Context
November 2020 has been a very different experience for me. I got to see a lot of new ways of seeing my life and got to understand truly how blessed I am. There have been some fleeting thoughts(as Twitter calls it) that I want to write down so that I don't forget them.
Your time is important, but so are people
I've been a victim of this and I'm sure many will relate. We emphasize the importance of our time and keep repeating that to ourselves to the point where we spend a major part of our lives with ourselves and kind of put family time and people time in the backseat. But you know, life can be unpredictable and we never know if we'll be able to see that person who just smiled at us tomorrow. I don't mean to be negative here, but prioritizing family time and people time is something that I've been learning. I'm not good at it yet. But we'll get there slowly.
Don't start your day doing mundane tasks
This one's obvious. But a lot of us, me included, don't consider this. But I've started noticing that when I start the day scrolling through social media, or watching videos or do any task that consumes my attention span and energy, I'm more likely to get tired by afternoon on those days. This is a major enemy of our productivity.
Your attention span is a rare treasure, treat it like one.
I've started to think of my days as a collection of activities that I do keeping two things in mind. One : to get the job done and be as productive as possible while doing them. Two : Do the above tasks by guarding my attention span and brain power against the evils of websites aimed for bottomless scrolling. I'll tell you what I mean. As the day progresses, our attention span gets divided on multiple tasks and slowly we start losing the power that we have to focus unwaveringly on things that matter the most to us. So I try to do all the important tasks when my focus is still intact and slowly start to relax as the sun starts going to rest.
You never know what someone is going through. Don't be quick to judge
I've had moments where I reached out to someone with the expectation that they might help me solve the problem at hand. But their responses have been vague and they didn't get back after that. That made me judge them as being rude or having changed. But a few days later I come to know why that happened and I'm ashamed of myself for being so quick to judge them. You never know what someone's going through. Give them the room to behave like their conscience wants them to. Respect that. If it was not right, they'll get back to you later when they realize it. If not, be the understanding one, forgive and move on. This is a tricky one because it plays with our ego. But having the long term relationship in mind, this might be the best available choice.
It doesn't cost a dime to be kind to someone. Why not do it then?
November started off with a bad news and I was off social media for a long time. Then one day I come back to see one message waiting in my inbox. I open it and I find the sender asking me if I was OK as they haven't heard from me in a while. That instantly pushed me into a positive mind space. If you're reading this, thanks a lot for asking!! I've done that a lot of times in the past and I've always received positive vibes from the other side. There's nothing to lose in this one. A win-win situation. So why not do it? Take a moment to send a message to someone telling them something nice. Look for yourself how lovely the experience can be!
Respect your time
Do the things that need to get done now. Don't postpone. Sometimes it is OK. But not all the time. Having a bucket load of pending tasks to get done doesn't feel good at all, I can say from experience. You never know what emergencies you might have to face, so do that work now!
There are so many others. But I'll keep this post short. Will include them in another post.
That's it from me! Bye👋