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Showing posts from October, 2020

Book Recommendation: Atomic Habits by James Clear

I am in the middle of the audio book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. The emphasis of this book is on working on the core of your habits, your identity, to help guide yourself to who you want to be. I think this quote typifies the idea the best: "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become... as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity... The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do." https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-James-Clear-audiobook/dp/B07RFSSYBH/

Productivity Tip: Write Down Tasks For Later

Near the end of the book Addiction, Procrastination and Laziness by Roman Gelperin, it offers advice to prevent forgetting tasks. When you think of a task to do, but don't have the proper frame of mind to do it, you should write the task down to remember later when you are in the proper frame of mind. The book suggests writing it somewhere prominent so you will be more likely to see it. Thus, a whiteboard makes an excellent medium. The book also points out that if you leave the task up for long enough, it becomes "part of the scenery" and you begin to ignore it when you see it. Thus, you should only use this method for one-time tasks, and either cross it out or erase it when you finish the task. What follows are conclusions I made myself. A question came to me after reading this: what about longer/larger tasks? The answer is simple: break that task into smaller tasks, and write the next step on the board. Then you complete the task like the other tasks, and you can put th

Productivity Tip: Write Notes To Capture Motivation

Whenever you feel the urge to do something, that is a strong signal from your brain of a direction that is important to you. It is equally important to capture that thought/feeling, as it is likely to fade quickly, and then be forgotten. Then, later, you can review it when you are ready to act on it, and away you go! IMPORTANT:  This should be a QUICK exercise to capture the MOMENT when it hits you. Don't feel bogged down by details. If you can't get a lot of information down, that's fine. If you can capture the passionate moment, then you're doing it right. Here's an example; I will break down the parts in a moment: I want to make a mobile to-do list app to help people with productivity . Reason: I would like to make a to-do list app that I have been using already. I have struggled with being productive, and I think that having aids around will help me to increase my productivity. Having a mobile app with helpful functions will keep those tools close at hand wh

Progress Update: Still Searching

  I am still taking a sabbatical from working. To help myself be more productive, I'm trying a simple schedule based on a normal 9-5 life   After waking up, I have breakfast and get into some work. I take breaks as needed when I feel stuck, and around 4pm I release myself from work and go into play mode.   Currently the work I am doing is "whatever I feel is important to me", which happens to be mobile app development with React Native. I also have plans to learn music arrangement/production with Cubase.   All this is to learn how to handle myself and figuring out where I actually want to go with my life rather than just going with the flow, as I was doing for something like 20 years.