Photo by Eddy Billard from Unsplash

Many of us desire to transform our lives according to our choices once you decide that you want to transform your life, try not to think so big right away. It all starts with being aware of what you want to make out of this life and how precisely you want to make that dream come true. As soon as you get a clear vision about your goal, you start creating minute steps being divided per day that are essential to reach a quarter of your goal.

A productive daily routine requires true intention and discipline to change your bad habits and incorporate beneficial ones. If you don’t get a hold of yourself in the morning, there’s a huge tendency that this anxiety-driven morning routine will follow to the end of the day. When much workload is on the table, it’s easy to become frantic and overwhelmed by the look of it, along with the imagination of being stressed and exhausted (before you even started anything). What people don’t know is the key to productivity is doing less to achieve bigger results.

It all starts with establishing a growth mindset. It begins with believing that you can change your life. Along with determination and vision should be a clear mind that has no room for limiting beliefs. You need to become aware of the choices you make every day of your life. When you evaluate your choices about its effectiveness and the happiness that it brings you, you can eliminate the habits that don’t give you both.

You can stop doing the things that you know are not good for you but you do it anyway because of the temporary satisfaction it gives you. With a healthy state of mind, you are less likely to indulge in self-sabotaging your plans. You will learn to protect yourself from negative thoughts that hamper you from doing the work that needs to be done. When you self-sabotage your plans, you are fooling yourself for exhibiting negative behavior while expecting results to come knocking at your door. 

 

START THE DAY FRESH AND RIGHT 

 

As soon as you wake up in the morning, feel the heat of the sun piercing into your skin through the window. It’s a sign of a brand new day, a fresh start. Every morning is an opportunity to be better, to give more, and to love yourself and what you do. Unless you believe it and not think of it as something cheesy or a cliché, you will fail to start the day as you should achieve a productive day. Know that the sorrows and negativity of yesterday shouldn’t have discouraged you from embracing a clean slate tomorrow.

It shouldn’t have to scare you into new beginnings because you have the choice to let go of that burden. Stop ruminating about what happened before and making up scenarios about what you could’ve done because it doesn’t matter anymore. What you can do, however, is to put in mind what you must never do again under the circumstances. Pick up what you need to learn from that experience and keep moving forward. Let it go and breathe. Trust me, you’ll feel better. 

 

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU CONTINUE TO DO THESE HARMFUL HABITS? 

 

Self-awareness is necessary to acknowledge which habit is good for you and which is not. If you do not express any concern about your actions, you will be lost from your vision. Not only will you become unproductive every day, but you are also cutting off the opportunities which could’ve been the avenue to get to the place you want to be. Every day, you would be committing to a massive workload you aren’t physically and mentally prepared for. As a result, you will be left admiring another person’s life for how far they’ve come while you’re stuck wondering what went wrong. 

 

8 BAD HABITS THAT ARE HOLDING YOU BACK FROM BEING PRODUCTIVE: 

 

USING YOUR PHONE IN BED 

 

One of the easiest mistakes to do to avoid being productive in the morning is to grab your phone in bed. Mindlessly surfing the web through your phone can sidetrack you from your morning priorities. Five minutes of screen time will turn twenty until you’ve consumed an hour of your morning which should’ve been used for better, more important practices.

When you realize that, you would face guilt and self-sabotage the rest of the day. It’s the same thing when you stay up late and put off your sleep while using your phone. Be very careful of what information you expose yourself at night because it will engrave in your mind the next morning.

Moreover, when you use your phone as soon as you wake up, your eyes will get tired and your mind immediately is exposed to the harsh, ideal reality of comparison and false successes. This will put you in a bad and negative mood and lead you to compare every aspect of yourself to the model or the fake entrepreneur you see online.

 

SKIPPING BREAKFAST 

 

Skipping breakfast or any important meal is one very unhealthy way to break your morning routine. This is a very common way to compromise both your productivity and health because you deprive yourself of fuel to your energy. If you make this a habit, you may think it’s a necessary sacrifice to skip meals because of the workload you have but it’s a major mistake to make.

In the long-term, you will see a huge decline in both areas. When you plan a busy day, it is impossible to fulfill it let alone perform it excellently without proper nutrition. You get tired easily because your immune system is not at its best. Therefore, you won’t be able to perform your tasks and duties well.

 

COMMITTING BEYOND YOUR BOUNDARIES  

 

Remember that being committed means being completely dedicated to a life’s work. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t be dedicated to a lot of things at the same time. It’s vital to be selective about the tasks that you choose to do for the day. Evaluate your daily objectives according to importance (if it directly benefits your goal) not only on urgency.

If you focus on fixing minor details and tweaking unnecessary parts of the major task, you will not be able to accomplish the goals you set for yourself. Instead, you are likely to feel burned out because you see yourself being busy and overwhelmed with the massive workload on your plate while realizing that you’re not inclined towards results.

Instead of pouring your energy into income-generating activities, you are keeping yourself busy with worrying about less important things that don’t directly affect your chances of being successful. Boundaries are important to not spread yourself too thin. When you are firm with focusing on your priorities first, you wouldn’t feel bad when you do something else because you’ve already finished your work.

 

BEING UNORGANIZED 

 

Being organized is a skill that takes time to practice and master. Make sure to not only be organized with your time but also in your working environment. You would never think it will take about half an hour looking for your car keys until you spend half an hour looking for them on a Monday morning. You wouldn’t want to waste your precious time finding something that shouldn’t be lost in the first place if only there were a safe, fixed place you can store it in.

Pay close attention to the list of goals you have planned for the day and try your best to achieve them, but be reasonable. Stop doing so much if you can’t do them all efficiently. Results will not follow if you do a lot of things but when you dedicate quality time, energy, and talent to them. If you ignore them, your day will go downhill from there.

 

PROCRASTINATING 

 

Procrastinating is the habitual action of putting off work to cater short-term satisfaction instead of one’s long-term goals. Putting work for later when there’s no reason not to do it now is a sign that you don’t have a clear vision of your goals. This is because when you procrastinate, you’re not driven by the fire to commit to progress regardless of speed, but by the stress due to fear of failure.

You’re overthinking the entire process by hurting yourself with the feeling of burning out. You don’t know exactly what you want, what the means are towards achieving them, and if you have the mental strength to go through the ups and downs of your journey. When you train your mind to procrastinate, you will slowly be detracted from your goals.

 

COMPLAINING 

 

Constant complaining is a reflection that you’re ungrateful. It’s a distressing disposition that always looks for something and not appreciating what is not there. It also speaks of your entitlement; how you always look at the mistakes of others and not of your own. You do not know how to adjust according to what is necessary for the circumstance and therefore lash out like a child. When you keep on complaining, you shrink the value of your past achievements by not respecting the truth of the uncertainty of life. Complaining about what could’ve been and what should’ve happened will only waste your time for speaking ill on what you can’t change.

 

DOING EVERYTHING AT ONCE 

 

Multitasking is a myth, a scam that will only keep you busy, but not productive. It tricks you into thinking you’ve done plenty but you don’t finish anything at all and you don’t do it well. Multitasking takes away your focus on the most important task to do by mixing it with less important tasks that can be done quickly. What could’ve been done for an hour will extend another three hours because you don’t manage your energy and intelligence one thing at a time. If you want to check all of the things on your to-do list, do them quickly and passionately. Give every task all your passion but give it the proper time to finish.

BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE 

 

Blaming other people speaks about how you lack a sense of accountability with your thoughts and actions. You magnify the setbacks of others to cover up your own, so there’s no reasoning with you. If you truly want to take control of your life, you need to start acknowledging and accepting the consequences of your actions as your doing, not others.

It’s much easier to admit humbly that you’ve made a mistake than pointing a finger at other people. When you choose humility over ego, you tell yourself that you can learn from your mistakes and find ways to improve your decision-making skills. Many people think complaining is better because it escapes you from being the one to blame, from being the one who accepts the shame and judgment.

But if you analyze the situation carefully, it’s the other way around. Accepting the fear of judgment is part of the process of growing; if you always accept good, flattering things said to you, you will never be aware of what your lapses are and how to manage them in the future.

 

CONCLUSION: 

 

If you want to change your state of life, start with the small things, and from there, you will manifest great things. Your habits today determine what your future in the next months, years to come will look like. Remember that if you choose the easy route, in the beginning, the tables will change, and in the near future, you will be dealt with a hard-knock life. When this happens, you’ll be left with no other choice but to work tirelessly, like there’s no end in sight.

There will be no more luxury leisure nor will rest be an option. So now that you’re still not in a tough dilemma in poverty, remember that it’s vital to start planting while it’s spring, even when winter is still so far away. Time flies by so fast, and you can never take it back; might as well spend it by doing something useful and beneficial in the future when you’re no longer given the opportunity to start planting conveniently. 

 

 

 

“Ultimately, your state of mind determines your circumstances. To realize the outcomes you want, it is critical to recognize and experience the transition from our present thoughts, habits, and actions to new thoughts, habits, and actions.”

Darren L. Johnson