We have been blessed with life in this unfathomable universe. Not just life, but human life, which is capable of so much more than any other species on the planet. The only downside is that we have finite time and energy to experience it.

If you live a sedentary life, time will drag you to hell. If you over-exert yourself, your energy will burn out. The key to living life to its fullest is to maintain a balance of your time and energy. Here are the five ways you can be the best version of yourself at all times of the day:

SLEEP

Yes! I started with this because this is the most overlooked yet most important step to being productive. I know the deadlines keep us all awake, whether we want it or not. We have bills to pay and take care of our families. But money is futile if your health drains all of it. Working in front of a screen late at night has made me suffer from anxiety, high blood pressure, indigestion, lack of focus, irritability, fatigue, and many more chronic disorders. Lack of sleep is lethal to your brain. It causes dementia in later stages of life. How can you enjoy your retirement if you forget your own family? Forget how to do basic things?

People with responsibilities know how difficult it is to sleep. So, here are a few ways to calm down and shut your eyes for a few hours.

1. Don’t allow phones or laptops into the bedroom. Anything else will cause you to make excuses and relapse.
2. Make a time schedule to stop working and stick to it. Try to keep it as early as possible. Let your family guide you.
3. Expand the horizons of your viewpoint. Have a positive attitude and deal with the pending tasks in the morning.
4. If you have sleep apnea or other sleeping disorders, consult a doctor.

OBESITY

If you want to be productive, you need to be physically fit. Exercise not only keeps your body in peak condition but also strengthens your mind. Exercise increases blood flow to your brain, making you alert and active. Even a ten-minute warm-up during office hours can boost your productivity levels. It is never about the quantity of work but the quality of work. Being in good shape improves your posture and reduces fatigue and weakness in your bones and joints. Note that exercise is not the only way to stay fit. Eating a balanced diet in correct amounts is as important as exercise. Do not starve yourself, and eat at the right time.

PHONES

We have all turned into cyborgs with the advent of smartphones. It has come to the point that living without it for a day seems like a nightmare. We need to fight this addiction. Smartphones can be great for boosting productivity as it is the window to endless information. But what if most of it is garbage? We’re suffering from information overload, and it is hampering our productivity. We’re too busy staring at the screen, swiping one data point after another, unaware of the hours fleeing by us. Remember that most news you see does not affect your life directly. And many that do, you can’t do anything about it. So why bother wasting your time on things you can’t control? How do a celeb’s lifestyle choices improve your life? How can you stop the inflation caused due to Russia-Ukraine war? The short answer is you can’t. You can only improve your financial conditions by keeping the phone down and being more productive at what you do.

GAMING

I’m 23 years old, and yet, when I download a game that I like, I waste hours every day playing it. Worst case scenario, people start spending money on it. If you’re someone who plays games to chill, you need to find a better alternative. Games nowadays are highly addictive, much like social media. They give you daily rewards and bonus points that trick your brain into releasing dopamine and make you play another round. Teenagers in our country are killing themselves for losing a game. I won’t put any specific link but encourage you to make a google search. The list is long. They are spending thousands of rupees from their parent’s bank accounts for in-app purchases that are not even real objects or useful!

It can be said that games are for entertainment purposes, much like watching movies or web series, but they are not. If you watch good movies, you experience life from a different perspective. You learn something new. But games neither teach you any life lessons nor increases your productivity. If you still don’t agree, ask yourself when the game on your phone sends you the notification to finish the daily tasks, “So what if I don’t?” You’ll be losing nothing. You’ll only have more time and peace of mind to focus on your real life. Unless you’re not a streamer who earns money by playing games, it is not worth it.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Let’s be real here. Social media can be great for productivity. It helps you connect with your colleagues, which can help you finish your goals at a faster pace. But how many of us use it to boost our productivity? If you’re the average person working a 9 to 5 job, which most of us are, you need to build real connections that help you climb the ladder of success. Social media can be a great tool to boost your sales as an entrepreneur or connect to people who are more successful and get insights into their progress. But we spend time browsing through the news feed and sharing memes. And it’s not your fault. Companies like Meta(Facebook) and Tiktok hire psychologists to help coders develop algorithms that make the website more convenient based on the data they collect from you. You cannot outsmart a team of professionals whose only job is to keep you on their website as long as possible. The only way to win is to not play.

But wait, I said social media is good for productivity. Then how is deleting them useful? My point is to focus on apps that are less addictive. For example, LinkedIn. It is a website to find jobs and interact with other career-oriented people. You can talk to people who hold positions that you may wish to reach one day. Now you may need to work on your social skills to make good connections, but that is the only way you can learn. Have more interactions, make mistakes, and rectify them in the future. Having the right people at the right time can be a game changer, as two people working on the same task will finish it twice as fast. Productivity will go through the roof when you divide your job into small tasks and outsource them to people with specific skills. Social media has given everyone the access they need. It’s only up to us to utilize it in the right way.

Best of luck!

Thank you for reading!

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