I am close to reading 50 books for the half-year, and I am excited about the things I am building quietly. Recently, I invested in improving my environment design. I set up a walking pad near the television, I have a posture corrector in my chair, and I have an aluminum stand that makes sure my laptop’s screen stays at eye level when I do my work. It is amazing how these ridiculously small environmental changes make a huge difference to how I approach my daily grind.
Recently, I learned about the power of the ridiculously easy. I overcome every difficult day with a ridiculously easy task. I usually focus on just a single task. I treat that one task as the big to do. I make the task so laughably easy like brush my teeth, stand instead of lie down, leave the bedroom, go to the portico instead of sit in front of the TV, or do some 3 minutes of breath work and body scanning (when my monkey mind keeps me from sustaining a strong 20-minute meditation session).
Daybreak in Zurich It was autumn and the middle of October. I was looking at signages in German and relied on icons and arrows to get me to the right places. The second part of the flight was delayed. Some random (and likely bored) guy was broadcasting angry smileys and weird pictures via Airdrop. It was midday there, few people knew I was awake since 2 am because I had grad school classes in Manila.
Lately, I have been noticing a fluctuation in my productivity levels. Instead of fighting it, I began to try to understand it and work on it with a pinch of self-compassion and self-care. This month has been particularly challenging because I am in a career transition and I needed to meet both existing commitments and prepare for a new chapter at the same time. The simultaneous demands did require me to consolidate my entire life management system into a combination of a few technology tools: Cloud Storage for PARA system folder, Notion personal knowledge management system, and Monday boards for project tracking.