Restored from Instagram stories ·
though people who regularly engage with me in DMs asked me why i wasn't so active posting stories as I used to do, it's a new coming from people who do not engage at all.
the real reason was I was running some experiments. will tell you all what i was doing.
so, whenever we did the weekly QnA, i recieve 50-100 every week which will borderline revolve around how to be productive or how to get rid of their mobile addiction and so on.
i have been experimenting on this for quite a while. you'd have seen the spreadsheet which i shared couple of weeks ago (available in my discord or ask my alt who archives my stories. they can get that for you) where you can actually improve behavior points week over week.
i've used that extensively to increase patience, temperance and reduce anger.
next, I did want to experiment on improving productivity. i have used the best softwares that are named for productivity world wide
like notion, etc.,
i found that spending time in notion to prioritise things, arrange it, making it organized and beautiful actually increased time consumed for doing that instead of doing my actual work.
every time i finished my work and went there to change status, and then spending a few minutes to look satisfied and all, wasn't doing my actual work in hand.
then i just threw them away and went back to basics.
keep for my android phone. notes for my iphone. (notes synced through iCloud in my workstation PC browser too) - notes sync automatically with my macbook.
worst case, for long documents, google docs work. no fancy notion pages or nothing like that. plain old Google docs.
for writing down tasks, I just wrote the tasks in blue marker pen in my white board and whenever they're done, I just strike them out with my black marker.
investing in a white board, two markers (blue and black) and a white board eraser is worth it. it's inexpensive and you can nail it any wall with two nails/screws.
just write them down. strike it as you finish.
at the end of every day, I just add more tasks. or if there's a part where I've striked down everything, i erase them to populate it with new ones.
there's a little trick here. it's not just writing down the tasks in the white board.
there'd be some big ones in this white board.
if you have a Google Calendar, take that out.
dedicate and block your calendar for each of this tasks for an hour or two (depending on how long it'd take for the task).
you can leave the smaller ones. but for anything that's larger do that.
concentrating on only one task at hand results in much better efficiency than multi tasking things. it's much cleaner. more focussed and it works well.
whenever you finish that task way ahead of the blocked time, see your white board from your desk. see if there are any small things you can finish.
take a break - every 5/10 mins an hour or in the task time period and get back in time for the next task.
keeps you fresh. not exhausted at all.
keep some boiled sugar candies in your desk or some lollipops. whenever you feel like binge eating, put this on your mouth while working in PC.
now, I wanted to fix my personal work hours as well.
i experimented with everything. but shifting times between the teams in NY, SF and back home in Pondy means my sleeping times are screwed. I needed to get it back asap.
shifted my weight trainings to morning and cardio to evening. or if I miss the morning routine, will start with weight training by evening, end it with the cardio.
get back home, get a warm water bath, eat and then hit the bed immediately.
making sure I don't see any devices for an hour before i sleep and turning off the light worked.
actually these aren't what worked for me. the one I am going to tell next is what did wonders.
have two mobiles.
one mobile - has all social apps, has food app, has everything. this is a dopamine phone. i take this phone, it's like a drug to an addict. has food apps, every app which can give me fun.
another mobile - has only things which I use to read and notes app where i can take notes.
emails, office discord and things where you can only concentrate on work. the boring things. etc.,
remember i am trying to teach my brain to be less addicted to dopamine.
i am not deleting my apps to turn away addiction. but rather embracing them to teach my brain to use them on moderation.
so when I started this experiment, the first two three days were tough. i was using the dopamine phone too much.
gradually my time with my reading phone increased. i took down a lot of notes after i read.
whether i thought about something, i quickly took my reading phone and noted down the points. sometimes i went back to make those thoughts concise.
to force the changed behaviour to my reading phone, i needed to introduce a short sweetener there. had to install a game. but it can't be long. it can't be endless. installed shadow fight since the game ends in two 100 second fight rounds.
since i associated thinking to that reading phone, my time with it increased.
whenever i felt like i need some time with my dopamine phone, i took that. spend an hours worth of good time on it and then put it down as i have my dopamine boost.
gradually my time in my dopamine phone decreased to such an extent i only used it for less than 20-30 mins a day.
was I able to force behaviors? yes
was I able to change my sleep cycle in less than a day whenever I wanted it to go back to normal? yes
have i actually increased my productivity with whiteboard, using Google calendar to block tasks so that i can do ONE at a time? yes
was I able to reduce screen time, control dopamine addiction by using split phones? yes
(you saw the proof with my increasingly reduced activity)
so, for all those people who asked in my QnA week after week on how to increase productivity or to stop procrastination or related questions, i hope I was able to answer now.
this is what I did. i will continue to experiment and will come back to you with how they went. feel free to try these. even if they don't work for you, worst case - they aren't harmful.
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