Nobonita Chowdhury
Even if we refer to all the self-help books in the world, I feel that we’ll eventually end up failing at being as productive as we expect ourselves to be. One of the key reasons for this is probably the fact that we set our expectations really high. As if reading all those self-help books can automatically transform us into the Dalai Lama of productivity. Before I start delving deeper, please take into account that this person may not be you. This is just me speaking from personal experiences. To be frank though, my level of laziness is probably a bit higher than the average person, meaning that many of the conclusions reached in this article may not apply for a large chunk of the population. Nevertheless, here are the themes that are mainly responsible for blocking my ability to be productive.
1.Distraction
In my case, distraction is literally the Great Wall of China between productivity and me. Even though I have this gigantic list of things I want (or NEED) to accomplish, all of a sudden I’m hooked on a new TV series or manga and can’t let go. And let’s not leave out the continuous Facebook notifications. The internet is a scary place. Being brainwashed by terrorists is our biggest fear right now, but we fail to realize that our beloved World Wide Web has already brainwashed us. Take me as an example, for instance. I live and breathe Spotify. My phone has literally become an extention of my arm. When I’m not listening to music for some time, I feel that something is missing. How can one expect to be productive at their fullest if they’re that addicted to their phone? What’s more, I become more prone to distractions when I’m trying to avoid certain tasks on my to-do list.
2.We’re tired all the time
My mother always tells me that back when she was young everyone in her home went to bed by 9. In fact, she’s always kept that rule intact to enforce discipline within my brother and myself. And it worked pretty well for me too, that is, until I decided to go to a boarding school. I really abused my newfound freedom badly. Even though our dorm parents would come to check in on us at 10:30 we would wait until inspections and then be on our phones again. We would also be allowed to stay up late if we had too much homework, something which my mother’s rules didn’t allow. When it came to my mother, you’d have to be in bed by 9:00 pm, no questions asked. She didn’t care whether I was trying to cram in a year’s worth of info for finals or if I was just fooling around. Her word was the law. In boarding school I got a lot more freedom and frankly my misuse of that is what messed up my lifestyle.
3.We are almost never accountable for ourselves
While I’m not a complete loser and still capable of accomplishing things on my own, I find myself doing a lot better whenever I have someone hold me accountable. Especially when I feel super unproductive, then confiding in someone is what usually helps me in getting out of my hiatus. Unfortunately, I don’t always feel comfortable about sharing my goals with someone. I guess I’m still super shy in that aspect.
4.We are easily overwhelmed by pressure
This one literally speaks out my name. The tasks we need to finish seems so big that we feel like we’ll never get any of it done. The root cause of this: procrastination. Instead of doing the logical thing which would be to do the task a little at a time each day, we wait until the very last minute to get it done. This ultimately reduces the quality of the finished work. The only way to tackle this is to stop procrastinating. There is no shortcut to it. Procrastination is a difficult habit to break, trust me I know. A solution could be to get rid of all distractions for a certain time period, but then again it varies from one individual to the other.