Eat the Frogs first, Ice-cream later
5 life-style changes that have helped me focus on hard things
4.5 min read
I can already see my 37-year-old self cringing when I look at this Mark Twain inspired title but so be it…
We’ve all been reading about how social distancing measures are a god-send to get quality work done or to learn new skills. Yet if your experience has been anything like mine then these “pearls of wisdom” haven’t really provided you with the motivation needed to actually get shit done.
A bit of soul-searching and a lot of guilt later, I made a few changes to my life-style that are proving to be beneficial* and here are a few of them.
*take me writing this post as evidence if you’re skeptical
1. Locking myself in (metaphorically)
Counter to what you’re probably thinking, this isn’t a reference to Covid. Rather this is about the familiar feeling of being inspired to do something one moment and losing it entirely the next. To capture this moment of inspiration and do the work it takes to act upon it, here’s what I started doing:
I found a way to make it so hard for me to back out of a commitment I made to myself that I wouldn’t
Examples of ways I did this through are:
Messaging a friend who I know will keep me accountable
Posting about it on social media
Putting it in my Notes app which I check regularly
Writing it on a piece of paper and sticking it to my shelf
Photo Credits: BetterHumans
2. Being more Mindful
Coming from someone who not very long ago thought mindfulness was for white yoga instructors and bald monks, hopefully means you won’t simply skip over this section.
Spending half-an-hour, timed, either with a group meditation video or simply focusing on your breath/doing a body-scan has made a world of difference for me. I do it especially because I notice how it makes me more conscious of the small decisions I make during the day. E.g. I take an extra second to think before munching on a snack bar that I only kinda want or before I impulsively check my email.
Picture above: A photo of Tompkins Square park from my covid lunch-time walks
Adding the extra step of being aware of the thought process that went into me wanting to engage in the said compulsive activity means I can more often than not resist the urge to do it.
3. Eating when hungry NOT when it’s time
More power to those of you who’ve been doing the hour-long cardio workouts that pop-up on your news feeds because I’ve found it hard to continue my pre-covid exercise routine. Apart from three sets of push-ups a day, getting any kind of exercise has been a struggle.
This means I’ve had to pay more attention to my diet than I’m used to and here are a few changes that I’ve made:
Instead of eating a full 600-800 calorie lunch in one sitting, I divide it into half, eating half around noon and the other half a couple of hours later. This helps me avoid the afternoon crash that meat-eaters especially are all too familiar with (you feel tired because blood flow to the stomach increases when you eat fatty foods like red meat and or fried foods to digest it. Read more here if you’re interested)
No caffeine (chai/coffee) after 5 pm: pretty self-explanatory. It takes me at least half an hour longer to fall asleep if I’ve had caffeine after 5 pm than if I haven’t
Last meal no later than 4 hours before I go to bed. Full disclosure as much as I would like to follow an 7 pm dinner and 11 pm bedtime schedule, it ends up being more like dinner at 9 and sleeping at 1
Picture above: Sad looking dinner when I knew I needed to sleep soon after
I’m no nutritional expert so feel free to ignore what I say next, but eating a few hundred calories less than what the standard calorie counters recommend has left me feeling fresher and more focused if anything. Having said that, I would also add that I make sure that my diet includes a good chunk of fruits and greens and I religiously take multi-vitamins (especially Vitamin D and B12 both of which South Asians are known to be deficient in!).
4. Eating the Frogs First
The only thing worse than not making to-do lists is making them and not checking off most of the items on the list. After a couple of weeks of this ordeal, I realised that I was spending my mornings responding to email while scheduling harder tasks for the afternoon or late-evening when (1) I was swamped with other tasks that had come up during the day (2) had lower energy/motivation to get through the harder tasks. This meant that I was in a constant loop of pushing back tasks each day resulting in a longer list to go through the following day.
I decided to change this mindset and started taking a stab at harder tasks in the morning and rewarding myself with a treat (food and/or break) each time I checked off an item from my list
Photo credits: ProofHub Blog
This small change meant that I would either accomplish the scary-looking task in the morning and power through the rest of the day feeling good OR at least make some progress on the task and not feel as bad as I would have if I had dilly-dallied instead.
Pro-tip: Don’t underestimate the value of rewarding yourself with something you want AFTER you complete a hard task
also segues nicely into my next tip…
5. Doing the Dopamine Detox (DDD?)
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released by our body that (1) Allows us to feel “pleasure” (2) Provides us with the motivation to do things. Any activity that gets us excited is a high-dopamine emitting activity e.g. compulsively checking our phones, eating junk food, watching TV etc.
The Problem
While almost all of our actions emit a certain amount of dopamine (even drinking a glass of water when we’re thirsty), being hooked to highly stimulating activities like texts, notifications and other social media on our phones is what we’re trying to avoid. When we are addicted to easily accessible “rewards” lower dopamine emitting activities such as “work that we should be doing” don’t provide us with enough of a rush to get us off our asses and on to our desks to do what needs to be done.
Photo Credits: BareMinerals
The Fix
You guessed it. Start tempering your consumption of addictive stimuli.
I started going a day a week without using Instagram. If your achilles heel is browsing the internet or going down the youtube rabbit hole, put healthy limits on the time you spend on your phone and laptop. Heck, the easiest change I made that made the biggest difference was that I started keeping my phone more than an arm’s length of where my work desk. Having to walk over to get my phone is apparently a big enough obstacle that it gets me thinking if I actually need to check something on my phone or if I’m simply doing it out of habit.
Similar to mindfulness, once you become more aware of your own problematic behaviours, you’ll find it easier to resist the urge to engage in them
Note that you might read about extreme practitioners of dopamine detoxes that go long periods without chatting with friends or even making eye contact but there’s no science that supports such behaviour. If you want to read about other people’s experiences with going screen-free or detoxing, check out the subreddit r/nosurf.
That’s all from me. If you try any of the above, please share your experience with me! I’d love to read about it.
Stay safe,
Rohail