Tuesday, October 7, 2014

How to ALWAYS Be Productive 24/7

Foreword

I, by no means, ably completely to the advice I am about to state, so take head that I am not judging nor blaming nor commanding any of you reading this blogpost, lest it be the most hypocritical series of characters known to science. In fact, so much hypocrisy in one document has been known to cause black holes in the space time continuum, so take all that is written below with a grain of salt, nay, a  bucket of salt, nay a Russian arctic oil tanker's worth of solid NaCl.  

Main Idea

The reason we are "unproductive" is that the activities we choose to do in our free time do not accumulate to a learned skill or lesson. I will attempt to explain this phenomenon with my own experience.

A Personal Experience

In 8th grade, I would come home everyday after school, plop onto my bed, and watch several episodes of a YouTube gamer. The videos were only 20 minutes long (which didn't seem as long back then but it's an eternity now). I would watch one, and since the related videos were just a tap of a finger away, I would watch 2 or 3 at a time. I did not have many of the games that the YouTuber had, so I felt that I was playing the game right along with him without actually having to buy the game. 

Eventually, I noticed that I was indeed spending A LOT of time watching videos. Then, I realized just how much time everyday I had spent to this fruitless activity. The videos didn't make me laugh; they didn't teach me anything; they didn't accumulate to anything.  In fact, I wasn't even making the YouTuber any money since I was watching on mobile. Thus, I resolved to unsubscribe from all of my gaming subscriptions (all 7 of them, and that's a lot). 

I found that my grades had improved, and I was getting a lot more sleep. I was performing better in sports thanks to the new found rest. However, most importantly, I felt good about myself because I was making much better use of my time.

Moral of the Story

Make your "restful" activities something you know is useful. It is very difficult to start because you have to work hard. And it is always easier to just sit back and absorb entertainment. But eventually, you will become invested in the thing you started, and you will want to do it more and more. You will be using the same principle of addiction in your own favor! Also, a good idea is to distance yourself from "poisonous" temptations as far as possible. Delete YouTube from your favorites bar. Block YouTube from even showing up in your browser. Put a limit on the time you spend on your social media. You know deep down inside that these things are not contributing anything positive to you; it's just the temptation on the surface and a little but of laziness that is blocking you from taking action to make yourself a better person.

1 comment:

  1. This crucial skill has been conveyed in a personal yet universal context. That is awesome and I find it very helpful :) It is a testament to your own productive methods.

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