How To Exit Your Lazy Era And Be Productive

This blog begins with a few questions:

Do you feel you haven't achieved any goals lately?

Are your days or weeks passing by without accomplishing much?

Do you often berate yourself for laziness?

Are you spending over two hours daily on unnecessary screen time?

Do you start your weekends with high productivity ambitions, only to lose momentum by Sunday night, dreading the coming Monday?

If you answered yes to half of these questions then you are in the right place. Through this blog, I am going to teach you the 5 step process to break the cycle and transition from laziness to productivity.

Dirty 3Ds

Ready to leave your lazy era behind, but unsure where to start? You might have a general sense of your daily flaws, but lack deeper understanding of 'when' and 'how' they occur, hindering your transformation. Let's do an exercise called the Dirty 3Ds. Over three days, observe and record everything you do from the moment you wake up until you go to bed. This will give you a comprehensive view of your habits, both good and bad.

I love this exercise for two reasons:

1. It involves writing - Much like journaling helps to clarify your thoughts, documenting your activities gives you a clear understanding of where your day might be going off track.

2. It confronts you with reality - Amidst the daily rush, with numerous tasks to handle, it's easy to lose track of how you've accumulated three hours of screen time, walked less than five hundred meters, or drank less than a litre of water. This log allows you to face your daily realities and offers a chance to alter them.

Removing Non-Value Adding Activities

Now, with a comprehensive list of your daily activities, it's simpler to identify those that don't add any value to your life. It's time to eliminate these non-value-adding tasks and make room for those that do. I'm a strong advocate for the Japanese methods of Muda, Mura, and Muri. The "lean" concept, originating from the Toyota production system, was designed to eliminate three deviations: Muda (waste), Mura (unevenness), and Muri (overburden). I find great value in applying this principle in my life to become an optimally efficient version of myself. In this section, we focus on eliminating waste (Muda).

For instance, you might start your day with 25 minutes of aimless scrolling in bed or spend another 45 minutes on social media to unwind after work. You might spend hours texting to stave off loneliness or binge-watch shows until midnight to relieve stress.

While you might think that watching reels brings joy or relieves stress, in reality, it's a trap. The consequences of mindless scrolling can range from setting a bad mood to weakening your mental health and detaching from the present moment. I could list countless ways in which mindless scrolling can negatively impact you. The same goes for hours of texting to combat loneliness and binge-watching to relieve stress. Nearly 70-80% of people give in to instant gratification, which prevents them from unlocking their true potential. Remember, our goal is long-term improvement, identifying flaws, and cultivating lifelong habits. Temporary distractions will only lead to future regret and remorse.

Plan - Creating a System

Many of us fail to maximize our day's productivity due to a lack of planning. I've lost count of the times I've ended the day without completing my tasks because I didn't set up a to-do list in the morning. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, wears the same T-shirt every day to avoid unnecessary decision-making. Creating a system can help avoid abandoning tasks due to the burden of decision-making. Sometimes, you have idle hours, but you end up wasting them scrolling aimlessly because you don't know what else to do. This is a significant barrier for 70% of people trying to combat procrastination, laziness, and self-sabotage.

Creating a system involves pre-planning your tasks. We take a top-down approach from our goals, breaking them into weekly or daily tasks. To ensure you complete these tasks, add them to your calendar and prepare for them. For instance, suppose you want to improve your fitness by eating healthily. But you've been ordering out often because you're tired and short on time.

Pre-planning can transform this situation:

During the weekend, plan your meals and order groceries. When you get home, you have a pre-prepped meal (which you spent 15 minutes preparing the previous night or morning). You can then start cooking according to your calendar schedule, knowing you'll have enough time to relax and prepare for the next day.

Planning is vital. Here are some tips:

1. Dedicate an hour on Sunday to plan your week and schedule your tasks.

2. Note your working hours and allocate time for necessary activities such as cooking, grocery shopping, sleep, and exercise.

3. Prepare lists for meals, groceries, and workouts for the week.

Spending an hour each Sunday on planning can prevent potential failures and resentment, and ensure a productive week. The aim is to not slack by establishing a well-structured system that takes the burden of decision-making off your plate and allows you to transition smoothly from one task to another without whiling away. Remember, if you wake up and start deciding what to do from several goals, you've already missed the train.

Fallbacks

Do you wake up with the same energy every day? Do you feel the same every day? Do you always have the same availability and bandwidth? The answer is likely no!

That's why you need fallbacks. Let's say you have a workout plan for every other morning, but some days you wake up feeling less than your best. Fallbacks are your solution for such days.

Fallbacks are practical alternatives that can help sustain good habits during temporary setbacks.

For example, when you schedule workouts, also plan for those groggy mornings. Instead of a gym session, have a 20-minute walk in the sun and fresh air as your fallback. Perhaps you plan to cook every night after work. But, after a long day, you might be too tired to prepare a full meal. Instead of resorting to takeout, have an easier, healthier meal in mind that takes less time and effort. Careful planning can help you maintain a healthy diet using these pre-planned fallbacks.

I recommend creating fallbacks for all your goals, such as staying healthy, reading regularly, studying, and completing work.

Staying consistent

It's no secret that consistency carries the most weight compared to everything else discussed above. There's a quote I once read that said, "Everything you want is on the other side of consistency," and I couldn't agree more. Whether you aim to be fitter, healthier, more focused, or more productive, you won't achieve this without consistently working towards it over a long period. There isn't a magic solution that allows you to complete a task once or twice and reach your goal.

At this point, you might question the purpose of reading this blog if, in the end, it's all about long-term efforts. My advice is, yes, you must put in the work. However, I've already shared how to take the first step and maintain consistency by establishing a system that prevents in-the-moment decision-making.

To help maintain consistency, I want to share a new habit I adopted this year: setting time-bound goals. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the effort required, give yourself a timeline of 3, 6, 9, or 12 months (or whatever suits you) to blindly follow the system you have created. Soon, your efforts will feel more natural, and your progress will become noticeable, encouraging you to stick with your new habits in the long run.

Hacks

That Extra Push

When I don't feel like getting up in the morning to workout, I quickly open my Pinterest account and view my 2024 board. Here, I see all the body goals I want to achieve this year. This serves as the extra push that gets me out of bed.

Visualizing your results isn't a game kids are playing; it holds immense power.

Keep a few pictures of what you want to achieve on your phone and look at them whenever you need that extra push.

Asking for Help

There are times when despite your best efforts, you find yourself unable to make progress. In such situations, seeking assistance from another individual, such as a partner, parent, sibling, or friend, can be invaluable. They may provide a fresh perspective and guidance. Always remember, asking for help is a sign of a healthy emotional state.

Find a Partner for Mutual Support

If you're trying to lose weight and establish a gym habit, it can be beneficial to find a friend with the same goals. Having a partner to share the journey with can result in a win-win situation. A companion can provide accountability, motivation, and encouragement, helping to sustain your new habits over time.

Bridging the gap between your current and dream self requires consistent effort. If you start today, you'll be surprised how far you'll get in just a few months. Achieving this transformation isn't easy. If it were, we'd all be living as our dream selves. But the reality is, most of us have work to do. The last thing you want is to be the same person you were 2-5 years ago. Self-improvement is a worthwhile investment. Remember, it might be challenging to work on yourself every day, but it's even harder to cope with a sense of underachievement. The fact that you've read this far shows your willingness to make a change. So let's start taking ourselves seriously this year. There's a high probability that six months from now, you'll have reinvented yourself.