So you’ve lost so much time being lazy. Now what?
A short guide for getting back on track
So you’ve had an extended productivity dip and you want to get back on track? I created this article specifically to help someone like you. Sometimes, we make out elaborate plans for a certain period of time, and something happens that takes such time away from us and we don’t get to complete some scheduled tasks or activities.
I’ve been through this countless times, and below I’ve recounted a few tips that have helped me get back on track and continue towards my goals, no matter how much the time past is.
1. Focus on the new task(s) at hand
When you have lost time for your goals, it is super important that you don’t try to cover up all the activities you should have done in the past in a very short period. For example, struggling to read a book in two days when you know it would ordinarily take one week to read. Except you are preparing for an exam or something extremely urgent, this is not advisable. The key to catching up isn’t to force a whole bunch of tasks on yourself in such a short period. Rather, focus on continuing the tasks you already started before but keep up with an adequate pace. You can decide to speed up a bit, but don’t overdo it so you won’t have a breakdown.
2. Don’t be scared to scramble and start over
This is what a lot of us don’t want to hear whenever we have lost so much time due to laziness or even anything else. There are some projects for which the deadlines have past and we need to start something else. Or some plans are just no longer feasible and we have to come up with new ones.
Don’t be scared to start over.
Don’t be scared to wipe out those old plans and create new ones when the old ones just can’t work anymore.
If you don’t do this, you will just be stuck thinking about what should have worked instead of moving forward. Things happen, and you can’t be producing awesome results 365 days a year. So you’ve gained more weight. Or your business strategies for the year weren’t executed at all in the first quarter. Big deal. TRY AGAIN. It’s better than just sitting there doing nothing. Or wishing you did better in the past.
3. Don’t struggle to backtrack
This is just to buttress the first point. Focus on your newly set objectives and don’t try to cram what you should have done into a short time. It doesn’t work that way.
4. Avoid comparisons
I’m sure you know by now that on a planet of about 7 billion people, nobody has exactly the same story as anyone else. That means that you are here for your own unique journey, and you are not meant to be exactly the same as anybody else. So whenever you fall off the wagon of productivity and the road towards your goals, don’t compare yourself to theirs who may be doing better than you are in this regard. First of all, you don’t know their full story. Secondly, you should be grateful for your own story and stick with it till the end.
It may take you longer to achieve your goals in the end. Or that time you’ve lost may have even helped give you a clearer perspective of what you should be working on. At the end of the day, everything happens for a reason. And always remember:
You are here for your own story. OWN IT.
5. Identify urgent and important tasks and push more for them.
So, I can understand that in some occasions, when we have lost time, we may still have a short window to achieve an important goal. For example, you may have been preparing for an exam you can only take once a year and you skipped one month of preparation which may cost you. However, you still have one month left after to prepare. By all means, go for it. You can decide to create extra hours to get better prepared for this task, and that is fine.
When something is important to us and needs to be treated urgently, we need to know when to make special cases for it. If we scale through or not, we will still be satisfied with the fact that we tried.
