Struggles With Productivity

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that productivity is sometimes a struggle for people. It might be more intense than others in some instances, but there's always been a moment in everyone's lives where you aim to do something and in the end only half an attempt is done. I, myself, have struggled with productivity like the average guy. The plan might be to draw and I get as far as the sketch and nothing happens after it. Or the plan would be to write a few paragraphs of a story to only have all knowledge of the English language disappear once the text document is open. Though I think sometimes my drive for productivity and to have something done has become worse and worse as time goes on. Call it burnout from school finally hitting me fully, call it me just being a complete lazy ass, what-have-you, but at the end of the day, I sometimes find myself not going through fully on plans I originally had. And it's worse on days I'm not feeling mentally well in myself. I'm not trying to ask for pity points, I'm just explaining myself. I know I've talked about how I'm almost motivated on rainy days in a previous blog post, here. But I wanted to practically talk and have a mini celebration for myself on something I did that made me feel so much better in myself.

I managed to fully clean out my room!! I have a bit of a problem with not completely clearing out my room, but today was different. I still have about a week left until I start college, (that's pending since it's only the induction day coming up.) And I still had notes of mine from 6th year. I knew I wasn't doing them any justice by leaving them sit there, so I fully decided "once I'm up, I'm getting ready to clean out my room." And I did!! My entire space has completely transformed now and I've never felt more better and proud in myself. I even cleaned down my desk and I have so much more room on it! Of course, I still have my small collection of CDs and DVDs stacked and sided in the corner of my desk on top of 5 sketchbooks, but it's now like a mini physical media hub of all my favourite music and movies. My own personal Netflix and Spotify. I've also got my fair share of figures and trinkets on my desk and bedside lockers. I decided to move my dream journal to the locker on the side I sleep on with also a little pen so that now I don't have to go sifting through piles upon piles of books to find it! (I have so many notebooks, sketchbooks and, well, reading books and comics that I might as well call my room a mini library too.) Everything is so organised now but not in a way that makes my room feel empty and more like a show room to me. I still like it to be my own space while also, of course, looking nice. My accessories (while still being many to count of) can sit nicely on the other bedside locker that lacks a dream journal. 

Which, side tangent, quick question to my fellow alt people (or anyone for that matter) that own a lot of accessories; where do you all keep them? For me I never knew of where to store mine and just had them on a bedside locker but I feel as though they should be in a drawer (??) But that also feels wrong if you get me. If anyone has an idea please let me know because I feel like I'm doing something wrong with just having them be there. Side tangent over. Back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

A lot of reoganising went down as I was cleaning, at first, all I wanted done was to just dump all of my 6th year notes and past exam papers and have my room shining. But as I was finishing up on vacuuming, I realised just how much I could fit into my shelves now that they were free from the shackles of holding schoolwork. So, I did what needing doing and I organised all of my sketchbooks and other books into them! A lot of these sketchbooks were older ones that I finished but keep since there's artwork and generally a nice time capsule for myself to look back on when I've possibly improved in my skills or am at a different time in my life. I also dedicated one shelf to books I had read and finished, and another to books I'm planning to get to and/or in the process of reading. I know I could've just put them all together, but I liked it more to keep them separate and almost gave me a frame of reference on what it is I need to get to reading.

To be fair I kinda ran myself dry that day since I did dedicate a near 3-4 hours of cleaning in one go. Finally getting to sit down in my chair in (what felt like) my completely different room was so rewarding. I continued to work a bit more on redecorating my walls with new printouts and whatnot but I could only do so much until my entire battery ran out. Don't ask how I still managed to write this blog, I don't know either, haha. But I don't view it as a bad thing, with the result I got in the end, I'm very happy with how things turned out. This wasn't something I expected to be doing on a Monday morning but I'll take these wins when I get the chance to. And I made it fun while doing so! I was completely home alone for a lot of that day so I had the chance to play my CDs and sing along to them. I always love listening to my CDs and vinyls whenever I get the chance. But I'm completely ecstatic still and beaming from how much work I got done today. I don't know if this spark of complete focus and persistence for such a long period of time will come back again. But I'm happy it hit me today! I don't have any real exact advice on dealing with productivity issues like how I sorta do, but just getting up and getting it done is what did it for me. Same with setting mini goals almost for the experience helped me get through it. One I did that was a fun one was to see how many albums I have on CD could I listen through while cleaning so then after it it felt like I had achieved a "high score" for it. I also divided my room into "sectors" to clean up, which helped me a whole lot since trying to clean my room is confusing because usually my brain can't process cleaning up as one big major task done in one go, so I work better with it broken down into steps. I went in a clockwise way for these sectors too which also helped me think of what it is I had next. Of course, don't take this as absolute gospel advice for what you should do if you're unmotivated, I'm only explaining what seemed to work for me in the moment. (The random burst of cleaning energy probably had the biggest hand in this for the most part.)

All in all, productivity is nice, but the motivation and energy to do said tasks sometimes seem to skip away once you get the very idea of working on something! Other than that, I've been typing for the past hour and a half, I'm out! Have a nice day/evening/night!

[saysike], 01/09/15