It’s your day, your thoughts and your actions!

Now I do as I preach or rather preach only what I really believe in. So I took a day out of my weekend, which normally constitutes cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, Netflix and meeting friends. It bore me, this routine. I just don’t enjoy going in cycles day in and day out. I want to break free. Haha – seems like I am singing right now. Oh, yes! I am, Lyrics are the best source of inspiration. They sum up your thoughts and feelings in this lyrical composition that sticks so much better than any writer can ever connect with you. ‘I want to break free’. Anyway, so I stepped out and did what I always wanted to – write, read, listen, and just enjoy life my way. Here is what I did:

So Melbourne has this ‘Emerging writer’s festival’ every year around June wherein they have various events, conferences, workshops around story telling, writing professionally and publishing/editing – so I attended to one of these sessions and get some insights from some published writers. The topic was 5*5 rules of writing. Now I am no professional writer and don’t know if I want to take it up as a profession, however I want to hone some writing skills for my blogs and what better way than to learn it directly from some of finest published writers to kick-start my journey as a writer. I shall write a separate piece on all that I learnt from this session in another article. But in a nutshell that’s how I started my morning, with some inspiration!

“You don’t need to know everything in the beginning, you just need to start”

– Toni Jordan

After some food for thought it was time to fuel the belly, so I headed to this nearby cafe and can definitely vouch for their coffee. One thing I have learnt while choosing a cafe/restaurant is that choose a cafe with ratings of 4 and above for a satisfactory experience. You will cherish the food, service, and ambience of that place and shall set the ball rolling for the rest of your day. So that was the next 45 minutes of me time or rather tummy time.

Now , it was the time to find a place where I can peacefully write with no distractions and whilst I would have loved any outdoor setting – it was not possible in this cold dreary winter days when the temperature drops to a single digit. So I thought what better place than a library. 

So I come to this library, a masterpiece in architecture and find my hideout place. Meanwhile I was thinking, when you have access to such facilities, why not take full advantage of it? So, I got my setting that I had needed – a place full of books, young and bright minds, quiet environment (not that quiet actually with all the visitors, but still better than most public places) – now is the time to begin the work

I started with writing some of my unfinished articles, planned for the forthcoming weekends, thought through some bigger agendas and spent some time reading this book that I had picked up from my office library and had never opened it till then – remember my habit to procrastinate and how I am trying to break through that habit – will write a follow up on that as well in terms of how I have fared so far, some common pitfalls, techniques to overcome them, etc. Anyway, by now I had almost spent 5-6 hours on this. Trust me the focus that I had was unparalleled. I would never have been able to achieve so much in probably next 2-3 weekends because of all the distractions and inexplicable black holes of time.

Anyway now that I had done most of what I had set out to do, it was time to return home. Now I had not planned for this, but when I stepped out of the Library, I saw these bunch of Sudanese students protesting for democracy and I loved the energy they had, the cause for which they were protesting – close to my heart and the leader who gave the speech had a sense of confidence that gathered a large crowd that you can see in the below picture. It left me with a smile.

The rest of my away day was just usual, spent time with my husband watching something over dinner and discussing our day. But this to me was a perfect day – doing the only thing that matters the most to you.

You are constantly thinking of how to do things better, be it at work or in personal life. How could you have done that project differently if you were to do it all over again? How could you probably improve this recipe a little better the next time? How could you shop more productively? Does it sound familiar?

Read the below checklist and tick against the ones you think applies to you. 

1. You watch the ‘Brightside‘ videos more often than the music videos
2. You read articles on ‘Medium‘ over browsing on Instagram
3. You learn from everyone around you irrespective of their age, caste, sex, experience, education
4. You try to find positivity even in the darkest places.
5. You beat yourself to death if you do the same mistake twice.
6. You crave criticism like pregnant women crave chocolate and you find feedback as a blessing in disguise.
7. You constantly improvise, that’s the only way to get better at a skill right!
8. You practice what you preach. It’s a sin to say something that you wouldn’t do yourself.
9. You hate it when people use jazz that they are not even aware of.
10. You feel suffocated if you find yourself in an unproductive session or a directionless discussion.

Now if you answered ‘Yes’ at-least 7 out of 10 times, you are a self-development junkie. If you answered ‘Yes’ in over 5 instances but less than 7 you are not a junkie yet, you are content with your self and less worrisome with what others have think about you. If you got a score of less than 5, you enjoy life on your terms and you probably don’t care what the world around you does and probably are in self-denial. Not always but might apply to a few.

This was just a fun way of probably knowing oneself better, and the above indicators are by no means any signs of telling you to follow this or not. That is totally up to you and no one else can/should dictate those terms to you. If you are content with who you are, that’s probably the best for you and need not always look for improvement.

I was just wondering if we ever stop for a second to think about how our last week was, how you are doing in the current role or how your business is growing or not growing, what have you studied and what’s left to study, what we ate and didn’t eat, what stories are we consuming, how much screen time do we have in the day, how are we contributing to make this world better, are we giving back to the community?

Sometimes, it is important to unwind to perform better. We have all probably heard about the saying that sometimes you have to take one or two steps backward to pivot forward in the right direction.

So whilst we might agree that it makes sense – not most of us really do it. When have you taken some time off from whatever you have been doing to do just what you have wanted to and ALONE? Yes, that’s the key here – ALONE. Not with your spouse, not with your family or friends. Just spending time with yourself. Now you might think it’s difficult, but it isn’t – you just need to plan a day in a month or fortnight when you wanna go to some quiet place, take your arms and ammunition to amp up the fire inside you – your laptop, your diary, your headphones, your camera or your phone and some snacks and just go on a trip of self-discovery – Start in the morning and give yourself ample time to think through all of what I mentioned above and come back with a more productive self. Read, write, run, jump, exercise, click, eat do whatever you please but alone – so you have had the best company in the world you can ever get – Yourself.

Now some might say this ain’t me – ‘I can’t go alone’ or ‘I can’t eat alone’ or ‘I can’t be alone’ – sorry to break your myth, it’s just in your mind – you are always on your own, always. Period! We all have a family and friends and colleagues and social circles but we need to live our own lives and the way we want to, so it is essential we spend time with ourselves asking ourselves those big questions – ‘What we want to do’, ‘Where we want to go’, ‘How things have been so far’ and ‘If there is anything we can do to make it better.’ And if that doesn’t convince you, I just have one last question for you – If you can’t stay with yourself, how do you expect others to stay with you?

Another popular myth would be what do I do? Oh, my God! there is no dearth of things you can do and trust me it can be done, in any part of the world – go to a park, beach, temple, cafe, trek wherever you can break the monotony of your routine and somewhere you won’t be distracted

Now there are some do’s and don’ts for this to work

Do
Write your thoughts
Pen a poem
Shoot a movie
Read a book
Reduce screentime if possible
Reflect on things (office, work, business, school, people)
Be creative
Plan the entire day
Have a positive attitude
Wear comfy clothes

Don’ts
No calling anyone
No wasting time commuting a lot
No shopping
No indulgence
No sleeping
No procrastination
No cutting corners
No exploring (like a tourist)

If you work out or even if you don’t you might have heard about the concept of a recovery week when you need to rest a little to be able to perform better, this is exactly the same thing in life but yet we fail to do so and that includes me. I have said the same thing using different perspectives to stress the importance of doing it.

So don’t think, probably plan your next Sat or Sunday to take time off from your usual life, pack your bag with some essentials, choose a location (need not be just one location, can be multiple, just need to plan it better) where you can sit, relax, unwind, do some deep thinking and come back rejuvenated. Hope it helps.

Oh my god, that’s such a big lie that anyone would ever tell you. I mean who are these super-productive people who have these perfect days each day every single day. I want to know these people.

In my life of 30 years I haven’t met one so far; so I am doubtful if I would ever find this perfect person who gets up early morning, reads the newspaper, does their workout, reaches the workplace on time, gets everything done, returns home on time, cooks a good dinner, indulges in some light reading, meditates, does their nightly routine and goes off to sleep and don’t forget — they have a good night’s sleep as well without a sweat.

If you tell me that people have this well-oiled machine, I would like to meet them. I strive for this perfect day and it just doesn’t seem to happen. I am sure there are a few people who follow a good routine that includes a lot of what I mentioned above and can consistently do that too but if you’d tell me that these people are happy with their outcomes I shall have my doubts. 

Seven out of ten adults in the United States say they experience stress or anxiety daily and can’t sleep peacefully. Now, do I need to say more? I do! What I want to say is that a perfect day is a myth. No one has this amazing morning routine, equally amazing day at work and an amazing evening too. That’s the law of the universe. You can’t have it all.

I constantly juggle work and personal priorities. I forget to bring groceries on time; I drag myself out of bed in the morning (I am just not a morning person no matter how hard I try) I just never seem to complete everything I need to – the backlog never seems to end. So you end up feeling sluggish, tired, and disappointed. But if you look at the glass half full – then you’d tell me you had a great day – you took those tiny steps to move forward, you probably met a few people, you learned something from them, you probably had a new idea and that got you excited and that made your life a tad bit simpler. And I would call it a perfect day. It is not about meeting the standards set by someone else, but it is about ‘setting your own standards’ and ‘living by them each day’. 

So the message is simple – Don’t run behind having a perfect day, get meaning out of each day, add value to the work you do, derive satisfaction from that me-time you get and that’s what a perfect day is.