7 activities to transform your day

7 activities to transform your day

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What’s Inside ?

• A post about 7 activities to transform your day

• Interesting “thing” of the week

We live in a hustle world.

Hustle is encouraged, celebrated and normalised.

Is hustle okay for you ?

Not for me,

Hustle causes burnout - both mentally and physically.

This is why I prefer productive culture.

Productive culture is where you aim to work towards your goals without effecting your physical and mental health.

The emphasis is to get something productive out of your day while being mindful about your day, living your day mindfully.

Results don’t matter, effort does, process does.

You don’t have to hustle.

Do you like it ?

Here are the 7 activities to transform your day into a productive one.

Pray:

The world is becoming fragile, lawless and getting deprived of morals.

Human vice is in triumph.

Human Intellect has trivialised the important of civility and morality in the name of freedom.

Self-adulation and narcissism is encountered at every walk of our lives.

So much that it is only “I” that occupies our minds. Not others, not family, not society, not environment only “I“.

You need a tight hit to knock you and ground you down. At least I need to.

Which is why, Prayer is the most important thing in my calendar.

Prayer should not be a ritual, it should be something that connects you spiritually to the higher power.

This activity alone is enough to help you with clear thinking, solace and grounded behaviour.

This activity will defeat the most important antitheses of a productive culture - self adulation.

Prayer should help you connect with your creator.

How long in a day ? : Dedicate 1hour at least in your day

Tip: Ensure you are extremely mindful during your prayer.

Goals

If you need to get something productive out of your time, you need a direction. You need goals.

Some prefer to call them tasks and some specifically stick to goals.

Whatever could be your literary opinion, they help you with direction.

One needs direction without which you are leaf swirling in a strong gush of wind, pushed in arbitrary directions without an end goal and without a place to land.

As much as people are fascinated with a goal less life and “lets see how things pan out with time”, life, without goals is pointless. You are an average Joe going about in life.

If you want to achieve things (for whatever intention) goals help you immensely.

I understand that people are overwhelmed by big goals. That is ok, You don’t need to define big goals when getting started.

Just define a few “important goals“ for the day. From there, extend them to weekly goals, then monthly, quarterly and then proceed to yearly goals.

I follow below 4 step process

1. Define a few big fat goals for the whole year

   Eg:

   I want to learn a programming language, I want to learn to swim etc…

2. Define small tasks(goals) that helps you achieve this big goal everyday/every week.

   Eg:

   Search for good online resources that will help me learn X programming language,

   Speak to the closest swimming pool in the area to enrol into

3. Work on your daily/weekly goals continuously

4. Reflect on your journey every week/every quarter,

   • You can validate how much of your big goals are achieved with your daily stuff.

You can follow something of your own or borrow the above pattern.

How long in a day ? : At least 10 min

Eat small, Eat Healthy

“you are what you eat“ is a good yardstick to define your eating habits.

The quantity and the quality of your eating impact your physical and mental wellbeing.

Eat too much, you turn lazy, unproductive, eat too less and you don’t have energy to get through the day.

Right amount of food is critical.

Quality of food matters as well, you might have heard the advice of not treating your body as a dust bin. That’s right, don’t throw all that’s edible into your body.

Ensure you eat food that is healthy, nourishing and nurtures your growth.

Another criterion is to ensure you have right amount of proteins, carbohydrates, fibre etc… which ensure a balanced diet.

Don’t forget the most important criterion of your food - enough water intake.

I can’t stress the importance of taking good portion of water daily to keep you healthy and productive all through the day.

Tip:

An advice I try to practice is to fill 2/3rd of the stomach. 1/3 with food and 1/3 with water. Leave the rest of the stomach empty. (Even if you are eating your favourite food)

Exercise

We don’t live like our parent generation - a lot of our household and work chores don’t involve physical strength. it can be largely done sitting in a place using your smartphone.

This is why exercise should occupy a very important part of your day.

You can

1. Go hardcore with regular visits to gym or

2. Play a physical game regularly or

3. Ensure you put in enough physical exercise/activity at home

Pick any of the above but don’t ignore this.

Don’t hesitate to invest your time and money in any of the above activities. It is part of growing your future self, it is self grooming.

Investing in yourself should not be a difficult decision to make.

The pattern I like is to

1. Ensure 5000 steps a day

2. Some physical exercises for about 15 min

3. Rigorous gym session for 1h a week (optional)

4. Go for a 15 min run/cycling everyday (optional)

Decide on what works best for you and get engaged.

How long in a day? : Set aside 30 min at least

Deep work

We live in the age of distractions.

We are surrounded and overwhelmed by all kinds of information. We carry our gadgets that hook us into an ever bustling and a constantly engaged world, it would be a herculean task to bring back our focus.

I had written a post about this and how to fight distractions and develop inner focus here. Read it when you find time.

This is why this activity takes a very important place.

I was introduced to Deep work by the book “Deep work” by Renowned American author Cal Newport.

Cal emphasised on the importance of distraction free time to ensure you complete an activity/work in an effective and productive way.

This skill of devoting undistracted time to a particular activity is becoming rare and valuable.

A big takeaway from the book is to schedule deep work blocks on your calendar. The size of a block is left to you, you could start with a 30 min block and go up until 2 hours or more.

The number of blocks that you want to schedule is also up to you, the more the deep work blocks, the more your productivity and thereby a better qualitative work output.

I would highly recommend you to do the same.

1. Schedule at least 1 deep work block in your day, it can be for a personal or for a professional activity.

2. Ensure you don’t have any distractions during this time (no gadgets, no physical distractions etc..) and get going.

You would be amazed at the amount of output you generate against your regular schedule.

How long in a day ? : At least 30 min (1 deep work block)

Family time

One can’t emphasise the importance of spending time with your family.

Everyday hustle means that we find quality time with family only over weekends. This is a bad practice/pattern.

We work to feed and liberate our families not the other way around. Any kind of work that keeps us away from family is not worth it.

Make it a practice to spend time with your family everyday for a dedicated time.

Completely switch off your work related affairs after a certain time and dedicate your entire attention to the family affairs.

They can be things like playing with your kids, reading them stories, helping them learn, spending private time with your spouse, praying together, talking to your parents. There are many activities one can do.

Set aside this time, even if you don’t have anything to do, just sit with them, listen to them.

You will be amazed at the mental stability and satisfaction this will bring to your life.

How long in a day ? : At least 2h

Reflect

Finally end your day with a good reflection of the day. Reflection helps course correct your activities, goals and routines.

Something you can ponder include

• The good things that occurred in your day

• Bad things you did or that some one did to you

• What can you learn from both ?

You can adapt it to suit your needs or come up with your own reflection structure, but use it as a time to review and reflect on your actions and work for the whole day.

This can be the last activity of your day, you can also use this time to have a look at your goals and review the progress towards your big goals

How long in a day ? : 10 min

That’s it folks, hope you liked the practical advice, try them out and give me your feedback.

Interesting “thing“ of the week

This week I shared a post on “function calling”, a new game changing feature to your gpt chatbots

If you are an AI enthusiast, you would love to read this.

Hope you had insightful time reading the post, if you would like me to write about any other topic, don’t hesitate to hit reply to this email and send me the name of the topic.

If you would like to give me any other feedback about the content, don’t hesitate to reply either.

Warm Regards,
Mohammed Sameer

www.transmin.co.in

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