Tag: life

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Life Progress Self-awareness

15 Priceless Productivity Tips for Procrastinators

Productivity Tips for Procrastinators
Reading Time: 3 minutes

This post first appeared on the 1st things 1st blog.

What a paradox that to write about productivity for those who always postpone things, I am procrastinating myself while scrolling productivity and business tips on Twitter. The problem is that I shouldn’t focus on productivity to be productive. Instead, I should focus on my goals. And develop effective habits.

The trick is just to start doing what you planned. And so I started, and in this article, I will give you a glimpse of those habits that you should develop to live a more thriving and meaningful life.

Know your WHY’s

Always be aware of why you are doing what you are doing. You will always have very little motivation if your reasons are vague.

Do you work just for survival? Or for financial stability? Or for recognition? Or for impact? Or for self-expression? 

Finish what you started

Decide in advance which of your projects are to be finished and which of them are just experiments.

Don’t start working on new projects until the old ones are completed. Learn the habit of getting things done.

Focus on your strengths

Nobody is perfect. Everyone has their flaws. As well as their strengths. 

Don’t be sorry about what you can’t do. Identify what you can do best, and make that even better. 

Ask others for help when it’s too hard to handle yourself or takes too much time.

Start now with what you have

Perfect conditions will never exist. So you have to start doing what you want or need to do now. Not next month, not next week, not tomorrow. But now.

Start ideating, prioritizing, and planning. Take the first steps. Even if that’s for 20 minutes. The goal is to build productive habits.

Create TODO lists

Have three TODO lists: “Must do,” “Should do,” and “Want to do.” Execute tasks from those lists according to your priorities and energy levels.

Don’t waste your time on “wants” if your “musts” are not done yet.

Break big tasks into smaller chunks

Sometimes your tasks are so huge that you just get overwhelmed and perplexed. Where should you start? How can you plan and estimate?

The trick here is to split the big task into smaller ones and evaluate them separately.

Find your prime biological time

Identify your most productive time of day. Maybe it’s your mornings, maybe afternoons, or maybe nights.

It’s your Power Hours that you should use for the most critical or creative work.

Schedule daily work time in blocks

Split your days into segments and dedicate those segments to different types of work. For example, 13:30 – 15:00 is for writing and replying to emails.

Do only one thing at a time. Don’t switch contexts. You will be more productive, focussing on only one type of work at a time.

Gamify your work

Try not to break a chain by working on something for a regular time daily. For example, building something for 1 hour every day.

Or, if you have some tedious tasks to do, decide on some point system to reward yourself for a certain amount of completed tasks.

Choose peace, not conflict

When communicating, aim to be calm, understanding, and harmonious. Unnecessary conflicts just drain your energy and make you less than productive.

Usually, complicated people are so because of their difficult pasts. So be aware of that, and it will help you be more peaceful.

Have an accountability partner

Struggling on your dreams alone might be difficult. There are a million reasons not to do something you wish to have done. The tiredness after the primary job, wishing to spend time with your friends or family, exciting TV show, or a new series on Netflix.

Don’t make excuses, and have a friend to talk with about your progress. This will make you more inspired and accountable against that person.

Control your devices

Don’t fall into the trap of digital devices. Instead, make smartphones, computers, and TV work for you, not control you.

Switch off most notifications not to distract you. Then, when you need more focus, go to Airplane mode.

Install apps that let you prioritize, plan your time, focus better.

Focus on the 20% most important tasks

The Pareto principle says that by doing just 20% of the most critical tasks, you can achieve 80% of the impact.

Identify which tasks make this 20% of your lists and focus on them.

Work hard on your mindset

Life is as finite and fatal as you define it. You can have a fixed mindset, thinking that you have developed during your childhood and youth, and nothing can be changed afterward.

Or you can be in a growth mindset thinking that you can continuously develop yourself, survive mistakes and learn from them, and work on life-changing projects.

Hold yourself accountable – drive your own life

Don’t wait for someone else to fix your life and make your dreams come true. Be the driver of your own life.

Design your life, take action, and go forward!

Invitation

There is more to that. If you learned something new and want to dive deeper, check these concise productivity tips I recently published. There are many more tips there (80 to be exact) for your goal setting, motivation, self-awareness, priorities, planning, efficiency, and growth.

Cover photo by cottonbro

Categories
Life Self-awareness

What Was Your Name Again?

What was your name again?
Reading Time: 3 minutes

This post first appeared on the 1st things 1st blog.

Whether your first name is James, Mary, or X Æ A-Xii, your name not only identifies you but also shapes your character and influences how other people will accept you. With the wrong name, you could have problems with being accepted by the society you are living in. With the wrong name, you can have difficulties getting a partner or job you want. With the wrong name, you can have a weight of associations that people bring to it. When you are about to have a baby, don’t give them the wrong name.

Our story

My wife and I are from Lithuania, and we are living in Berlin, Germany. Before the births of our kids, we did some name researches to find names that would be well accepted in Germany as well as being Lithuanian. I wouldn’t be a programmer if I wouldn’t take 500 most popular names in Germany and filter them using Python programming language to see the ones with Lithuanian word endings. From that point, we got just a handful of names and intuitively chose the ones that we liked most. I hope that Joris and Laura will enjoy the names they got at birth and will live integral and successful lives.

If we didn’t trust our intuition, we could have used the strategic prioritizer 1st things 1st to analyze a few names by multiple aspects. Let’s see how we could have done that.

Using the prioritizer

At 1st things 1st, you can evaluate anything (like first names) by multiple criteria (like aspects) and get calculated priorities. The workflow looks like this:

  1. You define your criteria or aspects.
  2. You list out your things, like first names.
  3. You evaluate each name by each aspect.
  4. You explore the prioritized first names.

Step 1. Define your aspects

Let’s brainstorm for some aspects that we can use to evaluate first names:

  • Both parents like it
  • Easy to pronounce
  • Easy to spell
  • Sounds good together with the last name
  • Doesn’t have negative associations
  • Has a nice meaning
  • Unique
  • Traditional
  • Globally recognized
  • Authentic in your native country
  • Ethnically appropriate
  • Doesn’t prompt negative nicknames
  • Doesn’t sound foolish for a middle-aged person
  • Some relative has it
  • A person you admire has it
  • A favorite book or movie character has it

I will choose the ones that are most important to me and enter into the prioritizer.

Both parents like it
Easy to pronounce
Easy to spell
Globally recognized
Doesn't sound foolish for a middle aged person

Here they are all added to the tool:

Step 2. List out the first names

Now let’s list some first names that you thought could be good candidates, let’s say, for a daughter:

  • Lina
  • Laura
  • Ada
  • Lara
  • Emma

Step 3. Evaluate each name by each aspect

Then I go through the list of aspects and names and rate how each name matches each aspect.

Step 4. Explore the prioritized names

In the last step, I get all first names prioritized by how much they match all the aspects. “Laura” is in the first position with a 100% match. Other names got fewer points, so they are less recommended to choose. 

Last thoughts

If people call you by another name already or you want to start a new chapter in your life, you can still officially change your first name in some countries. But if you care about your kids’ well being, choose their names wisely as soon as they come into this world.

Cover photo by Yoann Boyer

Categories
Life

How Game Development Influenced my Life

How Game Development Influenced my Life
Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you know me for quite a while, you probably remember how obsessed I was with game development culture. To me, game development had a significant influence since I played my first video game at 12 or so. I chose to study computer science to learn how to create games. Later I blogged about game development. I created a few small games (but usually I didn’t finalize them till polished projects). Also, I attended a few game development jams and other related events.

As I matured and developed my personality and self and global awareness, I concluded that video games are not an area where I want and need to spend the rest of my life. Yes, they were fun and challenging, but unfortunately too narrow, too fictional, and required a lot of mental power for short-lived results. Instead, I would promote searching for the truth and interconnectedness, finding your place in the world, and making a positive impact in your environment.

So the idea of “Make Impact” came to me. It encompasses many technical areas that are interesting to me: blogging, gamification, recommendation systems, social interactions, content creation, etc. It also has a noteworthy meaning: people are encouraged to donate to organizations of their choice to make a positive impact around them. The platform is in development, and if you want to have a sneak preview, drop a comment below.

After taking considerations of crowdfunding or venture capital, I decided to bootstrap another software project, so that I could fund the donation platform. I developed a commercial strategic prioritizer, “1st things 1st“. It lets you evaluate anything by multiple criteria and calculates their priorities. It simplifies strategic decision making and allows you to make more rational life choices.

I don’t abandon video or mobile games altogether. I still play some logical games on my iPhone from time to time to sharpen my brain and have some quality free time. I will create some casual games as a hobby in the future, probably when my children grow. But for now, I am concentrating on the realization of the strategic prioritizer and the donation platform.

What lessons did I take from game development?

  • Intuitive user interfaces are essential.
  • Games are safe simulations of the real world.
  • Although games usually don’t solve real problems, they stimulate the brain by letting you solve artificial difficulties, and you can use them for training.
  • Video games are some of the most sophisticated software programs. You can use the knowledge gained from various game development in mapping software, self-driving cars, accounting software, different simulations, and probably even rocket science (Although I have never achieved this level at game development).
  • Virtual and augmented reality are bringing game elements to the real world.
  • Video games let you test innovative logical and technological ideas.

It’s interesting to see how the development of interactive software will evolve in the future when we have even faster graphic cards, more capable smartphones, and snappier Internet connections. Be it games or other types of software. And I believe that the two projects I am building at the moment will add up to the greater meaning and sustainable progress. Let’s strive for a bright future instead of a Black-Mirror-like dystopia.

Cover photo by Hello Lightbulb.