How to go off track and get back

Yes, you can get back.

Welcome everyone to the third issue of my newsletter. Can’t believe that it is the third issue. Feeling proud.

Going off track

I have got to say that I am not proud of my productivity this week. The major reason for that was me getting a new laptop. It is a used laptop and still, it didn’t stop me from being excited and going off track.

The following are the 3 steps in which I went off track XD

Step 1

Setting up the laptop the way I wanted. I didn’t have much to set up except for the updates.

Step 2

Loving the laptop too much. Here, I was way too excited over the laptop and ended up watching reviews of the laptop. Felt good seeing positive reviews and I just disagreed with negative ones. I blame this one on the confirmation bias.

Step 3

We want to know how well it performs right? Games are the way to do it right? I thought about this for one full day not gonna lie. But, I ended up trying out Valorant and Counter-Strike and they ran pretty well. I just uninstalled them later.

3 Days were gone by and I was going crazy.

I didn’t have much to do in the internship this week. I am not sure if it is a good thing or bad. I did deliver one feature successfully though. Looking forward to the next one.

I couldn’t get too far with my mini project either because I decided to implement redux and implementing redux is not easy. I was able to understand it easily. I can even explain what it does and what the underlying principles are but I am finding it difficult to get it to work in my application.

Enough is enough. I have to get on top of this and I will.
But how? I found this productivity hack called interstitial journaling.

Getting back

You start your day by writing down what you need to do (You can even write down the tasks the previous night). A minimum of two tasks will do. But, throughout the day whether you complete the tasks or not, you should write down how you feel and whether you completed the tasks.

More tasks can be included over the day and the process repeats.

Every time you enter something in the journal, you enter the timestamp first and then write what you did. That’s it.

I think this will help a lot because it provides constant feedback. This feedback loop keeps us motivated and helps us head in the right direction. But, you might feel overwhelmed to write if you haven’t done anything productive. That’s where I think it gets tricky. I will try this method for a week and review it. I am rooting for it.

I think keeping a digital journal for this would be helpful as you can enter the timestamps easily.

Closing thoughts?

I will get back to work before my imposter syndrome kicks in and ruins another week. And, it starts right here with me publishing this article.

Come back next week to know how it went!

Quote of the week

You have time.
Doesn’t matter how much.
You have time!

You have today.
YOU HAVE TODAY!

Are you going to waste it, like you do not have it?
Or are you going to spend it, like it is the only thing you have?