Art of being Prolofic!

Productivity, this term always mesmerizes me. How more could be achieved with it? How did the great leaders use it to be so successful? What is the key difference which has created this boundary? How could that be fortified and achieve all that which they have attained? What they did which I ain't doing right? The questions are endless. After reading various books such as Outliers, Thinking fast and slow, Ready study go! , Six secrets smart people don't tell you and much more which I can't recall, I have jotted down the points which make the difference. But before that let me share a small incident with you.

Yesterday, I kept an alarm of 6:00 a.m. Well, I wanted to be among one of those leaders who have this good habit. So I kept an alarm and like always I snoozed it up in morning and woke up at my normal time 9:00 A.M. The strange thing is that the day before that I kept an alarm of 2 A.M. and  I woke up without any problem. In fact, I just had 3 hours of sleep and it just turned out to be fine. The reason was simple I hadn’t studied and I wanted to pass the exam. And now today sitting with my laptop I think what was is the difference between both those days? 
Let's try to observe some minute details which lead to this. The first scenario had motive something like a simple if else loop like if I woke up and studied I would pass else I won't. The second scenario didn’t have a clear motive. It was merely something which I wanted to do. Although it had a motive, it wasn’t long term. Its if-else loop was like if I woke up then I would go to the gym or would do meditation or maybe do yoga? Else I wouldn’t do anything and would sleep and complete my deprived sleep which is never ending. 
An interesting thing to observe is the deadline limit. In the case one, I had a deadline to be followed that if I didn’t study then I would fail. I mean, I can’t postpone studying now can I? It has turned out to be a matter of survival.  A lot of things depend upon it. A large number of chain of events. I don’t want my grade to be affected, If I fail I will have to give re -exam, It costs too many efforts to study again, It would affect my parents, clearing a re-test is much harder than the normal paper etc. The chain of events which I don’t want to happen made me; pushed me towards to study through the night. While in the secondary case, I also had the driving force to a better health. This driving force is nothing but the need to do which in this case I could postpone it to tomorrow. Getting a better health takes time, right? So subconsciously the mind say let's not do it because what’s the point as a day less won’t affect anything because in a day more I won’t attain any good health. So we can skip it for today and do it tomorrow and maybe the day after and after. The cycle never ends and adds a day after every day.

In both the cases motivation and the driving force both were present but the differentiating factor was the lookout. Lookout is not done by you but by your mind. The subconscious mind is lazy and doesn’t get any shit done which is not important. It treats everything as a threat which is not important; could be postponed; don’t have a deadline; doesn’t affect your ass if you chilled up today. 

One of my favorite ted talks which describe the following phenomena-

In order to trick your mind to attain whatever you truly want to attain you need to believe in it. You need to have a clear view of why are you doing it today and why today is as important as tomorrow. You could use 5 Second rule which I generally use and was discovered by Mel Robbins. It helps in overcoming the subconscious behavior of your mind. It's simple, all you need to do is count from 5 to 1 and then do it without thinking. Like while getting up early in the morning count from 5 to 1 to yourself and get out of bed without thinking. 
Another approach which I use is if a task takes less than 3 seconds to be fulfilled then it should be done now. This has helped me in completing small tasks which are generally left pending for tomorrow. 
The act of laziness has created a habit loop which affects the productivity and needs to be changed. Once you overcome the phase of thinking everything becomes easy; it becomes a habit and it's done automatically. 

Before going forward make sure whatever task you want to perform is worthwhile. It produces positive results; would help you; benefit you in the future. 

Try following things for increasing productivity-

1. Believing 
I have observed that a motivation or dedication comes in phases moving from high to the low like an exponential decay. Present maximum at the initial days and hollowing the cup after few days. The reason for this is not believing in the motive or losing the interest after some time.

It should be understood that in achieving something requires time and effort. Maybe we don't have a lot of resources like time, money, technology, contacts etc but a hell more resourcefulness is present like determination, curiosity, passion, and desire. A constant reminder is required why we are doing it. You should believe that you are capable of achieving it; no one can stop you from achieving what you want. The path will be simple but not easy but in the end, it will be worth it.

2. No oversleeping 

Sleep range various from 6 to 9 hours. Until and unless you don’t feel sleepy or unenergetic during the day without much work load it is nothing to worry about. Oversleeping has been linked to a host of medical problems, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, headache and increased risk of death. I don’t know if any of these diseases are really caused by over sleeping or not but you and I know both know it is bad for health so why not take it as a precautionary measure?
An advice is to keep track of your sleep cycles using either a fitness tracker or using sleep tracker application and figuring out what is the appropriate time for your body to sleep and at what time it goes into REM cycle.

3. Building the skill 
A combined effort of practice and performance is required. Both of them are necessary. Here is a ted talk about it.

4. Create Deadlines. They are good as we discussed above.

5. Make a priority list!

6. Change the habit loop. 
Read more about it here.

7. Checkbox list 
Keep it in front of you of how much you have progressed so you don't loose interest after some time.

8. Ask you friend/relative to remind you, why you are doing it when you loose the interest! If you believe/trust encourages you it has a higher impact.

9. Always think when you are not working someone else is!

10. Use the Pomodoro technique. 
Normally our attention span is of 20mins. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25mins in a length, separated by short breaks. It helps power through distractions leading to hyper focus and getting things done in short bursts of time.

There are six steps in the technique:

1. Decide on the task to be done.
2. Set the timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).
3. Work on the task until the timer rings.
4. After the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper.
5. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 2.
6. After four Pomodoro, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.

11. Take appropriate diet.

12. Meditation

13. Drink water like you are being paid for it. 

14. Visualize where you wanna be

15. Get out of comfort zone

16. The first 20 hours

17. I don't have time is shit! It's all about priorities.

18. Resist multitasking

19. Numbers matter 0.99 % or 1.01%

20. Procrastinate to clear your thoughts!