#StayProductive – There’s more than one way to achieve productivity and we hope that two perspectives on this will help highlight that it’s important to figure out what works best for you personally!
Christina:
A creature of routine and habit, I mistakenly believed that the best approach for me at the beginning of lockdown was to maintain or even intensify my routine and structure. So many news and social media articles were advocating for routine and structure to maintain as much ‘normality’ as possible. The only problem is that our current situation is not normal.
After over a month of forcing myself to get up at the crack of dawn; having a similar breakfast every morning before beginning a solid four hours of work at my desk (no breaks – what was I thinking?), to the surprise of absolutely no one, I started feeling overwhelmed and downright exhausted. The lack of a weekday, real-life, pub d’jour and weekends spent doing different things with different friends made my routine feel restrictive and, with hindsight, suffocating.
Something needed to change, and I decided that that “something” was my relationship with routine. It was painful at first, but I was determined to be a little more relaxed in my approach. I thought that maybe it was better to break up my day, injecting into it more variety and, more importantly, flexibility. It worked. In the mornings, I now make sure to mix things up a little and try some yoga or read my book over a relaxing breakfast. It depends on how I feel.
Unexpectedly, relinquishing the illusion of total control has also given me some perspective on my working habits. I’ll now focus on completing the tasks at hand in order of priority rather than relying on sheer determination to complete as much as I can in three or four hour slots. The result is that I’m more productive, not less.
When I hit a lull, I don’t force it. I’ll either try completing a different piece of work, change the environment in which I’m working, or take ten minutes for myself to clear my head and refresh. I’ve found making every day a little different and taking a step back to breathe when it’s all a bit too much has not only improved my productivity but it has also very much helped me to deal with this crazy new reality we’re all living in.
At the end of the day, I’ve realised that it's most important to work out what’s best for you as an individual, and not expect yourself to operate in the same way as before or even in a way that you think you should be operating. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures, and I hope this is helpful for other routine-queens and kings out there.
Giannis:
To be honest with you, I was a bit unsure of what to write for this article. In my experience, as long as you #staywell you can be productive. As long as you are physically and mentally healthy, you can #stayproductive.
So what I tried to do during the lockdown was to transform the hours that I was spending in transportation into something productive, rather than kill them all together by sleeping.
What I replaced those gained hours with varied, depending on my mood really; nevertheless, the choices are always pretty much the same - reading books, watching documentaries, preparing meals, exercising or even talking to friends and family.
Nothing too complicated… The best solutions always start simple and then you go on to explore their depths. A simple solution can lead to lots of lessons and great results. Obviously I have learned a thing or two through books, documentaries and cooking which I can now apply (that's the difficult part) in my everyday life, on top of managing to reduce my sleeping hours (something that I wanted to do for a long time since I was sleeping way to many hours for my liking).
In conclusion, productivity levels fluctuate through life depending on your mental and physical health.
Based on my really small experience, I would advise: to grab on to small good habits, even if they seem insignificant, and avoid or even actively fight the bad habits, however small they may seem.