxiety, struggle, busyness and ongoing addiction have had a significant impact on my ability to think clearly. It was only when I committed to abstinence, occasional meditation and running that my mental clarity grew significantly. (I still slip up sometimes.) I was amazed by the mental bandwidth awarded to me for theseContinue reading “Mental bandwidth”

Deadlines

Deadlines ensure work is done in a reasonable time or faster than it would have otherwise been done. They’re powerful, create extra pressure and get stuff done, but they can be hard to stay on top of when you have multiple deadlines running simultaneously. This is more a lesson for myself: In the last fewContinue reading “Deadlines”

Presence

If there’s one single thing you can do to immediately improve your life and the lives of those around you it’s presence. Presence is the greatest present. In this post I’ll talk about my experience of presence, flow, why presence is important and some ways that have helped me to achieve it. What is presence?Continue reading “Presence”

Incremental Progress

TLDR: Get plenty of rest and sleep, reduce distractions, prioritise, focus on what you can prevent, do your best, focus on what you can control, take opportunities immediately, respond don’t react. I made a commitment to myself to become a writer. This means writing every day. I write a lot that I never post andContinue reading “Incremental Progress”

Goals

– You can have everything you want(just not all at once) (Series hiatus) TLDR Re-define realistic. Goals don’t need to be huge in the beginning. Be careful what you tell children about their dreams. Don’t delay gratification until you achieve your goals – enjoy the process, learn to not be attached to the result. AvoidContinue reading “Goals”

Recalibration

Recalibration (bionic reading)

You may have noticed I went dark for a while. I am currently in a transition period, the process of recalibration, learning how to go from teacher to manager. This has challenged the systems I had in place to protect my mental health. More on that later – a bit of background first and some lessons I have learned at the end. Background – From Teacher to Manager (Imposter Syndrome)Until just before my post on R&R, I had a highly productive schedule, using the early hours of the morning from 4 or 5 am to around 10 am to read, study or write. After that, I would have breakfast with my family and then cycle to work. This was working really well. I was tired but productive, achieving, increasing my self-esteem and staving off depression. Since then, I have transitioned from being a teacher to a regional manager. This means a big schedule change. My previous teaching hours were between 1 pm-9 pm. I now essentially have a 9-5 office job. My day off was Tuesday. Now it is Saturday & Sunday, but my part-time job was on those days until the academic year ended last week, so I worked three weeks with no day off. I also have to drive to work, which means less exercise and more stress (peak hour traffic, abrupt lane changes and stopping = a mini-heart attack every day!). The naive part of me thought the transition would be business as usual, just with some schedule adjustments. To stay productive, I thought it would just be a case of getting up earlier but I had not taken into account the stress of the new responsibilities and the lack of days off as I changed jobs.My first few weeks have been quite intense as I learn about my new role. AnxietyI have had very little time to feel depressed. What I have struggled with is anxiety.Here is what anxiety looks like for me: racing thoughts, increased heart rate, headaches from stress, impaired concentration and forgetfulness, incredibly focused concentration, and a general feeling of impending doom. In my main job, I have gone from being responsible for teaching around 8 classes to representing the whole company and being responsible (and first point of contact) for around 18 schools. This, and my lack of experience leaves me constantly questioning the decisions I make on a daily basis. I have the title, but I sometimes have the feeling of ‘Imposter Syndrome’.Continue reading “Recalibration (bionic reading)”

Bionic Reading

This is an experiment for my readers. Be sure to open this page for full effect. I recently became aware of a concept called Bionic Reading. The idea is that by focusing on the bold parts of each word, your brain will finish the word. The aim is to “encourage a more in-depth reading and understanding of written content.” I will be trying it out on future posts too and would love your feedback. Should I keep doing it? Why/why not? Comment below if you find this helpful or not! Post emboldened with the help of: https://api.bionic-reading.com/convert/ For further information, see: https://bionic-reading.com/ (I am not affiliated with nor sponsored by them).

R&R

An uncharacteristically short post… I am currently having a week off as I transition between jobs. I had been feeling off and particularly unproductive in the 3 weeks before this holiday. I have been fighting the urge to be productive, so I set no alarms. I wake up when I wake up. Often that happensContinue reading “R&R“

Muddled (unplanned)

I am just going to write and see where this goes. Writing is my way of unscrambling my thoughts and reprioritising what is important. TLDR: You cannot do everything you want at the same time, listen to your body, rest. For regular readers It has been an intense couple of weeks. I have been pushingContinue reading “Muddled (unplanned)“

Stress and Anxiety

Fragments The importance of rest and purpose Summary/TLDR at the end. Let me pre-empt this by pointing out that, as the subtitle suggests, I have not been getting enough rest. It follows that I am not writing at my best, but I hope this will serve as a reminder to you to get enough rest!Continue reading “Stress and Anxiety“

Prioritising

Like me recently, you may have found yourself with a seemingly ever-growing list of tasks and no idea how to prioritise. This is what I learned (inspiration from Earl Knightingale and Tom Bilyeu): The good news: learning to prioritise is not as complicated as it seems. The answer lies in knowing your “why”. i.e. WhatContinue reading “Prioritising“

Goal-setting

It has taken me most of my life to take up my dad’s advice. Goal-setting seemed so boring and restrictive before. Now it is essential. What changed? After a family member’s suicide and getting scarily close myself, I spent a lot of time trying to understand and learn about why people end their lives. ThisContinue reading “Goal-setting”

Stress

Stress can cause a whole range of problems, but you can overcome it by changing your thinking about stress and building systems and tools to deal with it. Each time you overcome a stressful situation you build resilience…

…The tough part is getting to the other side. How do you maintain clear thinking and overcome the challenges you face?

Dreams

See “Time management” for productivity and efficiency tips. Background When I was younger, I had big dreams and I was uncompromising on achieving these. I did not like the idea of being tied down to a single job or debt-forced to work, unable to take risks, fearful of losing the ability to pay a mortgageContinue reading “Dreams”

Technology: relationships, mental health and productivity

Technology is wonderful-for education, sharing knowledge, business, and connecting with people you otherwise could not. However, the way we use it is not always in our best interest-for relationships, for our mental health, for productivity. We are always on, yet disconnected from reality, our concentration fragmented.