Boosted Productivity

WFH had stressed us all initially when it hit us. But given the nature of the human race, we seem to have been getting around them especially when it comes to boosting one’s productivity and speed to accomplish our tasks towards goals. I am sharing here a few things that I have used in the past few weeks and have benefited a lot personally.

I categorized my tasks into two categories:

• My mundane tasks, which have no specific goals but makes me happy like meditation, blogging, running, etc

• My Life Goals, which is categorized by a few focus areas where I want to grow and would count myself successful if I become better at it

Let me take a shot at explaining how I am targeting both of these separately and I would like to feel it’s effective as well. The mundane tasks are those which have little or no reinforcement for me to do at all (and in most cases, I do not do them as per my today’s lifestyle) yet I wish to do them on a daily scale because the thought that I am doing them every day makes me joyous - like running, meditation, reading, blogging. Think of them as habit-forming tasks. On the other hand, I have my life goals which are areas where I want to grow personally so that I can count myself successful. Things like financial independence, fitness, relationship management, etc.

I realized that making a checklist towards my most redundant and mundane tasks make me super productive. Such as whether I increased my running mileage by 10% on each week1-3-6 helps me increase my range by around 30% in just under 2 months which is something that I always wanted to do but was never to achieve so. Another example is I sat down every alternate day for the past 3 weeks and have written down tons of blog ideas. This was great for me to form a habit of sitting and blogging. For many folks, they can simply keep that in their heads but I struggle with getting back to my goals because of a constant jungle of thoughts that runs wild inside my head.

Another tactic that I have found is to put down my life goals and make simple tasks around them. Accomplishing those tasks has been reinforcing myself that I am on a correct path and nearer to my goals. There is a simple path that I have followed and discussed along with my friend and guide - Sushant Kochar. He developed a theory that if we do Plan, Move, Analyze, Repeat - then we are most productive at what we do. it helps us stay anchored to our goals. Let me go deeper into what I am doing and what PMAR means.

Plan means that we write down our long term plans - for more than a month and break it down into small actionable actions. I broke my plans around the following areas which I felt like the most bothering areas in my life right now:

• Fitness
  • I want to be fit but have difficulty in following up an exercise for a longer time in continuity
• Financial Health
  • I want to be financially independent and pursue a long time dream of having a business
• Relationship
  • I want to be the best person a woman can want including improving appearance, presentation, etc
• Personality Development
  • I want to add certain skills in my life which I started but left midway - such as skating, learning music, etc
• Learning/Explore Computer Science
  • I want to learn about new areas in computer science which I always wanted to - machine learning and build something out of it
• Family time
  • I want to spend more time with family - be it on screen or together
• Long Term Friends
  • I want to move away from a transactional relationship with a few folks whom I consider selfish and spend more time with whom I would be happy to be with
• Office/Work Improvements
  • I want to gain a lot more from my work at Facebook because the people I work with are a priceless hi-intellect group that I have ever been in close contact with

I have made my little tasks over each of these focus areas (actually missed areas where I am not super interested as of now). But seeing my improvements in each of my goals makes me feel very confident of myself. I do not hope that my plan or my focus area is also something which would interest others, but it could certainly be helpful towards taking the first steps towards planning the unknown.

I also plan to write a follow-up blog after a month on how my progress has been on each of these above which I followed.